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Now if only Steam would add a checkbox on their checkout page to add 10% donation/tip that goes directly to their upstream opensource dependencies (like the Win

Now if only Steam would add a checkbox on their checkout page to add 10% donation/tip that goes directly to their upstream opensource dependencies (like the Wine team), that would be amazing! I would add extra money on every purchase to support these people!

hochmartinez 7mo ago
https://www.winehq.org/donate https://www.winehq.org/donate
- moring 7mo ago
  Requires PayPal or credit card. The suggestion was to pay with your Steam Wallet or whatever payment method already used when you buy a Proton-based game on Steam.
  - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
    for 99% of people it will also probably be paypal or credit card
  - colejohnson66 7mo ago
    > Donate to the Wine Development Fund by cash, cheque, or international money order in US dollars.
    - moring 7mo ago
      IMHO this supports the original point that payment via Steam would be an upgrade: Sending cash to a postal address isn't low-effort nor low-risk. Payment by cheque is something I have never done, nor would I know how to do it. I'd have to ask at my bank -- not low effort. I don't know if I'm an outlier here but I have never heard from any of my peers who ever did such a thing. The same or even worse is true for international money orders. The whole concept of making a money transfer to a postal address is something I have never heard of. Where's the IBAN? The Wine team is right to put even PayPal before all of these.
  - greenavocado 7mo ago
    The best low overhead way to support them for Americans is to set up bill pay with their bank and auto send checks to their mailbox
  - moralestapia 7mo ago
    Can you have a Steam Wallet without having a credit card?
    - moring 7mo ago
      Yes, I do. It just means that you have to manually "recharge" your Steam wallet when it runs low. That's some effort, but it limits the possible damage if something goes wrong.
      - moralestapia 7mo ago
        How do you "recharge" you Steam Wallet? Gift cards, I assume?
        danudey 7mo ago
        Yep, depending on where you live you can probably find them wherever you find other major brand gift cards.
        moring 7mo ago
        Paysafe cards. A store near me has them.
- lebed2045 7mo ago
  i pay for crossover license (wine on mac), if i understand correctly, they spend this money on development wine core as well.
OccamsMirror 7mo ago
This is a fantastic idea. I completely endorse it. I hope a Valve employee sees this.
exitb 7mo ago
You always give 30% to Valve and their interests so far are aligned. Everything that's possible within the Steam ecosystem is available outside of it. Maybe things will change in the future, but I doubt we could be getting a better deal.
rickdeckard 7mo ago
Great idea! Such donations might even be tax-deductible revenue for Valve, so even the finance bros should love it. Although I would prefer if Valve simply commits to a fixed percentage of its Steam fee to be donated...
- colejohnson66 7mo ago
  Forwarded donations are not tax-deductible (in the US); That's a lie that's been spread around the internet. If you give a company money with the express purpose of them forwarding it to someone else (the company acts as a "collection agent"), it's not their income or donation. https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0 https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-thos...
  - BobaFloutist 7mo ago
    And even if it was, all "tax deductible" would mean is that they wouldn't have to pay taxes on that money. Which, you know, they don't get to spend. So it's kind of defacto tax deductible in the same sense that my friend's income is "tax deductible" for me, I guess.
    - colejohnson66 7mo ago
      A lot of people online have convinced themselves that "tax deductible" means that the government would refund you that dollar amount. That's a "tax credit"... If forwarded donations were a tax credit, then yes, rounding up is giving the company "free" money! But you're not.
  - rickdeckard 7mo ago
    Interesting, thanks for the details. So it would be actually financially _better_ for Valve to donate a portion of their revenue and state "we will donate x% of the price to yy", as THEN it would be tax-deductible for them
    - 7mo ago
tstenner 7mo ago
Buy a steam deck. It sends a strong signal to Valve to continue supporting Wine and you get a Steam Deck
- BatteryMountain 7mo ago
  I'm in Africa, when I go to the steam deck page, it says it is not available in my country. Not interested in buying from a third party importer. So until then..
  - MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
    What about buying from a fellow Hacker News nerd? I'm willing to handle shipping a new unit for you, based in USA. :-) I also have a used 1st-gen model, upgraded with hall-effect joysticks and a 2TB SSD with a glass screen protector that I am willing to part with. Apart from a few barely-visible scuffs on the plastic housing, it's in great condition. If you're interested, let me know how to get in touch!
- GreenVulpine 7mo ago
  Unfortunately Steam decks have been out of stock for a while. The AI slop Apocalypse ruined the consumer computing market with chip shortages.
  - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
    it's was out of stock as soon as they came out and in a lot of countries outside of the US it wasn't available.
- stavros 7mo ago
  I wanted to buy the entire new lineup (Machine, VR, and controller), but alas, AI RAM shortage. I hope it can get released soon.
lo_zamoyski 7mo ago
> if only Steam would add a checkbox on their checkout page to add 10% donation/tip that goes directly to their upstream opensource dependencies Or how about instead of passing the cost off to users, Steam actually supports them from their own profits? After all, they are profiting from free work. We can't be pushovers about this.
- InitialLastName 7mo ago
  As far as I can tell, Valve makes significant contributions back to Wine via Proton development. Isn't that essentially them supporting their upstream dependencies with their own profits, by using some of those profits to pay people to contribute work to their open source dependencies?
  - mietek 7mo ago
    No.
  - danudey 7mo ago
    Valve pays over a hundred open source developers to work on the various open source projects that they rely on so heavily, so yeah Valve's 30% of your Steam purchases is already contributing to these open-source projects (like Mesa, the Linux kernel, Wayland, etc.) https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-paying-a-whole-lot-of-developers-to-keep-the-steam-decks-open-source-software-going/ https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-paying-a-whole-lot-of-devel...
patmorgan23 7mo ago
Value does pay for development on open source projects already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34061110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34061110

hochmartinez 7mo ago

https://www.winehq.org/donate https://www.winehq.org/donate

moring 7mo ago
Requires PayPal or credit card. The suggestion was to pay with your Steam Wallet or whatever payment method already used when you buy a Proton-based game on Steam.
- red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  for 99% of people it will also probably be paypal or credit card
- colejohnson66 7mo ago
  > Donate to the Wine Development Fund by cash, cheque, or international money order in US dollars.
  - moring 7mo ago
    IMHO this supports the original point that payment via Steam would be an upgrade: Sending cash to a postal address isn't low-effort nor low-risk. Payment by cheque is something I have never done, nor would I know how to do it. I'd have to ask at my bank -- not low effort. I don't know if I'm an outlier here but I have never heard from any of my peers who ever did such a thing. The same or even worse is true for international money orders. The whole concept of making a money transfer to a postal address is something I have never heard of. Where's the IBAN? The Wine team is right to put even PayPal before all of these.
- greenavocado 7mo ago
  The best low overhead way to support them for Americans is to set up bill pay with their bank and auto send checks to their mailbox
- moralestapia 7mo ago
  Can you have a Steam Wallet without having a credit card?
  - moring 7mo ago
    Yes, I do. It just means that you have to manually "recharge" your Steam wallet when it runs low. That's some effort, but it limits the possible damage if something goes wrong.
    - moralestapia 7mo ago
      How do you "recharge" you Steam Wallet? Gift cards, I assume?
      - danudey 7mo ago
        Yep, depending on where you live you can probably find them wherever you find other major brand gift cards.
      - moring 7mo ago
        Paysafe cards. A store near me has them.
lebed2045 7mo ago
i pay for crossover license (wine on mac), if i understand correctly, they spend this money on development wine core as well.

OccamsMirror 7mo ago

This is a fantastic idea. I completely endorse it. I hope a Valve employee sees this.

exitb 7mo ago

You always give 30% to Valve and their interests so far are aligned. Everything that's possible within the Steam ecosystem is available outside of it. Maybe things will change in the future, but I doubt we could be getting a better deal.

rickdeckard 7mo ago

Great idea! Such donations might even be tax-deductible revenue for Valve, so even the finance bros should love it. Although I would prefer if Valve simply commits to a fixed percentage of its Steam fee to be donated...

colejohnson66 7mo ago
Forwarded donations are not tax-deductible (in the US); That's a lie that's been spread around the internet. If you give a company money with the express purpose of them forwarding it to someone else (the company acts as a "collection agent"), it's not their income or donation. https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0 https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-thos...
- BobaFloutist 7mo ago
  And even if it was, all "tax deductible" would mean is that they wouldn't have to pay taxes on that money. Which, you know, they don't get to spend. So it's kind of defacto tax deductible in the same sense that my friend's income is "tax deductible" for me, I guess.
  - colejohnson66 7mo ago
    A lot of people online have convinced themselves that "tax deductible" means that the government would refund you that dollar amount. That's a "tax credit"... If forwarded donations were a tax credit, then yes, rounding up is giving the company "free" money! But you're not.
- rickdeckard 7mo ago
  Interesting, thanks for the details. So it would be actually financially _better_ for Valve to donate a portion of their revenue and state "we will donate x% of the price to yy", as THEN it would be tax-deductible for them
  - 7mo ago

tstenner 7mo ago

Buy a steam deck. It sends a strong signal to Valve to continue supporting Wine and you get a Steam Deck

BatteryMountain 7mo ago
I'm in Africa, when I go to the steam deck page, it says it is not available in my country. Not interested in buying from a third party importer. So until then..
- MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
  What about buying from a fellow Hacker News nerd? I'm willing to handle shipping a new unit for you, based in USA. :-) I also have a used 1st-gen model, upgraded with hall-effect joysticks and a 2TB SSD with a glass screen protector that I am willing to part with. Apart from a few barely-visible scuffs on the plastic housing, it's in great condition. If you're interested, let me know how to get in touch!
GreenVulpine 7mo ago
Unfortunately Steam decks have been out of stock for a while. The AI slop Apocalypse ruined the consumer computing market with chip shortages.
- kelvinjps10 7mo ago
  it's was out of stock as soon as they came out and in a lot of countries outside of the US it wasn't available.
stavros 7mo ago
I wanted to buy the entire new lineup (Machine, VR, and controller), but alas, AI RAM shortage. I hope it can get released soon.

lo_zamoyski 7mo ago

> if only Steam would add a checkbox on their checkout page to add 10% donation/tip that goes directly to their upstream opensource dependencies Or how about instead of passing the cost off to users, Steam actually supports them from their own profits? After all, they are profiting from free work. We can't be pushovers about this.

InitialLastName 7mo ago
As far as I can tell, Valve makes significant contributions back to Wine via Proton development. Isn't that essentially them supporting their upstream dependencies with their own profits, by using some of those profits to pay people to contribute work to their open source dependencies?
- mietek 7mo ago
  No.
- danudey 7mo ago
  Valve pays over a hundred open source developers to work on the various open source projects that they rely on so heavily, so yeah Valve's 30% of your Steam purchases is already contributing to these open-source projects (like Mesa, the Linux kernel, Wayland, etc.) https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-paying-a-whole-lot-of-developers-to-keep-the-steam-decks-open-source-software-going/ https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-paying-a-whole-lot-of-devel...

patmorgan23 7mo ago

Value does pay for development on open source projects already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34061110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34061110