Warning: This will be lengthy. Sure, it's pretty straight forward. Everyone is a volunteer (including myself). All funds only pay for the needs of the project.
Needs could include a developer needing to pay for access to apple's developer program, for instance. That would only work for someone who has been around for a while (I'm thinking 2+ years like Rudy and Peter) or someone who has put in a substantial amount of work (Daniel, and hopefully soon Rachel). Other than that, it goes to pay for things like domain registration. We don't get a lot of donations, but it's nice to keep it around for a rainy day in case we do need something later on. Buying pizza for everyone is neat, but not responsible obviously. Our website is hosted by Network Redux http://www.networkredux.com/ as a donation, and our cdn is hosted by Cachefly http://www.cachefly.com/ . Both are great companies, providing hosting for many, many oss projects along with just being really good people. I would recommend them to anyone looking for these services, and have done so at every opportunity. So, overall no money really passes hands to developers directly. The money sits in an account and is withdrawn from paypal about once a month, if there is anything at all. If there is a need to purchase something, I will purchase it through an online website, and have it delivered to the person who wants it. This makes it easier, since if there is a billing problem I can handle that without bothering the developer, who doesn't have time for that junk. If the person is relatively local to me, we'll go to the stores together in person if that makes sense (i.e. we can get a good deal, and we can also hang out) The perian proejct is run in the same manner. For that project we needed to acquire apple tv's initially, along with sound systems. One developer received that, and I had one for testing purposes. Another developer required some different hardware, and they got that as well. That said, these are people putting in a lot of their own valuable time that they could be using to do something else, so they get to keep the hardware. This does not happen often, but the people who get the hardware still work on the project multiple years later. On a philosophy level, in my opinion people who donate are people are donating to the project, not to specific people or so I like to think. We like trying to honor that. If someone needs to be bought, it's bought without hesitance, but only after being weighed against other things. Usually nobody even talks about donations, since it's not generally something that even matters other than when the money is really needed (see examples above). Some things I have thought of to make this more transparent is to switch to one of those donations websites where they take the money and allow the person to pick a feature to donate to. That said, what if no one ever works on that? Do you take their money? Do you give it back? Any way you cut it, that seems like an awful message to send. Also, what if apple say, makes a notification system for os x? If Growl dies, what happens to donations? If Perian loses all developers and we don't have a release for 2 years, what do you do with the funds? I've concluded that there are 2 options there: 1) Donate the funds to a worthy charity. Personally I like the charity that gives hospitals gaming in order to give the seemingly permanent residents a way to feel normal: http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ . EFF is an obvious candidate for that as well. 2) Take the money and pass it on to another worthy OSS project on os x which has been around for a while. While Adium comes to mind since so many developers on Growl worked on that, I actually would consider splitting it amongst a few of them since a few of them helped Growl early on. I was hoping I would have to make this decision for 10.7, but it looks like the crew at apple has allowed me to postpone this for another couple of years. Bear in mind, the amount of money we receive on either project is nowhere near anything substantial. Every donation is definitely appreciated. But we're nowhere near say, contracting out work to get xyz feature worked on by someone who would require being paid. I would also feel wrong about doing that. I realize this is a lot, but overall my opinion on it is this. Donations shouldn't be the driving force behind an oss project like Growl. It should be used to help the project move along, but it's not the main reason that any of us work on it. If it is, you're on the wrong project. No one on the project brings up donations, since they simply don't calculate into the equation most of the time. Myself, I appreciate being able to renew the domains easily without worrying about paying for them, and I like having something there just in case we need it. Ironically enough, we need the majority of it next week. Chris On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 8:57 PM, Patrick <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi there all, > > I'm one of the lead developers on Quicksilver ( http://qsapp.com ) > now, and we're in the process of discussing how we should go about > accepting donations and distributing them. > > I thought I'd get in touch with some other Open Source projects to see > how you go about it. > > Would anyone be able to discuss how the growl donations are > distributed and agreements arranged. I'm sure there are many many more > 'one time coders' that have worked on Growl, so it'd be interesting to > know how it works. > > Thanks > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Growl Discuss" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Growl Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss?hl=en.
