Xfce project and financial contributions

[Yousuf Philips]

Hi Kevin,

I recently stumbled on opencollective, as it's being used by Endeavour OS,
and think it's a great idea. Also recently stumbled on some bad news about
bountysource on twitter[1] where the user mentioned that they were back at
it again, so we should definitely not support them. Another option might be
the Software Freedom Conservancy, which I heard handles all legal stuff,
taxes, donations, etc. so that devs can focus on what they do best. Not
sure if this was ever discussed on the ML, but it would be great if an Xfce
foundation was set up, similar to how Gnome and KDE have one.

I've run personal fundraising campaigns, as well as proposed a fundraising
campaign when I was contributing to LibreOffice, and also do marketing in
my day job, so here are some ideas I've thought about for xfce from months
back. We should take examples from Linux Mint[2], Sparky[3] and Ubuntu
Mate[4], who put out funding reports of donations that come in and what
they are or will be used for. We should have a sponsors page with donors
who pledge a particular amount each month or support xfce by other means,
e.g. GhostBSD[5]. Have both one-time and monthly donation options with
minimum amounts that are reasonable, so that processing fees don't eat a
huge chunk of the donation. Set donation goals that when reached, something
will be unlocked, e.g. contracting a web dev to revamp the website, buying
HiDPI screens to help fix related bugs, etc.

[1] https://twitter.com/CassidyJames/status/1379810821874745349
[2] https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4049
[3] https://sparkylinux.org/april-2020-donation-report/
[4]
http://web.archive.org/web/20170516171647/https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-march-2017-supporters/
[5] http://ghostbsd.org/sponsor#BecomeaSponsor

Regards,
Yousuf


On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 8:29 AM Kevin Bowen <kevin.bowen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> The Xfce project is currently in the process of looking to engage with a
> new
> organization to help us manage our collective funds as well as allow us to
> solicit donations and encourage fundraising efforts directed to end
> users who
> would like to support Xfce financially.
>
> Back in June 2020, Simon had elaborated
> [here](https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2020/06/18/why-bountysource-why/)
> as well as
> [here](https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2020/06/26/bountysource-update/)
> on some of the issues encountered with Bountysource and that Xfce has,
> subsequently,
> disabled its bug bounties and is looking to separate from its
> association with
> Bountysource.
>
> As of this month, the Xfce team is considering signing up with
> [opencollective](https://opencollective.com/) to assist us in managing
> donations and financial contributions.
>
> There are a few other options/orgs that are still being considered; but,
> opencollective is looking like a contender for where we will be moving
> towards to manage collecting funds.
>
>
> Hopefully, we can announce, in a few weeks, that we are open for
> business; and,
> a few new donation buttons can be put up on our pages. Perhaps we can
> even do a PR push to do a fundraiser. I am open to suggestions on how,
> exactly, to pursue this.
>
> That being said, I would like to open this up to the general dev mailing
> list for discussion and feedback for at least two weeks before we make a
> final decision. As of today, the decision to go with opencollective is
> not yet final.
>
> Any constructive feedback is welcome. Additionally, we are open to
> considering other sites/orgs for handling our donations.
>
> Thank you,
>
> kevin
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce4-dev mailing list
> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
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