Once someone stops donating, it is unlikely they will put up the effort of continually researching on which client/dev to support. This would be much better handled by Jellyfin maintainers.
- it'd be distracting, they're open source devs/maintainers not fund managers
- it could be divisive and they'd risk taking flak if they get it "wrong"
- it creates a class of "approved" clients and related projects
I think the Jellyfin team's approach is pretty reasonable.
That said, if I was them I'd probably do what the Helix devs do [0] and rather than telling people to stop donating, remind them that donations are a "tip" to the project and shouldn't be assumed to be buying you anything or paying to ramp up development (or marketing or anything else). I really appreciate that stance and their attitude that it's great to have the money and they'll spend it if and when they need it, while also encouraging people to consider donating elsewhere if they want to have a bigger impact.
Exactly this! It is extra responsibility which distracts from the core project.
I understand the argument that deciding who gets the money and how much is nontrivial and perhaps better left up to individual donors, but I disagree that it would be dishonest or misappropriating funds if you were to do so.
IMHO, most people donating to a software project would assume the funds are used for something related to that software project. Of course you can invent a narrative saying that the funds are now given to <developer> of the project, and now that he owns the money, he wants to donate to <some other project> -- it's probably a valid legal argument in case disputes arise, but it probably isn't what the original donors had in mind...
Disagree
> - it'd be distracting, they're open source devs/maintainers not fund managers
True. Dedicating time & effort to this would take away time & effort from development. But the harsh reality here is:
1. Client devs simply will not receive anywhere near as much funding as the drop Jellyfin are proposing/asking for.
2. It's clear from the article that Jellyfin's main devs would prefer a world where those client devs do receive such funds.
It's ultimately a trade-off: Jellyfin central dev would take a hit from taking on such a fiscal role, but the Client dev community would benefit, which sounds like it would benefit Jellyfin ultimately. Entirely up to Jellyfin's devs on whether they feel the hit would be worthwhile but I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand & it's worth suggesting.
I think many have donated to Mozilla thinking they were donating to Firefox only to later realize donations never reach Firefox.
The Mozilla case shows why it's bad to not have transparency.
That signaled the last time I would ever donate to Wikipedia.
In fact their decision is pretty mature and nice : they have enough to support the project costs but they don’t want the project to become their job and that’s exactly what money flowing over a hobby does : changing it to a job.
Still directly supporting the code running in the project. Balances out that people seem happier to donate to the UI/product layer than something like ffmpeg. Might be a bad example, but I’m sure some of their dependencies are underfunded.
Like others said, they're hobbyists providing a service in spare time. Asking them to be money managers is not a trivial ask.
May I ask which open source projects you maintain?
But as others have said, the hax office might not like it
(I also agree with various other reasons in other people's comments, most of all that this lets donors vote with their money on which third party projects that work on top of Jellyfin get the money, rather than Jellyfin having to decide which ones deserve what proportion of spare money.)
There are more deserving projects in the world than there is money. If you don't want to manage who gets the money directly (this could be called micromanage!) then something like united way which redonates to projects that you haven't heard of is probably a good use of your money. (United way is controversial and they do not support open source but they are still a good use of your money if you want to do the most good with the least thought)
You have posted an observation about non-profit organizations and described a defining characteristic of donations that go to them. You have not given a defining characteristic of donations.
> This is how donations are SUPPOSED to work: contribute money towards a COMMON goal
You mean like shoring up the Jellyfin ecosystem?
> Donations are not free money.
Donations are free money. (When the donation is money; donated clothes are obviously not free money—they're free clothes.)
Is a donation even if the other party is upset about it.
Why would anyone feel deceived?
I remember reading an article about that, how Jimmy Wales was driving super expensive sportscars around and such - it made me pretty much resolve to never donate to them. Ever.
Not withstanding the super aggressive please for cash every September or whenever they do it.
What is the connection between Jimmy Wales’ personal spending choices and your decision to never donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? As far as I can tell, Wales is not paid by the Wikimedia Foundation.
What is the connection between Jimmy Wales’ personal lifestyle and the Wikimedia Foundation? Wales is not and has never been paid by the Wikimedia Foundation. He is not fundraising for himself.
Like, David Heinemeier Hansson drives super expensive sportscars - does that mean you don't use anything he works on?
I checked the Form 990s back to 2004 at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200... . Wales has never received compensation from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Is your issue that he makes his personal wealth from some other source, and doesn't transfer enough of it to Wikipedia? If so, do you have the same views for board members of other non-profits?
I suspect you understand it pretty much perfectly, you just don't think the underlying premises of my position are correct.
> Wales has never received compensation from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Buying an expensive sportscar in the name of the foundation and then using it as though it were a personal car wouldn't show up as compensation.
I tried finding more, but the accusations against Wales are mentioned on the wiki page for wiki controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
Maybe it's just accusations, although I remember reading articles as well. Although maybe if Jimmy was more transparent about where his wealth came from, and maybe if Wikipedia didn't disingenuously and constantly beg for money despite having a surplus, I'd be less skeptical.
What I don't know is if you are being that sort of a person specifically about Wales and Wikipedia, or about any sort of charitable organization, or if your disdain has some other reason.
I wasn't able to find a mention of Wikipedia using their money to buy him a sportcar. The link you pointed to mentions "Jimmy Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes." then says "Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket"
Is the article you read based on that accusation?
If his money does not come from the Wikimedia Foundation, why would it affect things? Like, if he charges $80K speaking fees and gets invited to 4 of those talks per year, then he could easily rent an expensive sport car for a few days.
As I wrote, there are a lot of rich people who are on non-profit boards. They aren't transparent about all of their funding sources. Are you equally dismissive of them as well as their non-profits?
If you don't like their begging ads, don't give them money. The same holds for your local public radio station, which will have fund raising even when they have a surplus.
FWIW, Wikipedia is not currently asking me for money, even when I visit in a new private window.
Probably not. The amount of money they are taking in is very small, and if they start to ramp up revenue, then they actually need to start paying people for non-core work, like lawyers and accountants. Assuming that the money is received in Canada, by an Ontario registered non-profit, then it is really easy to do the accounting work for small dollar amounts (I ran several Manitoba and BC based non-profits previously for conferences and community work). If you start paying people who can't invoice you, then you need to sort out cross-jurisdictional payroll, and if you are making alot of purchases through other services.
Comments like this are unhelpful because it assumes that the developer of the project has a desire to run a business (and non-profits are businesses) rather than building and shipping an open source tool that scratches an itch. It's cool to speculate on what could be, but if you think that is the right approach, fork it, run the business transparently, and allocate a portion of revenue to be held in reserve the moment the core team for the project you forked asks for it.
Additional admin that will lead to more costs in a self-fulfilling cycle. This is a bad idea. People who are donating are already doing so with intent. Trying to gues where their money would be best placed is playing unnecessary financial games. They're a software developer, not a pension fund manager.
>Once someone stops donating, it is unlikely they will put up the effort of continually researching on which client/dev to support. This would be much better handled by Jellyfin maintainers.
They're already using the client just as they're using Jellyfin, how is this any more effort than what they've put into donating to Jellyfin directly?
Especially in Europe where you can get a nice tax deduction but only if you do the donation to a well (and complexly) registered non profit
It sounds like they have a general policy of "no paid dev". Further, it's possible that part of the motivation is the belief that if they did have it, it might lead to negative consequences (fewer contributions from non paid devs, squabbles over compensation, generally having to manage payouts etc)
(I personally think they made the right choice, am just responding to your comment disagreeing that it would be a transparency issue if they changed how things worked moving forwards.)
Make an announcement like this, but add that beyond x years of runway the remaining donations will be funneled to the community projects.
Except the IRS may step in and spoil the idea ...
I couldn’t find evidence that they do. If you donate money to me (not a 501c3) because you like something I do and want me to keep doing it, I can do anything (legal) with that money without IRS comment. (However, your donation to me is not deductible to you.)
By donating directly, there's one income tax layer removed.
If I was running a popular open-source project, I wouldn't make it public that I've got extra money that I'm giving away. That comes with all sort of complications...
Remember, Jellyfin is a fork of Emby which was a fork of Plex - both those projects were open source and then went paid. After being burnt twice like that I think it is understandable why many Jellyfin developers have had enough of that and will reject anything that even slightly could be seen as going paid. So while hiring someone might be possible and in the best interest of Jellyfin in a different world, they cannot do that in this world without losing support.
The money doesn't have to be spent just because it's there. Personally I'd be a little annoyed if I donted to a project and the only change they made was to burn the cash on advertising that they otherwise didn't do.
Seems like a perfectly good place for it to me.
The only thing you can say in favor of reddit is that most people already have a reddit account. Had, in my case. It is convenient in that sense, but reddit is not better than the forum. And reddit stands for everything that Jellyfin is against.
With all the practical and principal considerations summed together, ditching reddit was an easy, and the right, choice.