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Comment by chuckadams | Hacker News Reader

The tip jar is fine, the problem is that most corporations have no process to drop anything in the tip jar without purchase orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

The same process is why open source is such a hit among the developers that actually accomplish real work in such corporations.

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This is why I'm so glad when I find an open source project that has a book or similar that I can buy - I can expense a 50/500 book easily, getting a $5 expense for software approved is a PITA.

Maybe FOSS products should offer PDFs of the documentation as a "tip jar".

Format the documentation as a PDF, enable it on https://www.lulu.com/ and sell it for $100-200 (and a hardcover at some stupid high price).

You’ll collect a few.

I’d do that even in my personal capacity. Buy a new copy every major version release (where that’s applicable).

At least the new edition would be a worthwhile expense.

If all they need is an invoice and some papers, then it seems like a business-opportunity? Offer the service to manage their donations to OSS-projects, maybe offer some additional software for managing which OSS they are using and how much those need in donations. Seems like something the FSS should offer.

You just described Github Sponsors, Tidelift, and a couple other less well known competitors. It's a business opportunity, but not a great one from what I can tell.

That may work for some businesses, but IME, the people who hold the purse strings generally aren't ok with just giving money to a project without getting something in return. Especially if it isn't a 501(c) non-profit they can get tax deductions for. I think it is actually a bit of a gap in tax law, because I don't think such a donation would count as a business expense either if you don't get something concrete in exchange.

It would be great if all open source required payment of at least 1 dollarcent for enterprises, to make sure the purchase accounting layers are working in case anyone wants to send more money.

For 1 cent, we can still call it "free" even as in beer, the amount is small enough for that to be fair.

And if the penny isn't paid, no source? Then it's not open source. And practically speaking, no one will pay that.

If the penny isn't paid, they can still have the source.

But their legal department will have a problem.

I hope you understand the point now.

Going after them with legal claims is an odd definition of "can".

Nobody is going after them.

And remember this is only for enterprises.

This does require large players acting in good faith.

Or, at best, competently.

Sometimes both of those, or neither, are in evidence.

But I like the way you think. Make it a contract performance issue for legal teams to police internally.

And in order to pay that 1 cent, you have to pay 23 cents or so to a payment processor.

It's only for enterprises. They should have no problem with that.

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