[Distutils] Contributing money to package authors/maintainers via PyPI

[Nicholas Chammas]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 3:22 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Jul 23, 2016 11:40 AM, "Nicholas Chammas" <nicholas.chammas at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> [...]
>
>
> > You can already do this today, of course, with services like PayPal,
> Gratipay, and Salt. But the process is scattered and different for each
> Python package and the group of people behind it. What’s more, it seems
> wrong that these third-party services should capture some of the value
> generated by the Python community (e.g. by charging some transaction fee)
> without any of it going back to support that community (e.g. via the PSF).
>
> These kinds of money transfer services are pretty competitive, and AFAIK
> their transaction fees are largely set by companies like VISA, plus the
> actual costs of running this kind of business. (And this is much more than
> just shuffling bits around - there are all kinds of complicated regulations
> you have to comply with around issues like "how do you know that organized
> crime isn't using your service for money laundering". IIRC every country
> and US state has their own idea about what counts as adequate safeguards.)
> I think it's vanishingly unlikely that the PSF could provide these services
> more efficiently than these dedicated companies. So I don't think the PSF
> is going to get rich on transaction fees.
>

Agreed that it doesn't make sense for us to reinvent this wheel, at least
not unless the idea is massively successful.

I was thinking the PSF could perhaps start off by partnering with one of
these organizations who have already figured this stuff out. The PSF/PyPI
would bring a whole new group of users to their service, and in return the
service provider (e.g. Salt) would give the PSF some cut of their fee.

Not sure if that's viable (maybe the margins are too low?), but that's what
I was thinking.

Nick
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