Donations

Research and design page for adding donation/payment support to Software.

Goals

  • Enable application developers to generate revenue from their software.
  • Enable the GNOME Foundation to generate revenue.
  • Don't cut off potential revenue streams for the future.

Restrictions

  • Limited administrative/financial capabilities on the GNOME side.
  • Not all applications have the financial/legal apparatus to absorb funds?

Research

Existing Free Software applications that accept donations:

Paypal

Paypal subscription

Cheque

Bank transfer

Credit card

Bitcoin

Flattr

Yorba [1]

X

X

X

Inkscape

X

X

GIMP

X

X

X

X

X

VLC

X

X

X

Krita

X

X

X

Mozilla [1]

X

X

Blender

X

X

X

X

Ardour

X

X

[1] Donations seem to go to the organisation rather than for a specific app.

Application Developer Perspectives

Application developers - we want to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to add comments here or to contact us by other means.

From IRC: "GIMP as a project likely leans more towards making donations possible/easy, rather than interaction flows making it seem mandatory".

Discussion

Bug

Issues to be resolved:

  • One time payments vs subscription models.
  • Pay on install?
  • Can projects redirect funds to other causes (eg. Scribus suggests giving money to LGM)?
  • Should applications be required to explain what they will spend the money on?
  • Pay per app, or one payment that is divided?
  • One integrated system, or redirect to application websites?
  • What about apps that are pre-installed by distributions?
  • What about apps that are part of larger projects (eg. KDE, XFCE)?
  • Will distributions want a cut?

Payment Models

Possible payment models to consider.

Mandatory donation at install time

Suggested donation at install time

Suggested donation after using the app for a while

Mandatory donation after using the app for a while

Flattr Integration

One subscription, divided between installed apps and GNOME

Comments

Design/Apps/Software/Donations (last edited 2014-07-14 10:43:49 by AllanDay)