Hacker News Reader

Comment by high_na_euv | Hacker News Reader

I dont think it is purchase because there is no guarantee/promise that you will receive anything (usually)

In reality it does often offer perks (seeing creative work before release, exclusive behind the scenes stuff, etc.) so I think you can see that as a purchase, no?

Belonging to a church often has perks, yet we don't consider offerings purchases. I do think some Patreons are setup closer to a shops, but not all.

We probably should tax churches, since many churches require tithing and offer a pretty outstanding benefit for membership. It's hardly a donation when you're donating to an establishment central to your everyday life.

It's basically a social club that gets a pass on taxes because they believe in magic.

Isn't patreon basically always "pay in order to access (current and future) paywalled content"? And while there may not be (or may be) a promise of future content, there is current content.

If I give money to the apache foundation am I "buying" software or donating? Some of the artists I support post everything they make outside the paywall and just use patreon as a convenient tip jar.

I'm under the impression that "post everything they make outside the paywall [simultaneously or prior to posting it inside the paywall]" is not the norm. I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule of course, but are they actually common?

A quick search doesn't suggest that the apache foundation uses patreon...

That's how we do things with sqlitebrowser.org as well. The Patreon donations are helpful contribution from our users, paying for things like domain names, certificate renewals, new hardware (eg for development), and so on.

We don't gate anything behind the payments, and it's extremely unlikely we'd ever even consider doing so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com