[Debian-sponsors-discuss] Donations to Debian are too difficult

[Michael Shuler]

On 05/05/2013 05:05 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 12:14:36AM +0300, Vladislav Zorov wrote:
>>>> If it's possible to accept PayPal, an even better solution would be to just
>>>> use PayPal's donate button, thus most users will only need one click and
>>>> their PayPal password, avoiding the point where most users abort their
>>>> payments (the credit card details entry form). I understand if there's an
>>>> ideological reason to not accept PayPal, but neither Debian nor SPI said
>>>> anything about it.
>>>
>>> That's a good question for debian-project.
>> I bet they have a good reason, let's wait and see :)
> 
> I don't think there's any particularly good reason not to accept
> donations via PayPal. There are various good reasons not to use PayPal
> in general, but from a strictly Free Software-specific point of view
> (which IMHO is the only one value horizon Debian should have) they
> aren't worse than reasons not to use any other bank out there. As a data
> point, many other Free Software projects (e.g.: Tor, GIMP, KDE, the FSF,
> OSI, SFLC, Software Freedom Conservancy, etc) accept PayPal donations
> without much of a hassle. They all seem to value more the simplicity for
> donors than other concerns; and I don't think that any of those project
> values Free Software any less than we do at Debian.
> 
> In terms of fees, PayPal fees would actually be better than the fees
> that Debian pays to at least some of other Trusted Organizations that
> currently accept donations on behalf of Debian (e.g. SPI). As such they
> would be more respectful of donors' money, because a larger share of the
> donation will actually reach Debian.
> 
> Last point: we wouldn't need to rely on any Trusted Organizations to
> take care of PayPal money, we would "just" need to coordinate with the
> Debian auditors for proper accounting --- I haven't spoken with them, so
> that *might* be a problem, but I don't think it would be.
> 
> Just thinking out aloud,

To add an additional thought, why not use the services of one of
Deb{ian,Conf}'s major sponsors, and why not offer multiple one-click
donation options to give users a choice?

https://checkout.google.com/seller/npo/

-- 
Kind regards,
Michael


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