Where do I leave my money?

[jayjay73]

"I looked around, a lousy fork is all I found." [*]

After years being really reluctant to support free software a worthy candidate has arisen.

I have a couple buckazoids burning a hole in my pocket and they have to go. So where do I put them? There seems to be no link to a crowdfunding website.

Please set up a Patreon / Kickstarter / Ko-fi /... account.

Also: what crowdfunding is good these days? Suggestions welcome!

*) Plz don't hate if you don't get the reference.

[Ogromny]

I would like to donate as well.

[ZyxerZyxani]

Same.

[v-fox]

While it would be nice to simply drop some money to add to devs' wages, with how aggressive corpos are to true community forks, they would also may need to organise work fund for private hosting of code, just in case. Freedesktop has recently moved its GitLab instance between some hosters (apparently, IBM can't afford hosting its own stooges). On quick glance it seems quite overcomplicated and expensive, yet it's known to be slow, even with their resources as HTTP/web-crap is not designed for scalability at all, so it's usually heavily bruteforced by burning money on hosting hardware and bandwidth rent. Meaning that the more popular the project, the more money it needs to burn on self-hosting unless it uses well-scalable P2P approach. But git is not P2P-based despite being advertised as "decentralized". So something needs to be figured out there, especially since amount of such "banned, politically incorrect" projects will only rise (remember recent Godot drama?).

At this point we may need to run some kind of "LibreDesktop" global non-profit with its own data-centre and permanent dev staff in some relatively "cheap" but well-connected country, like Cyprus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Chile, Thailand, Russia.

[Ryu945]

There are a number of opensource alternatives that work like Github. I remember someone telling me about a good one but I forgot what it was called.

[dxlr8r]

There are a number of opensource alternatives that work like Github. I remember someone telling me about a good one but I forgot what it was called.

Gitea?

[darkhog]

I would love to donate as well. Would also love to help via coding, however I'd need someone to walk me through setting up a dev VM for x11libre (don't have hardware to do it on bare metal) as well as point me to some simple issues to get familiar with the code base and get my hands dirty.

[hholst80]

@metux might get around to setting up a Sponsorship for the Org later. That is a very convenient way to sponsor. It is right here, together with the source code. And the users. Everything happening up in plain sight direct 1:1 contact.

[reaperx7]

Nobody ever needs to know coding or even send money to an FOSS project to even help. Donating your time to even be a tester to submit logs and feedback can be more valuable than knowing any level of C code. Even getting the word out to raise awareness can be worth it's weight in gold.

[galets]

Can we stop going political @Sicaine ? Some of us are sick and tired of people assassinating other people's character. Don't like maintainer, go somewhere else. It's pretty safe to say you are not donating

[orlovskyjavaprofi]

I already suggested, the best way is a non for profit foundation, in terms of organization and tax return, thats would be the best solution.

[reaperx7]

I don't care what @metux has as his personal views. That's irrelevant to the purpose of the project.

The ultimate goal is to save X11 and not allow a corporate interest to perform one of the largest FOSS hostile takeovers of a major project for the UNIX spread spectrum to date.

While the mission statement to the public does need to be realigned better. We all know what the ultimate goal is...

Let's stick to the goal.

[jayjay73]

@galets yes but the point I make is, that there are people who actually care about things like a main maintainer playing down the genocide of million of peoples, communicating wrong information and downplaying nazi parties like the AfD.

I care and I want to be aware of this. Thats why I commented it.

Great for you if you don't care, feel free to ignore it.

Btw. I loved the idea of this, i was on the side of him until the garbage came up. And the "Together we'll make X great again!" in the README.md is a lot more political than a 'fun/weird side reference' if you are aware of his background....

Sicaine, you are commenting in a thread where I lament the lack of ways to leave some money on the table. To a project that I obviously like. And that’s my prerogative.

Do you think anything you said above is helpful towards that goal (parting me and my money, that is)?

If you really want to help (which I somehow doubt) you could, you know, leave a few comments about which crowdfunding platforms you like…

…so we can the avoid those.

Toodles!

[waynesbrain]

"I looked around, a lousy fork is all I found."

Is it a reference to a commonly misunderstood lyric of the song Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf?

Anyway, yes - please take my money!

Also one solution for the other problem here - there are easy ways to mute people who want to keep screeching about their political emotions:

[jayjay73]

"I looked around, a lousy fork is all I found."

Is it a reference to a commonly misunderstood lyric of the song Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf?

Yes, yes it is. Although I didn't know it was misunderstood in some way.

[shamefulCake1]

I would like to donate too.

[ZyxerZyxani]

Subscribestar never tried to deplatform ppl over politics, unlike patreon.

[ZyxerZyxani]

Oh, also taler seems promising. Open Source and anonymous payment, but you can't "withdraw" the funds anonymously (to prevent tax fraud and such).
https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

[darkhog]

Few years ago I've raised some money for my indie game project (unfortunately not enough) via fundrazr.com which seems to be legit and politics-free. There's also buymeacoffee (which is relatively new and I don't know about their stance on politics - seems to host some right-wing people tho).

[darkhog]

If there's going to be X11libre foundation, I really hope it's not an US non-profit seeing as those are easy to get infiltrated by political activists. Actually, it would be worth making it a foundation in Poland, as Polish laws are very good for non-profits (+there's a 1.5% thing, when each year every citizen can assign 1.5% of the tax he/she pays to a non-profit of his/her choice at no cost of his/her own, but the non-profit must be registered in Poland for that), the foundations also have great amount of leeway (no need to show the finances for example, unless they want to), as well as they can basically have anything written as the statutory goals.

[Ryu945]

People that infiltrate non profits do not care where you set it up. Poland can be just as easily infiltrated as the US. That tax thing does sound nice. US should get something like that.

[darkhog]

Yes, but infiltrating a Polish non-profit is much harder than an US one, as the ruling body of the foundation has the ultimate say in everything and it can't legally be influenced to take on people they don't want to take on. I am familiar with both how US and Polish non-profits operate, and it's significantly harder to take over a Polish non-profit. The protections against exactly this scenario are too strong. We've learned a lot going through communism.

[callmetango]

Related discussion: Use a Payment Processor that Doesn't Deplatform People · X11Libre · Discussion #95

[callmetango]

Thank you for your contribution! We currently restructured the "Ideas" discussions and accordingly this discussion will be moved to the Good Ideas For Later category.

[dxlr8r]

I would like to donate as well. And when you do, enable crypto as an option.