This implementation is clearly for-profit. I want to directly tip open source projects using a system that doesn't involve other third parties taking a significant cut.
What are your fees?
Tips at time of donation. You decide.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with charging a fee for a service, but there is something wrong with lying about it.
Agreed, but percentage-based fees can quickly become an unfairly large part of payments. I love the idea of this project, but I'd prefer there to be a 5% or X dollars minimum, so that if 5% is more than X dollars, then it doesn't force 5% minimum. If I'm donating $500 to 45 projects, then each project on an even split is getting $11, but thanks.dev is getting $25 even though their service isn't actually in use by my app/service. Seems unfair to me.
The remaining ~$10 will go to thaks.dev to cover operational costs, administration and other expenses.
I don't expect them to work for free. If you think it's unfair, contact the developers directly to see if you can wire them money (to avoid PayPal fees). If it's too much work, you can pay services like thanks.dev that does the work for you.
(And now I'm realizing that American tipping culture may be playing in to differing expectations here...)
EDIT: I see they have now updated their wording.
Surely they are not making a transaction for every patron/maintainer combination, but rather batching the payments.
Otherwise yes this is a Stripe charity :)
It's literally public information
$25 refers to the 5% fee of the total amount ($500) that the site takes. I said that more than half of that fee is used to pay Stripe.
The platform itself is also a project on the platform, where the donation happens
GitHub sponsors isn't too bad, they take a 3% cut (and the CC takes another 3%). But you're effectively donating to Microsoft, which feels icky.
A payment system is never simple and if it's more than a standardized "funding.txt" format it will have running costs and someone has to cover these. How much this system should charge is debatable, but it should probably be higher than 0%.
What does this mean? Using this service is letting the merits dictate. It doesn't stop anyone building a competitor.
This only works in a system where humans do not need money to live. This is not our system. In a capitalist system, for better or for worse, if you don't own a means of production you must work to get money because you need money to live.
We should recognize the value of work, and if it is useful, pay for it. It is only normal in such a system. I wish we were in a commons-based society, that all resources and production would be decided by workers in quantity and distributed based on needs, but that's not our system.
The problem comes from people believing they should be paid for willingly giving away the fruits of their labor.
I only use FLOSS and don’t feel I’m missing out at all.
I would love to live in a system where everyone is actually free to do whatever they want with their time, all day long, all year long, but that's not where we live today. What kind of people has enough time and energy to devote hours of their lives to something that is not their primary way of earning money ?
I too use only FLOSS, and only put out project under copyleft licenses, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the structures in which we live in.
> Thanks.dev presently supports itself through a voluntary tip percentage that, if more than zero, gets deducted from donation amounts along with a Stripe payment processing fee prior to distribution.
I also think they should allow manual addition of projects. E.g. I use Syncthing but that won't be found in my Github/Gitlab scans. I can donate via Github too but would be easier if I can have one place to control all such donations.
[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/07/thanksdev_open_source...
I'm seeing comments from two separate accounts, but when you look at their about, they seem to be the same person:
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qwerki https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=armini
Sponsors have a slider that allows them to adjust their tip from 5% to 100% of their monthly donation. We figured minimum 5% would cover our compute & merchant fees but left it to the community to decide what we should get. We thought this was the most aligned approach with open source. Totally open to other ideas and suggestions though.
So no, if you're taking a minimum of 5%, then any reasonable person is going to assume that you've already deducted the processing fees, not covering them out of that 5%.
I don't think you're being open and honest here.
The text may be imprecise, but it's a long way from dishonesty. In my opinion dishonesty requires a motive, and I don't see it here. If the 5% did not include fees, it would perhaps be different.
In a perfect world, Stripe and the credit card companies could waive the fees for donations, but that is not the case.
Someone has to actually cover those fees.
I agree it is not simple, but it proves it is doable.
At some point the dance isn't worth the peanut.
Sorry, someone donating $10,000 to their favorite FOSS doesn't want an intermediator to take in $500 just for making the transaction.
Even more so when the actual transaction infrastructure is not going to be their's anyway, but some banks or Stripe or whatever.
This phrasing is just inappropriate, and the situation you cite is an extreme.
> many would find this shady and wont want to deal with them
What's the point of armchair prognostication? We'll find out, and their pricing isn't fixed in stone?
Nothing stops you there to put 100% into one of those and 0% on the others.
There are some gas stations in Massachusetts that have a slightly lower cash price because they don’t have to pay that fees and pass along the savings. Most businesses nowadays just fold that fee into the price.
If they are upfront about how much I’m ok with it. Otherwise you can send a check, but no one is using that option.
tea.xyz will not have fees once it goes live with its funding protocol for open-source software.