[Other] Recommendation for project funding

[Coo-ops]

Hey folks,

I'm totally invested in Paperless and would love to see a mechanism of removing financial barriers for individuals who perhaps want to contribute but can't afford to.

Would the project consider adopting something like https://opencollective.com/ as a way for people to pledge to the project. Or would anyone have a better suggestion.

I'd also love to shout the occasional beer for contributors too on a monthly or yearly basis to incentivize the development to continue.

[qcasey]

That's very generous!

I also love to sponsor useful projects. Some relevant points to add:

1. Since buying a domain, @shamoon did put forward money for the org and that's technically an operating cost (albeit small).
2. Another option is BountySource, which can target $ directly at issues or feature requests and the contributors that address them. Their reputation is somewhat muddied last I checked, but the concept is sound.
3. Another option is GitHub sponsors to individual contributors you'd like to donate to.

If any organization-wide money did surface I'd prefer if it went to reimbursements first (domains, etc). I'd personally feel uncomfortable taking money outright for this project. Others here contribute far more, and have before I showed up.

Also beyond covering costs, there's a pretty big administrative overhead with donations. Even with only a few $, if it's being split, some people will be upset.

I'm very interested to hear ideas though. Thanks for your enthusiasm for the project!

[shamoon]

This is definitely a sticky issue, it came up before, see jonaswinkler/paperless-ng#167 and it has come up on just about every OSS project Ive been involved with. I personally am not very comfortable accepting money and I think it has the potential (likelihood) to get very messy, very fast. Both from the contributors side (how to we divvy things up, etc) and from the user side (are they suddenly "customers"?).

I would be happy to allow donations to a charity etc on behalf of the project, like DQ did.

Just one person's opinion.

[Coo-ops]

All respect to the project team and Jonas, but I want to see this project thrive and not become hopelessly abandoned with a maintainer disappearing without a trace for 12+ months.

Its not like there weren't pull requests in *-ng and people willing to contribute - we just need someone actually dedicated to approving requests and managing the team.

If that means having to support someone (with donations) to work on it at least part time I'd be 100% on board with that.

How exactly it is going to work though, I'll leave that up to you and the team.

[fourstepper]

I am also on the team of wanting to pay money for stuff that I use in hopes not to see the project die. Stuff costs money, as does time, and the time I would spend on finding a comparable solution if this project died would probably cost way more than $5 to $10 a month.

Users are not customers, that's why it's called donations, not a payment. But even if the donations were split somehow between the core contributors - expenses, it feels better than nothing (a better system could exist, this is just a one second idea)

Thanks for considering this :)

[thibaultmol]

Same here, I wouldn't mind paying even if it's for support for example. Like many other projects. Fully open source but if you want paid support, you can pay.

(also best not to recommend Bountysource... they're pretty sketchy the last couple years https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/5938.html )

[sukisoft]

Its not like there weren't pull requests in *-ng and people willing to contribute - we just need someone actually dedicated to approving requests and managing the team.

Thats a thing, i thought about quite a while ago. I am loving this project and make exessive use of it. I'd love to see this thing grow - and not be left on its own. What i think is missing, is somewhat a Product Owner (or a group of people) who decides, which of the many Discussions and Feature-Requests should be created. Maybe it turns out, this project already is kind of "Feature Complete" - since all bigger Features would turn it into a complete other Software. (like those CRM-like Features Requests or the User-Permission ones)

If that means having to support someone (with donations) to work on it at least part time I'd be 100% on board with that.

Signed.

I am also on the team of wanting to pay money for stuff that I use in hopes not to see the project die. Stuff costs money, as does time, and the time I would spend on finding a comparable solution if this project died would probably cost way more than $5 to $10 a month.

Signed as well.

[smichaelsen]

Late to the party, but I'm just building up an archive based on paperless-ngx that is meant to last 10+ years. If I can make a financial contribution, to increase the likelihood that the project will still exist then, I'd be more than happy to do that.

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