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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: I have an open source repo with millions of downloads, tens of thousands of active users, and, for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. How much in donations do you think it took in over its lifetime?

Hint: it's less than $200.

Donations don't really work.

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Thanks for the vim plugin for vscode! It's quite useful and usable. fwiw i don't think you get many donations because it looks like an official microsoft backed vscode plugin so why would people throw money at microsoft. that said, i do think you are correct in that people in general do not donate to open source individually that much.

We didn’t have many for Firebug either, though we appreciated those we got and funneled them to new contributors living outside the States where it made a difference.

>for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button.

Just to be sure, are you referring to the "BuyMeCoffee" button on the GitHub page for the extension (https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim)?

Nah, we used to have a more prominent link. It's been removed since I stopped developing on the extension.

At the bottom of a long scroll isn't something I'd consider prominent. I'd probably change it to simply "Donate" as a button, and put it with the badges at the top. Red, purple or orange as a contrasting color from the blue and green badges.

Which one is it? Maybe you will win a handful of donations here.

I guess its https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim

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