Hi,
I was wondering if there is already a method setup by the author to gather funds to probably fund other authors to improve MiaB. For e.g., Patreon recurring payments and most of us already have it.
One time payments are difficult. But it would be nice to make recurring donations monthly and if many do, it can but the authors of the project more resources to improve MiaB. Just a thought. Thanks for responses.
Hi Alento, thanks for quoting this message from the author. I noticed that thread is now closed. But I do have a counter proposal.
I would suggest that people might not be able to substantial recurring amounts. Please don’t get me wrong, they might want to. But some might be students, myself one, and others might not be under best financial states to make lasting recurring support.
My proposal is that the author creates a fund based on a potential feature he thinks is important but doesn’t have the time to invest. When the fund reaches maturity, the author hires a developer and pushes the code mainstream. The process can take even an year but who cares! Its a a community funded feature.
What bugs does this idea have?
Does “the author” refer to me? Or to anyone with an idea for Mail-in-a-Box?
Yep. Im refering to you, sorry I wasnt clear earlier.
I know this is an old thread, but I would absolutely contribute $20/month. If you look at the pricing for GSuite or Office365, that’s $6/month per user. If you have more than a handful of people in your organization then it becomes prohibitively expensive to set them all up with mailboxes.
I’d much rather give directly to open-source devs to keep this project and community going, than fork out more money to the FAANG gang. One possibility would be to set up a collective with Open Collective but I am sure there are other ways to do it.
I think the question is how would MiaB benefit?
The only thing I can think of might be to pay devs to fix something or add functionality. If you go through the issues on the project GitHub as well as PRs that need some fixing, what would help the project is some attention there. However, my gut tells me that this has been tried before with other projects and maybe there are problems I’m not aware with such a suggestion.
We could alternatively have folks putting money towards specific features (i.e. in a sponsoring act), more or less the way modoboa does. The money would then go towards the devs who actually implemented the feature.
Easier said than done, though - if two or more devs contributed to said feature, how would we determine the % split?
In other occupations they would just agree amongst themselves on how to split the booty.
No one is going to be doing any work for $20/month. Let’s be real here.
Yes you are right. No one will.
I had been using MIAB for quite a long time. I love it. It just works. I rarely debug the box at all. I’m a happy grateful person to you Josh.
So we know the 20 dollar won’t buy anything. But quite frankly I hardly think everyone here will even chip in. But if we do run a collection thread every half a year I think people here will donate something. I would. Most people here could be students and middle level enthusiasts. But lets say everyone chips in something every now and then. May be collectively, it will make around 1000-2000USD? I’m sure many use MIAB. So atleast it will pay for your coffee for few months. May be that coffee will taste better.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not going to make me work on this project more, and I’m fortunate enough to not need it. Maybe someone else. But if I have to start managing money, that’s less time for me to be doing other things.
Take our money… please.
Seriously, make it clear upfront there’s no obligation on your part, if that’s how you want to frame it. Frame it anyway you like. Perhaps something like this: “I’m not obligated to work on MIAB, but if you want to show your thanks and appreciation for the work already put in… donate here.” (PS and FYI… I cancelled my PayPal account after their recent corporate actions.)
As for where the money goes, I would hope the money goes in your pocket… you deserved it. Where else is it going to go?? I know it helped me setup my own email server and I’m certainly willing to fork over a donation for that effort, regardless of the future.
There are two sides always: in this case, the giver and the receiver. You’ve done work for MIAB and people want to show their appreciation and thanks. Be gracious.
Again, I appreciate it. But please instead donate to a more important cause (hunger, etc.), or contribute to Mail-in-a-Box another way (improve documentation, etc.).