Thoughts on Incentivising Donations With Direct Support

[N3wb]

Do some Linux distros have such concept of prioritised/direct support for people who donate/pledge money to their project? I feel like it's a good way to incentivise making contibutions/pledges for any distro project.
Also let me know if Mint has such a system.

[Pierre]

the Team.LinuxMint is a very small crew.

they are. of course, very busy with organising the next release of each LinuxMint.
and between those releases, they are busy maintaining the list of current releases.

the LinuxMint Project is also Not a Commercial Project,
and as such, there is No Direct Support System in place,
and most likely, there never will be such a Support System. either.

yet, another issue, that regularly comes up, is the correct method,
- to use when contributing to the project, and again, this is also limited, with Paypal being the only valid method.
this also, causes some consternation amongst, willing supporters of the LinuxMint Project.

Unfortunately, most of these issues, can't be changed, mainly due to banking Issues & associated costs,
of just where the LinuxMint Team is physically located & the Banking Rules of the Country of Ireland.

[N3wb]

Any other Linux distro which does it though? What about Ubuntu?

[gm10]

What about Ubuntu?

Ubuntu offers 24/7 paid support:

https://www.ubuntu.com/support

[N3wb]

What about Ubuntu?

Ubuntu offers 24/7 paid support:

https://www.ubuntu.com/support

That looks like business support, I was thinking more on the lines of setting a bounty for an issue you report. They get the money and the user gets the fix implemented.

[gm10]

I was thinking more on the lines of setting a bounty for an issue you report. They get the money and the user gets the fix implemented.

That's not donations anymore, that's paid services, gets taxed differently. From what I understood the Mint team specifically does not want to do that.

There are some projects that ask for money for implementing certain things, but I'm not aware of any distribution as such that does that.

[Portreve]

I think funding issues here of a right ought to be kept very distinct, because otherwise you're talking about a tiered user community, and that was never the point of Richard Stallman's GPL concept. All people are equal under GPL.

Now, let's say a person or a group of people, or a business or a group of businesses were to say, "As user(s) of LinuxMint, I (we) really want foo, and we're willing to give x Euro to Clem to prioritize its implementation.” Now that would be a wholly different thing, and would not, as far as I can see, represent a violation of the spirit of GPLdom.

[gm10]

I think funding issues here of a right ought to be kept very distinct, because otherwise you're talking about a tiered user community, and that was never the point of Richard Stallman's GPL concept. All people are equal under GPL.

Absurd. The GPL does not limit monetizing support in any way. All of the major distributions make money that way. You can also create GPL software for money. You should read the GPL.

[N3wb]

I was thinking more on the lines of setting a bounty for an issue you report. They get the money and the user gets the fix implemented.

That's not donations anymore, that's paid services, gets taxed differently. From what I understood the Mint team specifically does not want to do that.

There are some projects that ask for money for implementing certain things, but I'm not aware of any distribution as such that does that.

Then the money can be used to incentivise it's priority in implementation, plus the work they'll put on it will benefit not just the donator but everyone using it. So how would it come under paid service?

[N3wb]

I think funding issues here of a right ought to be kept very distinct, because otherwise you're talking about a tiered user community, and that was never the point of Richard Stallman's GPL concept. All people are equal under GPL.

Now, let's say a person or a group of people, or a business or a group of businesses were to say, "As user(s) of LinuxMint, I (we) really want foo, and we're willing to give x Euro to Clem to prioritize its implementation.” Now that would be a wholly different thing, and would not, as far as I can see, represent a violation of the spirit of GPLdom.

The concept of GPL, if that is what you say should not stifle one's capacity to earn income legitimately. Plus the work would not exclusively benefit the donor, it could potentially benefit all who'd come across that issue. Plus all parities would reap the benefit of the work at the same time, not like the donor would get it first exclusively.

[gm10]

So how would it come under paid service?

At the end of the day it depends on local tax laws in Ireland, which I know nothing about, so I cannot make a definitive statement. But generally speaking, if you say I pay amount X for result Y, and then you get result Y and pay X, that's a transaction and gets taxed as such.

[Portreve]

Absurd. The GPL does not limit monetizing support in any way. All of the major distributions make money that way. You can also create GPL software for money. You should read the GPL.

Both GPL broadly and the Open Source Definition do not, as you say, limit monetizing, including selling software that's libre-licensed. That said, the intent was never to tier users such that some are more important than others. Nothing I've seen in any version of GPL, nor in any comments Richard Stallman has made, suggest otherwise. Ergo, what I've said is not, in fact, absurd.

The concept of GPL, if that is what you say should not stifle one's capacity to earn income legitimately. Plus the work would not exclusively benefit the donor, it could potentially benefit all who'd come across that issue. Plus all parities would reap the benefit of the work at the same time, not like the donor would get it first exclusively.

The way it was stated up-thread to my eyes suggests the tacit implication that some users would become more important than others. In fact, though I didn't mention it, the first analogy which came to mind was rate scheduled Internet which is (or would be) prohibited by having Net Neutrality.

[gm10]

Absurd. The GPL does not limit monetizing support in any way. All of the major distributions make money that way. You can also create GPL software for money. You should read the GPL.

Both GPL broadly and the Open Source Definition do not, as you say, limit monetizing, including selling software that's libre-licensed. That said, the intent was never to tier users such that some are more important than others. Nothing I've seen in any version of GPL, nor in any comments Richard Stallman has made, suggest otherwise. Ergo, what I've said is not, in fact, absurd.

No, of course the GPL has no such intent. What I meant is that the GPL has no intent at all in this regard. The GPL couldn't care less how you tier your users or if you have any users at all.

[thx-1138]

....................I was thinking more on the lines of setting a bounty for an issue you report.
They get the money and the user gets the fix implemented.

...i *think* elementaryOS does that:
https://www.bountysource.com/teams/elementary/bounties
https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9 ... y%22&type=

Then the money can be used to incentivise it's priority in implementation,
plus the work they'll put on it will benefit not just the donator but everyone using it.
So how would it come under paid service?

...some really weird ideas in regards to what commodity exchange economy is and how it works.
So how would you define the above...Potlatch?

[gm10]

Potlatch

I learn so many things on these forums. Fascinating.

[Portreve]

Historically, pay-for GNU+Linux distros have all failed. Corporation-oriented ones, such as RedHat and SuSE Enterprise Linux, are viable, and have made quite a business out of it.