this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Why don't you donate (or donate more) to KDE? (self.kde)
submitted 10 months ago by parens to c/[email protected]
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Related to a previous post about Thunderbird collecting 6.4 million dollars in 2022 and KDE only 200k, I'm wondering why people do not donate or do not donate more to KDE.

What's holding you back?

Here's what I said in that thread

I donate periodically to KDE, but my major gripe is that I don’t know where the money is going. They have no financial reports that can be easily found, individual projects don’t have a donation button, there’s no public tracking of their income or expenditure like on opencollective, and it’s not easy to find KDE devs (aka who is actually on the KDE team) so that one could sponsor individual devs.

Although I trust KDE more than Mozilla (MZ pays their CEO 7 million/year and invests in anything but Firefox, their most known project), I would much much much rather prefer it to know where the money goes.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I donate periodically to KDE, but my major gripe is that I don’t know where the money is going. They have no financial reports that can be easily found

The yearly reports of the KDE e.V. can be found in https://kde.org/community/donations/

individual projects don’t have a donation button

this is because giving money individually to a KDE subproject is a lot of logistic and unless the project is big and receive a lot of money, the amount collected for the individual project won't be enough to do anything meaningful for the project. But we had a trial with Kdenlive specific fundraising, which worked reasonably well last year so maybe we will see more subprojects specific fundraising in the future.

there’s no public tracking of their income or expenditure like on opencollective

yeah aside from the graphs in https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2022/#working-groups_ we don't publish detailed logs of every single transactions as they contain private details like how much our contractors are getting paid. KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit in Germany and the tax offices is very vigilant that nothing weird happens.

it’s not easy to find KDE devs (aka who is actually on the KDE team) so that one could sponsor individual devs

This developers accepting donations often have this info on their website. It's also possible to find KDE related people on liberapay https://liberapay.com/search?q=kde

[–] parens 3 points 10 months ago

Thanks Carl.

My search query was "financial report" and I stopped scrolling after after a few seconds on the page. Maybe working with tabs on that page or having a table of contents would help. I was honestly expecting a PDF 🤔 I find the way wikipedia does it really good https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/ . A simple "wikipedia financial report" query brings me to their page.

this is because giving money individually to a KDE subproject is a lot of logistic and unless the project is big and receive a lot of money, the amount collected for the individual project won’t be enough to do anything meaningful for the project. But we had a trial with Kdenlive specific fundraising, which worked reasonably well last year so maybe we will see more subprojects specific fundraising in the future.

I kinda understand. As said before, I do trust KDE more than I do Mozilla, who uses the exact same response to say "you can't donate towards Firefox" and then you see what they do with the money - it doesn't go to firefox.
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but seeing a moneyflow graph, diagram or just simple table of how the pot is split by project would be amazing. The current table doesn't mention a single project. Maybe personnel just jumps between projects as they see fit and don't contribute to a single project, which would make tracking difficult? I assume that's the case.

At the very least adding the option for people donating to say "my money is for all of KDE, but I'm donating because of project XYZ" would give you data on which projects people really value and a bit of a reason why they use KDE.

This developers accepting donations often have this info on their website

I would very much appreciate a section on the donation page or even a separate page of "Contributors", projects they are involved in / function / what they do, and official links to their donation options (liberapay, github account, paypal, website with payment information, crypto address, whatever).

Because liberapay is a third-party website and I'd have to first verify that the in the search query actually does contribute to KDE.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Because I'm broke.

[–] parens 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Broken or broke?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Yes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Oops, fixed.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think the reason Thunderbird got so much is because of it's Windows based users. KDE really only has Linux based users, which is nowhere near the same amount of people.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Krita has far more Windows users than Linux users, so does GCompris, and very probably Kdenlive too, to mention 3 of the bigger (in terms of userbase) KDE products. Many more KDE app projects are currently compiling their products for several OSes (Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Krita has far more Windows users than Linux users, so does GCompris, and very probably Kdenlive too, to mention 3 of the bigger (in terms of userbase) KDE products.

And all of them combined have fewer users than Firefox and Thunderbird which both nag people to donate.

Many more KDE app projects are currently compiling their products for several OSes (Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS)

With exceptions like Krita, Windows support is second tier for most (things like weird icon sizes and window positions) and even for applications that support Windows well, there is little interest in promoting the Windows version, even though there's a decent chance this would improve the developer pool. I'm fairly convinced that had Windows support been a bigger priority, the KOffice/Calligra would have had a chance to survive against OpenOffice/LibreOffice, especially considering that it could have worked with Kontact the way MS Office has Outlook. Kontact even had reasonably good Windows support before the move to the whole Akonadi thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

KDE really only has Linux based users

I was only arguing this point. Apologies for not making that clear.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm using Kate on Windows (if In have to use it) as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The number of Windows desktop users outnumber the number of Linux desktop users something like 25 to 1, so that makes a lot of sense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm a poor student living in a poor country. I'm contributing with telemetry and bug reports instead. I've thought about helping with development, but they seem to mostly need C++ developers and I don't happen to be one, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You are helping a lot already. Thank you for your contributions!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm poor (income is ~20% below US poverty line) and only vaguely understand how things work and speak one language. So I have no money, wouldn't trust my advice to fix things or explain them and translations can be done better with other resources than me. I did try to make wallpapers and icons for a few things but they weren't professional looking enough to share. As I learn more I hope to contribute more in any way I can, if I'm confident it will help, but for now the best thing for me is to stay out of the way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Well you are here so maybe your future can be a little brighter

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

There are many ways of contributing to Free Software with your efforts. That you are seriously considering it is already very much appreciated. Maybe you should think about signing up to one of KDE's mentorship programs (excuse the bare bones website, it is still work in progress)? These would help you get the foot in the door of contributing with someone to guide you, and even a foot in the door of the IT industry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

  1. I'm broke

  2. PayPal is horrible and inconvenient

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
  1. Sorry to hear that. The financial crises is terrible.
  2. Although the prior point makes this one moot, We do have more ways than just PayPal. If you follow the process through that form, you can use bank transfer, credit card, and so on.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, except none of those are the most convenient payment method for online purchases in my country, even credit card requires an international one IIRC, furthermore, it is a pain to figure out a proper amount cause it uses Euro. The minimum € 3,00 isn't a huge amount converted to my local currency, but it isn't a small amount either.

So you end up with something that is too much of a hasle even if you had the cash and wanted to donate. Cause you can't stop thinking along the lines of "even if I wanted to deal with all of this the amount I'm giving isn't going to change that much"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's okay, though. Donating is purely a voluntary thing. No-one at KDE is into pressuring or guilting anybody into doing anything. You enjoy our software and it helps you study, work or have fun? We are happy and good with that. Have fun!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's more of a frustration thing rather than guilty, mostly because it is possible, but not convenient. KDE isn't the only thing I'd like to donate to, but it also uses PayPal

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Again: we do not use only PayPal. We have implemented many other methods.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Oof, my bad, posted the message without completing it. I was gonna say that PayPal is a bad payment method cause it doesn't take into account the intricacies of local payment methods despite being used as an sort of international method to transfer money (The play store is a fantastic payment method for instance, almost makes me wish for Google to take on PayPal). Credit Cards are also bad cause you need an international one and it isn't always easy to get it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Don't have a job ( and have no money )

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
  1. i'm poor
  2. my currency is whorth nothing
[–] parens 1 points 9 months ago

I wish you strength, my friend

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I am homeless

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I honestly intend to but haven’t gotten around to it. I’m more comfortable with a one time donation but might look at recurring donations for KDE and Asahi when it makes sense for my budget. I use both daily and both projects are killing it as of late!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Mostly just no money honestly.