[Debian-sponsors-discuss] Donations to Debian are too difficult

Stefano Zacchiroli zack at debian.org
Sun May 5 22:05:27 UTC 2013


[ Cc += debian-sponsors-discuss ]

On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 12:14:36AM +0300, Vladislav Zorov wrote:
> >> If it's possible to accept PayPal, an even better solution would be to just
> >> use PayPal's donate button, thus most users will only need one click and
> >> their PayPal password, avoiding the point where most users abort their
> >> payments (the credit card details entry form). I understand if there's an
> >> ideological reason to not accept PayPal, but neither Debian nor SPI said
> >> anything about it.
> >
> > That's a good question for debian-project.
> I bet they have a good reason, let's wait and see :)

I don't think there's any particularly good reason not to accept
donations via PayPal. There are various good reasons not to use PayPal
in general, but from a strictly Free Software-specific point of view
(which IMHO is the only one value horizon Debian should have) they
aren't worse than reasons not to use any other bank out there. As a data
point, many other Free Software projects (e.g.: Tor, GIMP, KDE, the FSF,
OSI, SFLC, Software Freedom Conservancy, etc) accept PayPal donations
without much of a hassle. They all seem to value more the simplicity for
donors than other concerns; and I don't think that any of those project
values Free Software any less than we do at Debian.

In terms of fees, PayPal fees would actually be better than the fees
that Debian pays to at least some of other Trusted Organizations that
currently accept donations on behalf of Debian (e.g. SPI). As such they
would be more respectful of donors' money, because a larger share of the
donation will actually reach Debian.

Last point: we wouldn't need to rely on any Trusted Organizations to
take care of PayPal money, we would "just" need to coordinate with the
Debian auditors for proper accounting --- I haven't spoken with them, so
that *might* be a problem, but I don't think it would be.

Just thinking out aloud,
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack at upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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