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You're stating, essentially, that anyone who wants to publish FOSS software with a donation link should be forced to go through some convoluted procedure and register as a charitable organization. (where? in the US? in their specific region? does it matter? how much time will it take for them to figure out? is this even possible in all regions? does this require ongoing effort e.g. accounting, document submission, general bureaucracy?)

This is simply not how the real world works. If it ever does, you've created a dystopia.

Google are being bureaucratic twats here. There's plainly and obviously a difference between WireGuard and the 10,000,000th iteration of some bullshit F2P casual game, and there's obviously a distinction between donations and purchases - the intent of the user, for one.

That they put prole-tier support on the case and 'accidentally or otherwise' sling the banhammer at pivotal pieces of software is their problem to figure out.

True, I'll agree that going non-profit is a nightmare.

But again, what is FOSS with a donation link vs free-to-use software with pay-as-much-as-you-want.

One sounds like a non-profit while the other sounds like a for-profit.

Perhaps if you can directly show your software is FOSS via licensing etc that there should be a special exemption?

Seems like there needs to be a sole-proprietier non-profit... but man that seems like rife for abuse.

Sure, there is very little distinction. I'd argue that both are donations. Pay-as-much-as-you-want (if $0 is an allowable price) represents a donation with a slightly different funnel.

The for-profit vs non-profit distinction is immaterial to me; the distinction is between actually paying for products (e.g. buying an ingame item or support or a subscription or whatever; some sort of 'contractual' thing), and literally giving money away with no strings attached.

Google's particular funding model for their App Store is a different kettle of fish entirely - they can decide that apps beginning with the letter A pay a 90% fee and that's just how it works.

To purely play devil's advocate, there are a number of 'home restaurants' (operate out of my home) that are pay-what-you-want and operate quite profitably. I believe 100% they should be taxed (i'm totally conflating taxes and apple/google profit share but it's a form of a network fee?).

Through this discussion I do wish there was an exception for FOSS for individuals at a legal level.

I can 100% agree though that the fees which google/apple charge are extortionist.

How taxation is collected is a completely different issue and has a trillion nuances.

this exactly is how the world works. if you receive money, wherever it comes from, in more and more countries it must be taxed as income. if you want it tax free, you must prove that you are eligible to do so.

the question is whether or not it is right for google to act as a gatekeeper here. i think not.

Gifts are trivially tax free in the UK excepting cases of Inheritance Tax whereby someone pretends to 'gift' an inheritance before dying instead of having it taxed normally.

It would surprise me if that were not true globally.

A donation is definitionally a gift. If it's not due to some legal wankery, rename it, doesn't matter.

it's not.

as far as i know, at least in the US only donations to registered non-profits are tax free. any other donation is taxed like any other income.

if it's a one-off, sure, calling that a donation may be trivial, but if you start getting donations on a regular basis, you have to prove that they are in fact donations, and not hidden payments for a service. if it weren't so, we would not need to have entities register as non-profit.

You can't just freely receive donations and not pay any tax. There is definitely an argument that you are donating to ensure future development of the software, essentially quid pro quo.

Edit: Wireguard literally make that case while soliciting donations

>We're extremely grateful for all donations, which enable us to continue developing WireGuard as free open source software. We are happy to receive donations from interested companies who would like to see WireGuard development continue and thrive, as well as individual donations from folks who would simply like to say "thanks".

Well, if I'm not on antidepressants yet, I will be soon.

Not for profit status is susceptible to abuse so I'm glad the process is strict. But you're proposing that app developers should be able to self-describe as charitable in order to dodge fees? And how well do you think that would work exactly?

Having a donation link in your app that is completely voluntary and confers no benefit other than fuzzy warms (and yes, indirectly, if enough donations are acquired, continued development) should not carry fees.

I don't believe that the app stores would cease to function or even suffer appreciably decreased profit by doing so. In-app purchases result in new features or items or something being unlocked.

Donations do not. They are gifts.

I disagree with the concept of fees for the Google and Apple play stores because they are monopolies within the platform entirely, but if they must exist, attempting to charge fees for donations is just bad form.

There is no need for a philosophical debate, because Google Play In-app Billing simply doesn't support donations.

https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/

I have done open source development for well over a decade, thousands of hours, tens of thousands of lines of code, and I can tell you:

Considering the amount of donations I got, it would have been much more profitable to clean toilets, to just go begging in the streets, collect bottles from public trash cans for the deposit, or just sell my body.

In fact let's have a look how much I got during the past 12 months for 250 hours of work:

$0.

Had I been working as someone who climbs onto roofs and cleans the dirt off of them I would have gotten this much for that in this country:

$16500

And then, as a cherry on top, you now demand that a giant monopoly, which is trying very hard to soak up as much of people's data as possible - without paying them for it! - should get a cut from donations for my work which I genereally give away for free.

Now I can understand that you did not know this when you wrote down your opinion!

But given that you do now, do you understand how insulting this feels? :) It actually itched me so much that I created this account solely for the purpose of telling you, and I would be very happy if you could change your mind :)

Thanks for making an account to comment. I went to sleep (live in Singapore).

100% open source does not pay money for the vast majority of people, and thank you for your contributions to the community.

I also hope you understand that I get that FOSS donations won't make a liveable wage. At the same time, we want to be thanked for our contributions to the community - I get that.

My point is - by throwing up a donation link, we're circumventing their process. What's the difference between throwing up a donation link vs a Apple/Android pay link in app? It's the network fees. We're trying to avoid those because we feel they're unfair (which they 100% are).

If the Apple/Android pay fee was the same as the donation link, the majority of the time, we be using Apple/Android pay. Why not?

We want the benefits of the Apple/Android distribution network without paying their fees because "We belong to FOSS".

It is useless to discuss market or even fairness as long Google and Apple are (de-facto) monopolies for the respective phone owner.

It's a major failure of governments to allow monopolies.

100% agree that what Apple and Google take for their network is extortion pricing.

>Charging vs Donations, I don't see what the difference is.

Charging: Person paying gets something in return Donating: Person paying does not get something in return

>The primary difference is the open ended pricing model.

What does "an open ended pricing model" mean?

By "open ended pricing" i mean - pay what you want. This is very common in food industry, "house restaurants" if you will. I get a meal and very well can pay $0 or $1000.

Agreed, donations do not necessarily mean I receive anything in return and I purely want to support like clean water efforts in 3rd world countries, but policing the difference seems unrealistic.

But that seems like it should be a special non-profit category. I think I'm beginning to convert to a 'middle' ground that there should be a sole proprietor non-profit, but that seems insanely hard to police.

In most legislations they are taxed (and deducted) very differently and must respect specific characteristics (eg donators must not receive nothing of value in exchange, must not be asked to donate a minimum amount or a repeated amount, etc)

While it doesn’t touch on donations, for the “value prop” angle I strongly suggest developers read and internalize Apple’s point of view as expressed in “iOS App Store Principles and Practices”:

https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/

Also on the value prop front, worth noting a variety of digital app stores at scale have found operation costs 12% to 18% fees before the hands on “40% rejection” level of oversight that Apple is providing to end users.