TOPIC: Donation

I have been trying to make a small donation since I downloaded and installed !JoomlaComments on my website ( www.jcharper.net ) some time ago. It is a fine piece of work. I appreciate your efforts very much.

The problem is that it is very difficult to make a donation. First, I did not have a pay-pal account and wanted to use my credit card but was reluctant to do so because the form was in German and I didn't know exactly what I was filling in the blanks. I guessed, got an error page and gave up on doing it on a credit card.

I opened a PayPal account and now I don't see any donation link - All I can do is buy a support subscription for a product I am not using (Compojoom Comment). If you will put up a Donations link, I will send you some Euros via PayPal for the use of !JoomlaComments.

Voluntarily paying for free software is harder than I ever imagined. Other OpenSource developers also fail to make it easy to make donations.

Cordially,
John Harper

Almost easier to learn German...

Kidding, but yeah, there should be a Donation option here too... I agree.

Hey John, Hey Nils,
Do you guys think that we need a donation button? I mean, we already have embraced the subscription model.
And to be honest that I think that we just should keep it like this. If someone is happy with the free version, then he is going to be happy with the paid one - and the paid one is f.... cheap. So anyone who wants to donate can get a subscription
Daniel

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing actually...

The only real situation this may be needed, is if someone decides to install Joomla 1.0, and then can't really use the full version. But as you say, even then they can still purchase the full version and just think of it as a donation.

Joomlacomment 4.0 doesn't install on joomla 1.0 . Do you guys think that I should publish 3.26 - it was working on joomla 1.0, but who is making websites with 1.0 those days anyway?

Exactly...
I have one site still using Joomla 1.0 version, and I have no plans (at least not yet) to upgrade it, as it works fine.
But, all new installs are of course on the 1.5 platform.
I can't see any reason to do a new installation on the 1.0 platform.

Personally, I think 3.26 has done its job, and that's now history.
Your upgrade seems to be working for most people, so it seems most are on the 1.5 level.

Then again, Microsoft and many others still have outdated stuff available... I am still running Windows XP here!
So, it might be an idea to at least have it available somewhere... Like an area called "Previous versions" or something?

No, I'm not putting it online. 3.26 and older also have this XSS attack, so it is not good to give such software to the users.

Ha, I'm making my finances for the last year right now and I see that I got a donation from 1€ trough paypal. After the paypal taxes this are 61 cents - cool

Hahaha, yeah, this is good news, and actually confirms previous discussions!

1 Euro Donation? Haha "because you're worth it"
Seriously though, I had around the same trouble when donating last year I think, that I didn't understand German and the way it seemed to setup... so it was scary to even complete the donation!

To prove once again that blind luck is better than logic and brains, I finally found out how to make a donation by accident. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then!

To write a reply here, I went to the !JoomlaComments "About" link in my Joomla administrative panel to get the precise version I am using. Lo ... and Behold ... - a Donate Link right before my very eyes! Using my new PayPal, I sent 10 Euros so you guys can have a beer or two on my tab. Let me know if you get it.

!JoomlaComment 4.0 RC1 is doing exactly what I want on my website ( www.jcharper.net ) so I will leave it alone until it quits working. Since I am not a website developer/designer and my website is absolutely non-commercial, I am not interested in committing to annual subscriptions to keep things working properly.

That is why I left Microsoft - about the time I get things working they come along with an upgrade, want more money and another slice of my life spent learning to figure out how to use the upgrade. About the time I wade through a 1000 page book and figure it out, everything quits working again, everything I learned is suddenly "no longer supported" and it is time to send more money, buy more books and start over again. Stop the world and let me off!!!

So far at least, OpenSource software just keeps on working today like it did yesterday. When something better comes along, I can make the decision to keep what I have or change, instead of having it jammed down my throat by the powers that be.

Keep up the good work!

Cordially,
John Harper
www.jcharper.net

Hey John,
Man that is amazing! All that trouble just to send a donation! Because I know that it took you so much time and I really appreciate this I granted you with a 6 month subscription You can download the newest version if you need it for another site or so
Cheers and thanks again,
Daniel

Thank You for the subscription - it was my intent to contribute something toward the development of what I am using. I don't plan on having another website, although several small business have asked if I would build one for them. I don't want the trouble of having customers and bosses anymore. This is for fun and for free .

One of the great benefits of OpenSource is that I can go back to building computers from old parts for people who can't afford to buy them. Windows 2000 was the last Microsoft OS that could be installed on multiple computers. After that, I couldn't afford the OS even though I had the parts. Finding monitors is a problem but the rest is fairly easy to find for free.

With OpenSUSE, I can give someone a computer with email, internet and word processor capability from donated parts again. From a practical user standpoint, they hardly notice the difference - I just tell them Firefox is IE, Nautilus is MyComputer and Evolution is Outlook and Writer is Word and they are up and running! This makes a big difference for smart poor kids with ambitions for higher education.

OpenSource is ready for prime time in my opinion. It has been a long hard slog but no longer or harder than it was for Microsoft from the advent of the Apple IIe to Windows 98. They put computers in the hands of the average person - then they forgot where they came from. I hope OpenSource doesn't do the same.

Cordially,
John Harper

Hey John,
I like your website! I remember the first days when I started browsing around 2002 - it was back then when someone could read the personal opinion of someone without thinking in the background - this guy is telling all this for money. When I read the things you write I really feel that this is your opinion, your point of view and it is truly amazing!

About openSouce. All my friends are some Linux geeks. Me on the other site - I'm a Microsoft fan. I know they are expensive, but I like the way a microsoft machine is working. I like the fact that I don't have to fight with the console for 1h etc. I've tried several times to run suse - and it is a good system, but I've always managed to crash it within 1 ор 2 day (it was always a driver problem by the way). Anyway this is not my point. Behind suse - you will find novell. Behind opensuse you will find sponsors such as IBM.

Behind compojoom the main sponsor is me and the users that have donated. I understand that perhaps the biggest reason for the few donations last year is the german form we had, but even if we multiply the donations by 3, we are not going to be close to 400€! The server that we are on costs 700€ per year. Considering the download number - more than 150 000 downloads last year - this is just funny.

So far I'm super happy with the move to this subscription model. I don't know how the subscriptions are going to sell in the future, but I was free of worries at least for one week! ( I was not worried that I don't have a constant cash flow and that I have to find projects to work on.) I could just concentrate on compojoomComment. I've coded the latestcomments module, I've updated the extension itself - twice! I fixed a problem with the plugin for myblog. And this all in 1 week. (I'm not counting the e-mail, chat, phone and forum support). In the past all I was doing was - helping everyone in the forum and hoping that I will find the time to update the component.

In the past I was always thinking - code should be free, but what I was not understanding was, that free doesn't always mean 'free beer', but freedom! And the support subscription method doesn't change this freedom in any way. You have access to the code, you can do whatever you want, install it on as many websites as you wish and you get a bonus - SUPPORT that you can count on. (and you don't get this even from microso...

I for one feel a lot more secure in my choice to use this comment system, now that it has a cashflow system with it!

I know John Harpers situation very well, as that's how I started my stuff too... and things kind of developed, thanks to all the Open Source available. I am kind of lucky though, as I have started to earn money on my site, and I always make a point of donating. Hehe, even to the point of buying subscription packages I know I do not need, but I am trying to support good projects.

But as Daniel states, the volume of donations is way too small to justify full work time with this stuff.
My server also costs money, and even a trip to town will cost petrol and a toll booth, plus parking etc. I mean, we don't exactly live in the jungle.

As I have previously mentioned, the small price for subscription is so small that everyone should easily be able to afford it. If not, how can they afford batteries for a keyboard etc?

I think donation stuff is a great idea, but just look at the number of top projects that have stopped due to lacking donations!
Mamblog, JSJobs, CMS TopSites and many others are just left as ghost projects.

I am also a Microsoft junky...

This may not be the proper forum for this discussion but it is where it is taking place so I'll go with the reality and skip over proper.

I obviously have an advantage in that I am retired and don't have to make a daily living. I also have a disadvantage in that I am 67 years old and having a hard time keeping up with the fast paced modern world. Having been in business for myself and being in and around the world of finance for my entire working life, I understand better than you might know the problems of making a living without a steady paycheck coming in every month.

For the self-employed the key to success is in keeping expenses down while generating reliable income. Conceptually, software is the ideal business for the self-employed because the same item can be resold an infinite number of times and the cost of production is time, not money. Yes, I know that time is money but it is given to us at birth and we don't have to pay interest to use it. We spend it one minute at a time on something and it is gone forever. The point is that it is important to spend time carefully on the things that will bring us the things we want in life.

Looking at costs, I know nothing except what you have revealed. 700 Euros a year for a hosting server seems very high to me. Of course, you operate at a different level from me but my server costs US $103 for two years at iPowerWeb. You might want to check into alternatives.

Using Docman and OSE Access Control, I can control who downloads from my site (all of the downloads are in the private areas). Just charging a download fee of say 10 Euros would generate EU 1.5 million on 150,000 downloads. The additional benefit would be that you are not obligated to make constant minor cosmetic changes in the product to stimulate continuing subscriptions. Your time would be free to develop new products or make major improvements in existing products.

From your customer's standpoint, the advantage would be that it is a one-time known cost for a known product he can use as long as it suits his needs. Only when the needs change will additional expenses be incurred.

The thing that would bother me about your product and business model is that it is dependent on 1) Joomla success and 2) Joomla not incorporating comments into their product a a native component. (That is exactly how Microsoft killed independent developers) The second possibility is a real and significant risk, in my opinion. Maybe you can get paid for it and maybe not. Either way, developing new product is vital - you can bet that Comments won't last forever but unique scripting solutions will.

Cordially,
John Harper
www.jcharper.net

Yes, I work for myself too, so I am fully aware of the difficulties involved.
And yes, once a digital product is developed, the continuing production costs are minimal.
This is true regardless of whether the product is Compojoom Comments or the Avatar movie.

But, I believe that if Avatar was left to pure donations, it wouldn't stand a chance of covering the costs of coffee breaks.
This is the problem that poor donations is giving developers of software.
Had the product been the result of a student just doing something like a brief plugin etc for fun, sure no problem.
But when a product starts to be stacks of code lines, the competance and ability required starts to mount up.

JoomlaComment was free for years.
It is only now, when demands are rising to the products safety and intergration that continued workflow has made demands on the producer that can only be met through some form of finance.

Sure, the next generation of Joomla will have a comment system integrated. Regardless of how good it is, it will still be there. And even if it is a little simple to start with, it will probably be good enough to use, and in time also useable for most other components.

In time, nothing of today will really survive. Even Joomla 1.0 is history.
Joomla itself was based on the Mambo code. Things change, as you also stated FAST!

But right now, for me at least, I want and choose this Compojoom product because I feel it meets my requirements best. And I want it to survive.
If I decide to abandon it, I still feel that the producer has prooven ability and commitment that I would like to see in the future, regardless of what product gets produced. I only hope it is a product I have use for.

And I remember the list of up-and-comming products! I would love to see some of that getting in place!
And that's just not going to happen without some form of cashflow.

So as you stated correctly, "...Comments won't last forever but unique scripting solutions will."

And remember, even though there is now a subscription plan, any help you may need is pretty easy to get here.
Most of the time that will probably be as before, free.

I am not arguing for free software. It is morally and ethically wrong to enjoy the fruits of another person's labor without fair compensation. I don't do it even when someone offers to work for free, as evidenced by my sustained effort to make a donation here.

From the other point of view, I do not want to be forced to pay for the same work more than once or be forced to pay for "improvements" I don't want or need. That too is morally and ethically wrong.

The business model for "free" software (and other intellectual property) is still evolving. Maybe it will be based on subscriptions, downloads, piecework or charges for support, or some other method.

Academic institutions underwrite the development costs of some software (The first free software I ever installed was PGP Encryption developed and distributed by MIT. I still use it) as spin-offs from basic research. Corporations underwrite software development (previously mentioned Novell and IBM for example) to support their own commercial interests and for competitive advantage (drivers for hardware devices for example). Bell Labs (once part of AT&T) donated Unix to the public domain which led to the development of Linux.

Also, it might be pointed out that most free software rests on a foundation of other free software. For example, !JoomlaComments won't work without Joomla which relies on free Apache, MySQL and PhP. What happens now if Oracle (now owns Sun Microsystems, the primary supporter of MySQL) decides to charge a monthly subscription fee to use MySQL?

The point is that any business model must take into account the donations of past developers and price new product accordingly.

I am sure it will evolve but I see nothing wrong with the subscription fee model so long as whatever the customer paid for keeps working as it did when purchased.

Cordially,
John Harper
www.jcharper.net

If more people donated as you, then this would never have been an issue to start with.

I agree that all your arguments are very valid.
And the onetime flat fee for life is something that some have adopted.
Others like HWD MediaShare started to take subscription pay from the very start of Alpha releases.
Then again it is early days for this subscription system, so perhaps it may even change according to input such as yours.

There are valid arguments for each approach. I know Daniel was reluctant to start this as a subscription project, but was (as others) in the dilema of either stopping the project, or to make it finance itself.
The flatfee system as I see it, is perhaps a little outdated, as the web is far from a flat stable environment.
A component that is buzzing hot today, may be attacked by a brand new strain of XSS stuff tomorrow, demanding development. Just look how long version 3.26 survived before these XSS attacks made it redundant.

A flatfee system as I see it, may not really attend to this. It has sold the product to you, no strings attached, and perhaps the owner is now working as a gardener in Guyana.

I would love the idea of buying a computer today, and still be able to use it in 30 years in the future.
I mean, when I think about the computers I had in the early 90's.... The hard disks of those times were tiny compared to the RAM we are on today.
I had all the SyQuest and MO-Disks available! All of this is obsolete now...

Computer stuff and software change steadily faster. It is good and bad, but puts an extra strain on free stuff trying to survive.

As you so rightly mentioned, Joomla and many projects are Open Sourced. This Comment system is stlil Open Sourced too.