Thanks Willy, it makes perfect sense. I'll sponsor other projects! :)
Cheers, ~Nico On 08 Oct, Willy Tarreau wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 11:20:25AM +0200, Sebastian Fohler wrote: > > What about a Patron account. > > > > https://www.patreon.com/europe > > > > Cause I already asked multiple times for some other means of contribution as > > well. > > That would help a great deal, makeing it easier. > > I'm supporting multiple Opensource projects already this way. > > Would that be an option? > > Well, to make things clear, first let me remind that the paypal account > is my personal account, which I have added a link to from the main page > upon request by several people willing to donate many years ago. This > has been helpful in the early days, allowing me buy some hardware to > experiment during week-ends (such as the 10G lab), and to significantly > improve the code's portability and efficiency on small systems. It used > to serve to contribute to the hosting costs as well. > > Since then the project has considerably evolved, being backed by a company > offering a much larger full-time development team. And users are well > aware of this because nowadays donations are extremely rare (in the range > of tens of dollars a year). But at the same time nowadays I do not need > them at all anymore, so I'm perfectly fine with replacing the link with > anything else. I've only been keeping it because I know that if I remove > it, the question will come back again a few months later. > > The only thing is that I am *not* going to deal with yet another task > that adds more burden, so if someone is willing to set up any account > via $whatever company, they will have to handle it and pass me the > replacement link. At least the paypal link doesn't cause me any extra > work beyond replying "thank you" to donators once in a while. Just be > aware that since donations are rare, I'm not at all convinced it will > be worth doing anything particular. And at some point a solution will > have to be found to spend the eventual money that would land there, > so someone will have to handle this, and again it's certainly not me. > > My personal suggestion would be that those who want to give a few > dollars better keep their money that they certainly need more than > most developers or contributors do, because due to the project's > nature, contributors generaly work in IT at levels at which, based on > the high quality of their contributions, they're not expected to be > starving at all (or if they do they definitely need to switch jobs as > their skills are quite sought)! If anyone is ever willing to spend a > large amount, like thousands of dollars, better hire someone to develop > some useful desired features, it will be an excellent contribution to > the project! Another great option is to contact your favorite distro's > package maintainer and propose your donation there, because distro > maintainers have been doing this thankless job for many years now and > deserve some recognition as well. For anything else, offering time to > look into bugs, testing -dev releases, improving the doc, contributing > to the wiki etc is extremely valuable and helps all contributors at > once. > > As you see, there are still plenty of options which do not require > managing any new account anywhere. > > Thanks for your support :-) > Willy > -- ~Nico
