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

[tritium-list at sdamon.com]

I assert that a PayPal Donate link in a readme is sufficient.  Anything more is a pure waste of precious PSF and -sig resources.  If a project is large and needs significant funding, there are better avenues to get funding from or through the PSF.  Besides, I do not want to ask Donald to deal with PCI compliance; no matter who writes the patch, he would be the one that needs to make sure its correct.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Distutils-SIG [mailto:distutils-sig-bounces+tritium-
> list=sdamon.com at python.org] On Behalf Of Nick Coghlan
> Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 6:41 AM
> To: Nicholas Chammas <nicholas.chammas at gmail.com>
> Cc: distutils-sig <distutils-sig at python.org>
> Subject: Re: [Distutils] Contributing money to package authors/maintainers
> via PyPI
> 
> On 29 July 2016 at 02:09, Nicholas Chammas <nicholas.chammas at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Would it simplify things for the PSF if they partnered with someone who
> took
> > care of moving the money around?
> 
> If a global payments provider came to the PSF (or the Packaging
> Working Group within the PSF) and said "Here's a proposal for you to
> consider and suggest amendments to before we start sending
> implementation patches to Warehouse", then it would likely simplify
> things somewhat (the PSF would mainly just need to review the proposal
> to ensure it didn't jeopardise the PSF's non-profit status, that the
> platform operator had a clear escalation process for folks sending and
> receiving money, and that the terms of the proposal for individual
> publishers were something the PSF was happy to promote to PyPI's
> users).
> 
> However, in terms of designing such a system from scratch, picking a
> default payment platform is a relatively easy part of the problem -
> the design work around how the program is presented to package
> publishers and users, how folks raise questions regarding problems
> with money sent or received, and how we mitigate the chance of horror
> stories as folks naively fail to comply with their local tax laws all
> remain as complex problems to be addressed. (There may also end up
> being some challenges around age verification, as PyPI doesn't
> currently require you to specify your age when signing up, but also
> doesn't currently provide any services where that's a potential
> problem)
> 
> > The PSF, via PyPI, would bring a large, opt-in user base to their doorstep,
> > and in return the payment provider (e.g. Gratipay, Salt) would cut the PSF
> > some tiny slice of each transaction.
> >
> > I don’t know if this tweak makes the proposal more realistic (again, maybe
> > the margins wouldn’t work for the provider)
> 
> It does make it more realistic, but as you note in your parenthetical
> comment, it's an open question as to whether it would be worth the
> investment in design and implementation effort from the side of the
> platform provider (especially if they assume the PSF itself will
> eventually get around to funding something along these lines).
> 
> Regards,
> Nick.
> 
> --
> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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