Hacker News Reader

Comment by doesnt_know | Hacker News Reader

Accepting money isn't "free", and usually incurs a non-trivial overhead. If it's someones hobby it's easier to just not accept money and focus on the actual hobby.

Some kid getting pocket money from a lemonade stand is significantly different to accepting recurring donations as an adult. Dealing with either setting up some sort of non-profit, managing tax in your country, accepting international currencies or supporting largely unethical/hostile US based financial institutions like Paypal, it can be a rabbit hole that some just can't be bothered with.

It's also just really weird to critisise people for wanting their users to donate to worthy causes.

View on HN

If someone doesn't want pay, or donations, then don't ask for it. Don't put a donate/buy button and it seems like the problem is solved. I mean this is a bit strange: it's hard enough getting people to pay for great projects when the makers clearly need it and ask for it, so I am surprised by the need to proactively reject it as if unsolicited donations are piling in their bank account.

However there is nothing weird with discussing this, and that claim is exactly the sort of "moral" short circuit that I find so unpleasant about the whole thing. I would wager few if any people have donated to a charity in lieu for this case. But by announcing such a moral standing they've undermined anyone else who does accept or even request compensation for their creations: Do they have an adequately bad situation to justify such a request?

"Accepting money isn't "free", and usually incurs a non-trivial overhead."

Is that really true? What if I say I only accept checks, or certified checks even.

Wouldn't depositing such checks be trivial?

Yes, you do have to pay taxes on the money (which in countries other than the United States can be very simple), but apart from that the other things you list such as setting up a non-profit, accepting international currencies, or dealing with corporations like Paypal are all optional.

> Wouldn't depositing such checks be trivial?

It would be, yes. But getting an appreciable number of people to donate via check instead of PayPal/Stripe would be highly nontrivial :)

> Wouldn't depositing such checks be trivial?

In Belgium? No, not really, nobody uses checks and I'm fairly certain that for most banks it will cost quite a bit of money to deposit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com