Accepting money

mdtrooper

Yes, but I think that it is better center the "job" of manage the money several free software projects in one nonprofit instead that each free software project spend time/money to manage the money.

TPW

poVoq Call me jaded, but such non-profits usually become self-perpetuating entities more concerned with paying salaries of their administrative staff than furthering the original goal.

The same criticism is raised against funding projects for specific projects - take Mozilla or the Wikimedia-Foundation.
In the end, imho it comes down to a double-bind situation: FLOSS-devs can either refuse to play by the rules of the market but then will be unable to compete on it; or they chose to participate in the market but invite all the ugly mess that playing by the market causes, eventually getting eaten by it.

There is no right life in the wrong. Adorno.

Peter

But we weren't talking about the market. We were talking about funding organisations. Mozilla is a good example for being detached from the original goal.

TPW

Peter But we weren't talking about the market. We were talking about funding organisations.

If you talk about funding, you talk about the market.
There is no funding without commodification.

Peter

But funding doesn't mean you're eaten by the market.

TPW

Peter
As I tried to explain in the post you answered to: It does.
But you know what? If I write a lengthy essay we would really go off-topic. The topic wasn't "do foundations work out" but "how can I take money for my games without proprietary software".

AFAIK there is no foundation that is likely to support the OP and their - active, existing - projects. The linked foundation doesn't support games, and I don't know one who does. Neither did the OP ask for support through a foundation. This is a dead end.

Peter

Sorry that I don't get your point about the market.

The foundations was a try to help the OP. So it's not completely useless. But I doubt it's bringing in much money.

~~I know games who are sold on Steam or Itch despite being FOSS. For example Gearhead Caramel. Maybe that is a solution? Simply driving "two lanes".~~

I see now that the OP wants a libre solution. Maybe libre crypto currency? [Edit: Wuzzy didn't write that cryptocurrency is absolutely trash.]

TPW

About you not understanding my point: That's my fault. I should rather attempt to get clearer in my statements rather than getting toxic about my fellow people. I'm sorry.

The point Wuzzy made about BC is basically true for every practical working cryptocurrency - especially the environmental hazard.
It isn't pretty, but the only working anonymous form of money transfer is probably to rent a post office box to where people can send cash. For the average FLOSS gamedev this would cost more than it would bring in.

Peter

~~Anyone knows whether Fosspay, Opencollective and Opencomradry are without closed source JS?~~

Or what would be needed for a paying solution from scratch? As a backend any idea besides IBAN? As a frontend: Would encryption be necessary?

Edit: What I found out myself:

OpenCollective claims to be open source.
comradery.co seems to be proprietary
Fosspay uses Stripe (as was said before) which in turn isn't FLOSS

Peter

Ok, I thought about and I see only two ways:
a) The person who wants to get sponsored posts their IBAN on their webpage.
b) "Paypal style": The payment provider runs a bank account and withdraws money from the payers account, then sends it to the receiver's account. The payment server software is AGPL licensed.

TPW

OP said that he wants to stay anonymous/keep his IBAN private. Also, I'm quite sure that nearly every bank is using proprietary, non-free software ;). (I'm aware that this could be regarded nitpicking - but srsly: Same goes for considering non-free JS, so I guess OP is having strong principles).
If you want to live from something within our current, surrounding system, you'll have to make your hands dirty. There is no way around it.

Peter

TPW If you want to live from something within our current, surrounding system, you'll have to make your hands dirty. There is no way around it.

Yeah, I think so, too. If I ever will have something that could be sponsored, I'll use Patreon.

I found some solutions on Github, but you either have to use cryptocurrenxy (bad for the environment) or a bank account (not anonymous).

Peter

I found some new informations: There is phone payment. Has anyone here knowledge whether phone pay can be anonymous? It is perhaps a solution. Africans know how to do it, with services like M-Pesa.

poVoq

Peter usually not, as these phone payment systems require phone number registration.

But I think for small sums there are these gift vouchers for various services that you can buy in supermarkets. But that is of course only anonymous for the sender in most cases.

Lopy

A partial solution would be to give people a list of projects that you would like to donate to yourself. Big projects have an easier time getting a proper libre payment system (e.g. via the SFConcervancy), and neither the sender nor the (non)receiver have to learn information about each other except for the list.
Obviously this can't become an income source, but if the amount you receive via donation is bellow what you would donate each month, it actually reduces payment transfer fees.
For the list, I recommend highlighting one project in your game interface to alleviate choice paralysis, and have the highlighted item differ each time to avoid sending everything to the same place. If you have preferences between the projects, you can weigh them more or less inside the random pick.

Modanung

Lopy SFConcervancy seems to primarily use PayPal. It may support libre projects, but that doesn't make it a "libre payment system".

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