Donations ? Open Collective?

dmontaine · 2023-05-24 14:22:38

Some of us would like to donate $. I understand not allowing donations because of concerns about being considered a business. Has there been any consideration about joining Open Collective? Open Collective collects the $ and pays expenses, allowing contributors to be isolated from the business issues. https://opencollective.com/

unklar · 2023-05-24 14:58:00

That's exactly the way it is with siduction.

hhh · 2023-05-25 07:35:25

@dmontaine, thanks for posting this! @johnraff is away from keyboard for a week or so, but we'll check it out when he returns.

johnraff · 2023-06-15 06:53:18

Returned.

Yes, agreed a solid transparent donations basis is something we should have going forward.
It would make it clear that BL is a community project.

dude · 2024-11-22 01:16:54

Is there any progress on this? I'd like to throw some occasional bucks your way when I can afford to spare them.

johnraff · 2024-11-22 01:27:19

Hi @dude we really appreciate those feelings from our users!
The fact is, no there's been no progress so far. It's something we need to look into for the project's long-term stability, but in the day-to-day work it tends to take lower priority than getting the next release ready, user support, blocking spammers...

Thanks for the reminder.

johnraff · 2024-11-26 06:03:38

...and while it's all quite complicated for both technical and legal reasons, we really should at least think about it some more.

marens · 2024-11-26 16:04:30

I used Linux Mint (Cinnamon + Mate) for a long time.
Every month they publish how many donations were received in the previous month.

Everything is transparent (scroll down and find Sponsorships and Donations in September):
https://blog.linuxmint.com

I understand that there are many technical and legal issues as each country has its own regulations, but I like the way the Linux Mint team is doing it:
https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

The manager of the Linux Mint project (Clem) is French, but I don't know if they are registered in Europe or the US (or elsewhere).

Last edited by marens (2024-11-26 23:08:41)

johnraff · 2024-11-27 02:53:26

marens wrote:

I understand that there are many technical and legal issues as each country has its own regulations, but I like the way the Linux Mint team is doing it:
https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Yes that looks very nice, but Linux Mint is a much larger project than BunsenLabs and I wouldn't be surprised if they have one or more people just devoted to handling the financial side of things. And the "technical issues" include exactly how to set up a website to handle donations via a variety of different organizations, in a secure way. As soon as money is involved, security becomes even more important.

Whatever BL finally end up doing, it will have to be much simpler than that.

Jimbo_G · 2024-11-27 09:00:39

I would also be interested in donating. Having had a quick look at Open Collective, mentioned at the top of the thread, it seems legit. I found accounts for Manjaro, Siduction, XFCE, Solus, Budgie, plus various apps and Firefox extensions.

It seems you have to choose a fiscal host, which can charge fees (typically 5-10%) on the funds that are held. Expenses are paid directly by the fiscal host.

I guess it would be important to know what the expenses could be for BL, and whether they're able to be managed in this way.

johnraff · 2024-11-28 07:12:46

Many thanks Jimbo!

BL's running expenses are currently in the region of $US 13.5 monthly for the server and ¢15 (yes 15 cents) for AWS SES email.
So it's within what BL can support as private individuals in the 1st World.

So the reason for sorting something out for donations is more ideological than financial. It would be good if all members of the community felt that the project "belonged" to them.

I'll have a look at Open Collective.

Whether our hosting company (Hetzner) or Amazon would be open to having the payments arriving from a third party or not is something else that would need to be researched.

Another point is that BunsenLabs is not "registered" as an organization anywhere, the way eg Linux Mint is. To do so would possibly make us more vulnerable to legal attacks from some future EU legislation, and was strongly resisted by a former BL team member. We aren't in a position to hire lawyers!

Last edited by johnraff (2024-11-28 07:17:48)

Jimbo_G · 2024-11-28 09:01:06

I use BL on a daily basis, and despite the costs being fairly low, I really would appreciate being able to contribute (as I can't really contribute in other ways).

It seems like on Open Collective there is a fiscal host specifically for open source projects, called Open Source Collective (OSC). They charge a 10% fee on incoming funds. Eligibility requirements are here: https://docs.oscollective.org/getting-s … e-criteria

Expenses can be paid as a reimbursement to an actual person who has the receipt for whatever they've paid for; the collective admins have to approve any expense request. The expense is then reimbursed by Paypal or bank transfer.

Taxes only seem to be an issue if someone is being paid for their work through OSC. If they invoice more than 600 USD per year there are some tax forms that have to be filed.

When looking at all this, don't forget that Open Source Collective is just one fiscal host, part of Open Collective. There are others, such as https://opencollective.com/europe

Manjaro also has a Patreon account, which I would think is easier to set up, but has less safeguards. I think one person would have to receive the donations and be trusted to use them on BL-related expenses rather than a cruise in the Caribbean (it would probably have to be quite a short cruise)

eightysixed · 2024-12-09 15:44:19

There's also this idea, which I really like

johnraff · 2025-03-23 05:01:45

Just dropping this here for possible future reference:
A handy guide to financial support for open source.
https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-sta … pen-source

#1 2023-05-24 14:22:38

Donations ? Open Collective?

#2 2023-05-24 14:58:00

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#3 2023-05-25 07:35:25

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#4 2023-06-15 06:53:18

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#5 2024-11-22 01:16:54

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#6 2024-11-22 01:27:19

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#7 2024-11-26 06:03:38

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#8 2024-11-26 16:04:30

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#9 2024-11-27 02:53:26

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#10 2024-11-27 09:00:39

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#11 2024-11-28 07:12:46

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#12 2024-11-28 09:01:06

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#13 2024-12-09 15:44:19

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

#14 2025-03-23 05:01:45

Re: Donations ? Open Collective?

Board footer