4 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Release: V5.5.0 Witty Wildebeest
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Comment by creesch at 01/02/2021 at 10:52 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I do get your perspective, I really do. But that doesn't change the fact that we don't have a good place for the donations to go. There are no costs involved with developing toolbox in regards to hosting or tooling and there simply is no way to divide donations over those who contributed in the past in a way that makes sense (ignoring legal hurdles involved with taxes in different countries and the fact that probably over 50% of the contributions to toolbox's code have been by people no longer on reddit or reachable). Even if we decided that donations only apply to those that contributed code after we started accepting donations (which morally doesn't sit right with me) it would still be something we'd need to do (and also figure out) adding an administrative task and adding work in that regard even using platforms that do facilitate some of that. In fact it is something a lot of open source project struggle with and isn't unique. Even more so because I still firmly believe you do hugely overestimate the amount of donations over time.
So simply put, donations wouldn't actually support the project in any meaningful way and I don't want people to give money based on a false assumption that it does so.
I do realize that contributing code isn't a feasible way for most people to contribute either (though that is where we could use the most support and where there is an actual risk to the project) and that maybe even contributing to documentation isn't always possible and that is perfectly fine. If you still feel like you have to contribute something do so by making more mods aware of toolbox and possibly point those that do know to code to the fact that toolbox is open source.