[spambayes-dev] FW: SF.NET Project Donation System

[Richie Hindle]

[Tim]
> As the project admins should already know, SourceForge is integrating a
> donations system throughout their site (see the attached for a bit of
> detail).
> 
> I'd like the people here working their spare-time asses off on SpamBayes to
> give this some thought.  We don't *have* to give SpamBayes contributions to
> the PSF, and I wouldn't object if the people doing the work here wanted to
> split donations among themselves.  It probably wouldn't amount to much, but
> even 100 bucks now and again can work wonders for morale.

This is a great idea in principle, but devising a fair system for
distributing the donations would be difficult.  Trying to measure people's
contributions, when that means original code, bugfixes, patches,
contributions to spambayes-dev, work on the web site, providing support to
users, writing documentation, admin... it's more difficult that SpamBayes
itself.  (Anyway, we all know Mark deserves all of it for fighting Outlook
all this time.  And in Australian dollars, 100 bucks US would set him up
for life! 8-)

A couple of ideas do spring to mind, though:

Anyone who's spent real money on the project, like Rob with the
spambayes.org domain, could be reimbursed.

We could add developer links to the Donations page, so that if a user
wanted to donate to a specific developer, he could.  Though that in itself
raises fairness problems: who gets an entry on that page?  Do they get to
write their own entry (for example, could Barry put up an entry saying
"Bassist. Please help." - that would be grossly unfair to those of us
without that kind of affliction.)

I'd love to make money from SpamBayes (and my wife would *really* love it
8-) but I wouldn't want to leave others feeling short changed.

[Tim]
> Anyway, give it some thought over the holidays!  It's your project more than
> mine, and has been for a long time.  I'll support whatever decision you
> make.

And if we're ever in the same bar at the same time, you won't need to buy
any drinks.  8-)

-- 
Richie Hindle
richie at entrian.com