I disagree. Of course we can keep not accepting donations ever 
I think: letâs discuss how we want to organise (the monthly IRC meeting will help with this). Once we have decided how we want to organise, weâll know if and how we can use donations and then itâll be a good time to start asking for them.
⌠or we can add a Flattr button now and just let people Flattr the project if they want to 
But we canât get the donations to FSSN that way. The donations wouldnât go to the foundation, so we couldnât accept them. At least, thatâs what it sounds as though is the case.
Quoting my earlier comment;
I donât agree on this reasoning. If the Flattr donations were paid out, they would go to the FSSN since Flattr payouts are via PayPal. But we can get some love and show some love as a project without ever touching cash.
We could accept Flattr donations without ever paying out and support our devs and other FOSS projects this way. No cash = No FSSN involved.
Guys, donât be so bureaucratic 
Guys, donât be so bureaucratic
Iâm not being bureaucratic - I simply donât believe we have the structure at the moment to be able legally to accept payment except through the FSSN, and they wonât accept any payment except via Paypal.
It is possible that now that Diaspora is no longer incorporated in USA, the restrictions for US-based organisations (which I think was what made the FSSN link necessary) no longer apply, but this would need to be investigated and definitively worked out before we just decide to go ahead and accept payments extra-FSSN.
In any case, we need a mechanism for distributing payments, and to decide what we need money for. E.g. one of Maxwellâs rationales for instituting the donation structure was so that Jonne could be paid, and Jonne said âI donât want to be paid.â I think putting lots of work into establishing a means to accept donations before even knowing whether we have any use for those donations is a bit arse-about-face, if youâll excuse the language.
Oh blaa blaa blaa guys - let us not try to support anyone ever
I think putting lots of work
It takes 2 minutes to embed a Flattr button.
one of Maxwellâs rationales for instituting the donation structure was so that Jonne could be paid, and Jonne said âI donât want to be paid.â
So because Jonne doesnât want money we shouldnât accept donations - to pay for things like server independence and say thanks to projects like Loomio? I know we havenât defined how to work with donations - but hey why should we because we clearly are not accepting any
Hmm maybe one could set up some project independent dummy non-legal organization to accept virtual donations and pay back to developers and projects that we use, and to pay for features via open source support sites + even support pods. Maybe that is the only solutionâŚ
Personally the whole âPayPal onlyâ thing about the FSSN is pretty much killing the whole point of donations imho - PayPal sucks. Iâm not sure I want to endorse donations via PayPal.
Flattr only takes a cut if money is paid out. And other virtual options exist, like BTC, to make sure the project is never in touch with money, but can still support our volunteers and our friends.
So because Jonne doesnât want money we shouldnât accept donations
No, of course thatâs not what I said. That was an example of saying âwe need to raise moneyâ when it turned out the âneedâ to raise money was based on at least one false premise.
I havenât said we donât need to raise money. What I am saying is that as far as I can see, no one actually knows whether we need to raise money or not, or indeed how money raised would benefit the project. Some people thing we should raise money, some think we shouldnât, and many probably simply donât have a strong opinion one way or the other; but no one seems to know whether the Diaspora project needs to be able to raise money or not.
What Iâm trying to say is letâs have that discussion before trying to raise money, so at least we have a clear idea of whether or not the project can benefit from money raised and if so, how we can target that money. You make a couple of suggestions about what could be done with money, but letâs have a proper discussion about what could be done, so thereâs some proper agreement; not just assume that there are lots of things that money could usefully be spent on. And then we can tell people what sorts of things their money would go towards.
It takes 2 minutes to embed a Flattr button.
Maybe, but the point I was making was the work needed to establish clearly whether or not creating a mechanism to bypass the FSSN in accepting donations could potentially jeopardise the project in some way. There was so much hoo-hah about the need for a proper non-profit status and vehicle for accepting money for legal purposes, that I think we would have to establish properly whether it would cause problems to ditch this. I simply donât know the answer to this, and neither do you.
Hmm maybe one could set up some project independent dummy non-legal organization to accept virtual donations and pay back to developers and projects that we use, and to pay for features via open source support sites + even support pods. Maybe that is the only solutionâŚ
Maybe. Letâs find out whether this would be possible in Diasporaâs model, and whether bypassing the FSSN in this way would be allowable for a project established in the way Diaspora has been.
PayPal sucks. Iâm not sure I want to endorse donations via PayPal.
Agreed. But itâs what we have been landed with.
All Iâm saying is that this whole accepting money thing appears to be potential a legal minefield. So letâs not just wade into accepting money outside of the FSSN without first establishing that doing so would not cause any problems for the project. Surely thatâs just sensible.
Maybe. Letâs find out whether this would be possible in Diasporaâs model, and whether bypassing the FSSN in this way would be allowable for a project established in the way Diaspora has been.
You misunderstood. I didnât mean the project would be involved in any way. I think individual action might be the only way forward. Iâve written down some ideas, might post them once I clean them a bit.
Itâll be great if you can find a way to bypass all the institutional stuff. I look forward to reading ityour ideas.
As this topic has exactly the title I wanted to give to the thread, Iâm going to revive it, even if this is not about the FSSN anymore (well, not the central point at least).
With the release of 0.7 approaching, I feel like it can be the good timing to remind users they can give money if they want to support us. I created a few weeks ago a wiki page about donations. This page is far from perfect and I would prefer to have a clean, beautiful one on the official website.
Do you agree? Can I start to work on this?