That's not what I wanted. I wanted this to be just an additional method to the ones you are listing.
FYI - this post by Jow explains why there's no options to donate yet. So we might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
1 Like
Excellently put man!
Sorry, just to clarify -- are you opposed to the idea of stopping donations once the target amount is reached? Because if you're OK with stopping donations when the target amount is reached, in the spirit of transparency you should be listing the target. 
I'd be more wary of the project which accepts donations indefinitely possibly accumulating surplus (it's a nice problem to have, but it's still nonetheless a problem), than the project which has a stated goal for donations based on the infrastructure costs and only accepts that much money.
And, uhm, yeah -- we absolutely are angling for money. As things are right now, people who put their free time and knowledge to further the LEDE Project development are also supporting it financially to the tune of $2.5k a year. I see it as both a social injustice and a lack of opportunity for people to contribute financially who can't contribute in any other way.
Finally, I think what annoys people most about the way wikipedia collects is the huge-ass banner up top, not that they state their collection goals. Having said that -- their technique works and wikipedia is none worse off.
To sum things up:
- Annual target amount to cover running infrastructure costs.
- PayPal, credit card and bank transfer options to contribute.
- Fund/donate towards specific device requested by devs.
- One-time donation is a must, with monthly/annual plan as an option as a bonus feature.
How should we go about people who want to get their favorite device supported without current expressed interest from devs and at the same time avoid people sending in, well, junk?
I also think that unless it's a corporate sponsor signing up to provide a crucial piece of infrastructure for free for a number of years (and maybe not even those), all donations should be anonymous and not listed on any of the "thank you" pages (people sending in the money, especially bank transfer should absolutely receive a confirmation of their payment tho). Hopefully people want to donate money for better reasons than being recognized and to avoid any sort of threshold level on which donations are not recognized.
Any other opinions, things to consider/add?
Sorry, just to clarify -- are you opposed to the idea of stopping donations
once the target amount is reached? Because if you're OK with stopping
donations when the target amount is reached, in the spirit of transparency you
should be listing the target.I'd be more wary of the project which accepts donations indefinitely possibly
accumulating surplus (it's a nice problem to have, but it's still nonetheless
a problem), than the project which has a stated goal for donations based on
the infrastructure costs and only accepts that much money.
The project should be able to find ways to make use of additional money. This
can be in getting more servers so that builds go faster, it could be in setting
up a farm of devices to test builds on real hardware, it could be in paying
someone to be the sysadmin of the systems so that the current contributers can
concentrate more on development, or in extremem cases, it could be to start
paying the core contributers.
But to both be saying "we can't do that because we don't have the resources" and
"we don't need anything from anyone" is a mixed signal.
David Lang
There's a huge difference between sending money towards a specific goal and sending money because "project should be able to find ways to make use of additional money". The latter (when done by government) is called taxes and I'm sure most people have enough of that.
Lack of legal entity is a concern. From what I've read, even SPI can't help handle the money if there's no legal entity. 
There's a huge difference between sending money towards a specific goal and
sending money because "project should be able to find ways to make use of
additional money". The latter (when done by government) is called taxes and
I'm sure most people have enough of that.
No, Taxes are when you are forced to send money, and it doesn't matter if you
want to or not.
David Lang
[quote="stangri, post:15, topic:1049"]
Sorry, just to clarify -- are you opposed to the idea of stopping donations once the target amount is reached? Because if you're OK with stopping donations when the target amount is reached, in the spirit of transparency you should be listing the target. [/quote]
Well maybe I was a bit quick 
I'm not opposed to stopping donations when a target is reached, and yes, if you do that, you should advertise the targets. But it wouldn't be my first choice.
There's nothing wrong with a rainy day fund. A server breaks down, a dev needs new hardware, people may want to attend a conference or some other event to talk face to face, there may always be unexpected costs. Donations serve that purpose as well. Especially developer 'mobility' should be funded, since that's what partially made OpenWrt's internals grind to a halt.
It's a bit naive to think LEDE will be flooded with loads of money once donation becomes possible. I wouldn't worry about getting too much money - rather the opposite 
Instead of setting fixed targets, I'd prefer donations on a voluntary basis. Targets seem a bit coercive to me, but I am wary of hierarchy ;). If needed, we can organise a donation drive for specific goals.
To add additionally and reiterate:
A donor can stop donating whenever they want so there's no reason to limit how OTHERS willingness to donate. If you choose to donate once then that's completely fine. Others may want to continue support and that's fine too. If you are concerned about how much LEDE gets through donations then you personally should message the donors and tell them to stop their generosity. (But why?) (its no different from telling consumer's not to buy things because the Big Boys in the company are getting "too rich" - consumers themselves are making that choice to buy similar to how donors are making the choice to donate)
+1
Still no possibility?
Only yesterday I have been reading https://lede-project.org/infrastructure again:
As of late 2016, two core team members are personally covering the costs of the Hetzner servers [150 Euro / month]
While reading this I was thinking to myself: I could take some financial load of that shoulders... if I only knew how to donate.
...and this sum is per month. As I briefly overflew by brain first "suggested" year ;- )
It's not fair to have two people basically fund this whole project.
I am all for monthly donations.
Are things going to be returning to the OpenWRT platform, et al, or is LEDE's current setup going to supercede that? I was under the impression that LEDE would continue as it is, but assume the OpenWRT moniker at some point- but I haven't bothered to fact-check that.
I don't have spare cash right now but I do have some hardware that is being underutilized in various POPs- I'd be happy to throw some bandwidth/CPU at it.
If someone objects PayPal and Patreon due to their proprietary nature, why not to create a Liberapay account? I think a project such as OpenWRT needs a way to accept donations.
2 Likes
I'd be in favor for LiberaPay as well, they support organizations therefore fitting the OpenWrt status.
They had some payment provider trouble lately but just recently fixed it cooperating with a new provider, so it should be usable again.
I would prefer giving a one time sum once in a while as well. If the donation page informs about how much money they have at the moment and what the monthly costs are I don't think over funding will be a problem. Librapay would be great if it wasn't for the fact that they require recurring donations.
I'm intrested in donating as well.
Would be sad to see this project go down the drain due to lack of funds.
1 Like
I think this is a great idea if the goals include money and hardware. Not everyone will be able to provide money and not everyone will be able to provide hardware. Some folks may be able to provide both. After all this forum is a place to provide intellectual help, there should be more ways to help this project. Hardware and money donations would help the project a long way.
As it has been mentioned previously only 2 people are bearing the monthly infrastructure costs, but what about the setup costs of that infrastructure? Someone must have bought it somehow. Secondly, how long will that infrastructure will be helping, does it not need to be replaced after a set amount of time? On the other hand, no one knows how much donations will be generating in terms of money or hardware. Although, we may have some big lists of users coming to this forum or using the website daily for information but it doesnt mean they all want/able to help financially.
As I remember, the last forum we had, went down somehow and a lot of important info got lost probably. So if the project had some financial help, maybe this could have been avoided in first place. I am not saying that we must need to provide for the salaries of people working in the project although it can be included if needed, but still the ongoing infrastructure maintenance and replacement costs needs to be reimbursed somehow, and putting the pressure on just 2 people seems to be an overkill when thousands of people are benefitting from the project.
I am sure the Devs may have seen this topic somehow (or haven't seen it yet) and probably do not want help but they need some help in running this project. This is why we as community are here, helping each other with info as needed. So I would like to introduce an idea: maybe the community should choose some well-reputed forum members (I am not sure for certain who would that include but maybe @tmomas ) in case Devs are not reachable for the time being and create a board of (3 to 5) people (who can spare some valuable time) who oversee the donations and provide feedback as to how the money was spent. I mean they will need to contact the Devs obviously and send the money back to them so it can be spent on appropriate stuff and improve the standing of the project.
After all it's a community driven project so the community needs to make sure it stays alive for the foreseeable future.
1 Like
After all this time and after all this offers and options are laidout no response so I think everything and everyone is fine except its december and raining ;- )
It's raining again
Oh no, my love's at an end.
Oh no, it's raining again
and you know it's hard to pretend.
Oh no, it's raining again
Too bad I'm losing a friend.
Oh no, it's raining again
Oh will my heart ever mend.
Oh no, it's raining again
You're old enough some people say
To read the signs and walk away
It's only time that heals the pain
And makes the sun come out again
It's raining again
Oh no, my love's at an end.
Oh no, it's raining again
Too bad I'm losing a friend.
C'mon you little fighter
No need to get uptighter
C'mon you little fighter
And get back up again
Oh get back up again
Fill your heart again...
Lyrics by SuperTramp
See https://openwrt.org/about?s[]=donations
Donations can be done via SPI. Donations can be bound to a specific project, e.g. OpenWrt.
https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/openwrt/
2 Likes