On Monday 10 September 2007 19:10, you wrote: > Theo de Raadt wrote: > >> Theo de Raadt wrote: > >>>> Theo de Raadt wrote: > >>>> <snip> > >>>> > >>>>> Decreasing CD sales means the margins have to be adjusted. More of > >>>>> you are relying on our FTP services, and also donating less. > >>>> > >>>> <snip> > >>>> > >>>> Hey Theo just a quick suggestion to increase the cash donations: > >>>> > >>>> Why aren't the web-order-cash-donations (no longer) added to the > >>>> donations.html page ? Sad but unfortunately true there are petty > >>>> people like me for whom that actually matters. > >>> > >>> They are, but there is a lot of latency. Yes, that really sucks. > >>> Perhaps I will take a shot at 'pushing' a lot of them forward today. > >> > >> Yup me too petty and whiner. > >> > >> I have been sending $20 a month for something over a year. I was on the > >> donation page, then gone. Sent mail to Austin a couple of times, got > >> peevish and wanted to stop the donation ... then remembered, I don't do > >> it for credit. I do it so the project can continue, or in this case buy > >> pizza for one day of one hackathon once a year. I order CD, poster and > >> T-shirt for every release, not because I think you care but because I > >> get fantastic value for dollar. > > > > Yours is a special case. Yours comes as that weird mailed cheque, > > and I did add you. Bizzare, but I never commited it, because ... I don't > > know how. Bizzare. Maybe it conflicted by the time I wanted to. > > > > The big issue these days is donation fraud -- I'm not joking. About > > 20-30% of donations by credit/paypal come in, and then the transaction > > does not clear (credit card) or gets backed out of later (credit card > > or paypal). We have been trying to not cope with that through a > > process of "deleting names later", and that has introduced latency. > > But I don't know how to tell the public those figures. It is > > unbelievably stupid. > > I did not know that. You have already spent way more time on this than > the donation in question is worth. I do it this way because it is > automated from my perspective and therefore reliable, and allows me to > retain control of the transaction. If there is a better way I would be > happy to change.
I've been in the habit of sending a Paypal donation whenever I have hammered on the FTP sites, as well as trying to buy most of the disk sets either personally or through work, or both. I'd been assuming a direct 'cash' donation was in many ways the easiest/best way of doing things for OBSD, in that I'm not asking for any physical goods in return. Is that still the case? I have used Paypal because I'm in the UK and it seems a streamlined way of sorting out the annoying currency issues. Anything about this I should change? The idea that people would renege on a donation is rather gloomy news. I hope none of mine have ever gone wrong without my knowledge. Cheers Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: 0161 834 7961 Fax: 0161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk
