TOPIC: Donate?

Daniel Dimitrov wrote:

..., perhaps you could consider donating for the work, that jonus has put into this

I think that people's attitude generally to donations is appauling.
I am not pointing to anyone in particular here, but just in general.
In the past few years I have seen a number of really good projects dumped because the creators are just not earning anything from it.
I mean, the programmers are doing a fantastic job of actually doing the work that is needed to be able to make live sites interactive etc.
But then "we", fail in our job as the customer/client by not donating.

Open Source is kind of doomed to fade out if things continue this way.
Mamblog and that Jobs component were great in version Joomla 1.0, but the developers just lost interest due to this fact.

I think this donation system has prooven it doesn't work.

Sure, small plugin stuff can be regarded as a fun hobby event. But complex stuff that help keep a site alive should be kept alive.
Donations to this stuff should be second nature.

But it won't change in the near future, and good projects will die. Then people like "me" will scream out asking why have the programmers given up?

Personally, to avoid this thing happening, I suggest that the next upgrade to !JoomlaComment 4.0 Stable should have a price to it.
Maybe just symbolic, but hey everyone chipping in a little is a hell of a better situation than nobody. Well, at least close to...

Sorry if this post is totally out of context etc, and feel free to delete it if it is too far over the edge. I just feel it should be said.

And if you decide to delete it, perhaps a few would have read it first...

I won't delete it but I'll move it to Off-Topic.

Well I had a similar thought some time ago, I have donated hundreds over the years and half those projects are dead now. But I'm not in the slightest bit upset with the attitude here, then again I don't see any of the donations so I don't know the exact figures (Daniel has offered a share many times mind you but I'd prefer to let boss have it all since there is probably much)

Well the way I see it, my personal support will probably start to dwindle more and more, simply due to lack of time (and time is money).

Although we are lucky to see the future in the case of JoomlaComment (hint: Joomla 1.6). I really want to make big changes to 4.1 an introduce new Premium Templates that are drastically varied from any other comment component. When that happens, I don't see a future in JoomlaComment.

Maybe we or someone else will build a forum component ontop of it? Probably not.

Daniel and I are talking on other new things though.

And oh, don't worry. Open source will never die, more and more of the world are open sourcing their projects (Nokia and Google to name two massive contributors/liberators) and real developers can be pretty appreciative.

JonusC wrote:

Well the way I see it, my personal support will probably start to dwindle more and more, simply due to lack of time (and time is money).

...When that happens, I don't see a future in JoomlaComment.

And oh, don't worry. Open source will never die, more and more of the world are open sourcing their projects (Nokia and Google to name two massive contributors/liberators) and real developers can be pretty appreciative.

Excatly, the creators loose heart due to the realities of financing a bottle of cognac in the weekends.

Don't see a future for JoomlaComment?

Open Source will live on, I see that. I just think it is a shame that good projects that stacks of people use, get let down by the people using it.

This particualr project JoomlaComment, is excellent in the atmosphere and everything. But, that is close to 100% due to the work of Daniel and yourself.
You two don't let the users down, you take their problems seriously and work to get it fixed.

But then again, I too have no idea what the donations are like here or anywhere. I have just seen projects die, and I know a few nettmasters that don't even think in that direction.
They think I'm a nutter that puts aside some money and donate on a regular basis. Well, not as regular as I'd like, but the direction is that way.

As far as I know, Daniel might even be driving around in a brand new, bright pink Mercedes. Well deserved.

Excatly, the creators loose heart due to the realities of financing a bottle of cognac in the weekends.

Don't see a future for JoomlaComment?

That was a bad use of wording. What I meant was - I'm ignorant to the future direction. We are putting in many many new features, optimizations and code re-writes so it'll be more closely described as JoomlaComment 5 than 4.1 if you want to get technical and I am personally focussing on making sure it can at least do what every other commenting extension does.

I was thinking about opening up a new subforum labelled "Development" which is only visible to donators or approved alpha-testers, so they/we can actively criticize and suggest on prototype features or visual designs as well as try them out. That's just a random idea though.

As far as I know, Daniel might even be driving around in a brand new, bright pink Mercedes. Well deserved.

Dunno about that, but the problem with donations is that you can't budget around it. I.e., it doesn't pay bills. It's fun/bonus money because it's unsteady. But you could always pool it into savings I suppose. I wouldn't know, I'm not here for any cash - just for experience and interest. Although, I have attained somewhat of a responsibility to the CompoJoom name, and hence why we're brainstorming about ways to make cash (in the dream that we can do this practically fulltime).

As said though, I'm actually still a novice at coding. I'm just experienced in scripting-in-general (I learnt ARexx when I was 9 ) Maybe I'm just getting old(er), but PHP is quite complex.

You have humbled me so Nils, and I'm sure Daniel would agree

People like myself all over the place, believe that we will some day shortly, make that crucial turn-of-events gadget on a site, that leads everything to a life of luxury. And when that day comes "I" will donate stacks of money to all the component, module and plugin suppliers I have ever used.

Most people have ended up also regarding themselves as "just one person", as in the famous "what differnce can I make" type of futility.

These users are far from bad at heart, and mean well, but are as everyone else, struggeling to pay the past months rent etc.

Hardly any of us have a Command Center (loved that comment!), but we dream of getting it some day.

I know, I just started saving for my second million! Because I gave up on the first one!

But as they say, the cow dies while waiting for the grass to grow.

I think you guys have prooven you take customers and the product seriously, and I would love to see you guys getting your teeth also into that list of Upcoming Products.
But that's not going to happen without at least some form of base money happening.

I seriously guess that close to every user of your product can afford around $ 10,- for a product like this that makes things interactive for their users.
I mean, if they can't afford it, then they can't afford new batteries for their mouse either, and shouldn't be working with this.

I can understand the FREE way approach while the product has been in beta etc. But once it goes stable, I recon it's time to at least cover base expenses.

Your idea about a subforum for Development is also one way to get that ball rolling.

Hi,

I was looking for the right place to report a small bug in the donating procedure, and stepped into this discussion.

The bug is that after donation I was directed to an error 404 page:

compojoom.com/payment/payment.php?tx=37R...eabDqVRS3HDEi1rEY%3d

Nevertheless I hope that my money will reach you.

I am happy that I have found this component that meets exactly my needs. It includes still some small bugs, so that I cannot use some of the features. But I can live with that when I start to make my website more interactive. And of course I hope that the developers will elimitate these bugs next time. As soon as everything works properly in a stable version, I am ready to donate again. I think this is a fair way to pay for software components.

Hey Joom Laner,
Yep, I got your donation. Thank you very much for it! I've reported the problem to paypal, but they've sent me to paypal's sandbox - where I should figure out the problem myself and I didn't have time to see why paypal redirect us to this page (this page is not existing on compojoom and I don't remember that I've ever set it)

Again, thank you for the donation and I will figure out what the problem is once I get the time for this.

P.S. The donations are working - just that paypal sends the user to a non existing page (I'm telling just in case anyone wants to donate )