Should Antennapod begin accepting donations?

[keunes]

@Podder

I don’t think stickers should be the start. The start should be covering costs and creating a surplus fund that should go towards future costs. Stickers are for bigger projects like Newpipe, etc that have many, many times more users than Antennapod and no commercial alternatives.

Sure, first cover the costs. But then, as ByteHamster said, more money will most likely be available.

@Podder

I’m not sure why people think merch, stickers, etc are something to even consider at this point when the project hasn’t even opened up an Open Collective yet.

Because we’re discussing here how to use the money, before we’re starting to collect it

@Matth78

and if we want developer mercenary : bounties to implement features (which will mean features / refactoring / debugging planning)

It’s already been stated that we don’t want to pay developers - being in cash or via bounties. So this won’t be an option.

@Matth78

I think it’s not a good thing to ask for money more than necessary to cover running cost. If there is ever a donation page it should be capped to avoid having too much cash… It’s a good thing if user want to give money but it doesn’t mean it should all be accepted.

This I really don’t understand AntennaPod can perfectly stay a free, friendly to use app that is sufficient to serve general podcast needs. I don’t see the contradiction. (Of course, we wouldn’t do any fund-raising promotion to get more money - so I agree with you to some extent.)

@Matth78

I thought there were already a limited time for development and a limited number of developers.

Both to @Matth78 and @Podder: this was exactly the reason why we’re interested in collecting money. To recall ByteHamster:

@ByteHamster

I don’t think we really need money. What we need is contributors. If money can be used to get more contributors, donations would be an option.

@ByteHamster

This month, Hacktoberfest has lead to a significant spike of contributions of new features. I like that I currently only need to deal with reviews, bug fixes and releases - not new features. If giving out AntennaPod T-Shirts would keep the number of contributions that high, that would be pretty great

In other words, stickers & t-shirts/hoodies could help promote the app both to regular users and potential contributors.

@Matth78

I did in self interest because I wanted it to be better, because It feels good if we have a good community and so on.

Basically we hope to get more people like you and simply thank them, not with money but with small token (e.g. a sticker or t-shirt).

@Matth78

Is there time to manage donations, giveaway, ordering products and so on?

Sure. I could do it, you folks might possibly help out. And I don’t have a clue about coding, so there’s no risk that it’ll lead to less development time

@Matth78

If somebody does it how does he reports what the cash is used for?

Good question. When we would go for Open Collective, we can designate a few people that can claim money, and one that can approve claims. They’re claims, because the money has always first to be spend by the person (e.g. I would order & pay stickers, and then get money back via Open Collective). For every claim, an explanation needs to be added as well as an invoice. That information is public, so anyone can see what the money is spent on. The Ferdi Open Collective is a great example of this.

@Matth78

If there is a lot of money won’t it be better to create some kind of entity? And how much more time would be needed?

If there’ll be a lot of money, then yes, a (legal) entity would be better. But while I think we’d have enough money for ‘merch’ and promotion materials, I don’t think we would be collecting masses of money. So an entity (for now at least) would probably be overkill. The time needed would be limited as the Open Collective legal entity does all the tax work.

@Matth78

producing stickers, clothes or anything else doesn’t sound too good for the environment

As a (former) environmental activist, I find that a very good point But I think the ‘greater good’ can be served with more Open Source users & contributors. And at the same time we can (decide to) source good products (e.g. GOTS certified t-shirts) and offset our environmental impact.

[wojtek]

Hi!
I’m aware that there are some logistics issues regarding donations (how to split/utilise them) but as a long time user of AntennaPod I would like to donate to this project as well!

[Podder]

@ByteHamster

I am aware that pledges are not the same as donations and the numbers would likely drop (especially when switching to another platform) but it looks like users are already willing to donate around 7€ per week on liberapay 1. After paying the costs, that would leave 20€ per month for merch.

You should just start an Open Collective to take care of people who want to use 1-time donations, recurring donations and Bitcoin donations, and then wait for a surplus to show up before asking people what they want the money used for. For all we know, the project could get absolutely nothing or close to nothing for months or even a year. The sooner costs are covered, the better, and we have plenty of time to decide what happens to the potential money.

Can we just make the decision to accept donations or not and then just do it?

Let’s take this step by step.

[ByteHamster]

@Podder

The sooner costs are covered, the better

I don’t really care about covering the costs. Not even sure if the forum server should be paid by AntennaPod because I sometimes use it for my own projects, too.

@Podder

Can we just make the decision to accept donations or not and then just do it?

If we can’t come up with something that we want to do with the money, users should rather donate to the Red Cross or another NGO

[keunes]

@ByteHamster

come up with something that we want to do with the money

If you want this sorted before moving on; how can we best reach this goal? There’s been quite some discussion and ideas have been shared here in this thread already. Should we put to digital paper

• what donations can be used for, and
• who can get reimboursed, and under which circumstances?

I can set up an Etherpad for us all to work on - let me know if I should.

[ByteHamster]

I think writing a general guidelines document would be good. Doesn’t have to contain precise numbers but just as a general agreement what we want to do.

---

Some other things I noticed:

@Matth78

I would find it best to only add a Donation section in AntennaPod next to the About one so user can easily be redirected appropriately if they want to donate.

Not sure if we are allowed to do that. I think Google only permits using their own payment service.

@Podder

Post the Open Collective button everywhere we can, like F-Droid, the forum, the site, the app, etc.

We don’t depend on money, so I don’t think we should nudge users too much. Having a “donate” section on the website seems enough to me. Also, I think that the website should even state that donating your time (user support, translations, development) is much more appreciated than money.

[Podder]

@ByteHamster

Not even sure if the forum server should be paid by AntennaPod because I sometimes use it for my own projects, too.

Eh, it probably is mostly used for this forum anyway so it’s not a big deal. Whoever pays for it should get their costs covered.

@ByteHamster

If we can’t come up with something that we want to do with the money, users should rather donate to the Red Cross or another NGO

Sure, but first we need to actually begin accepting donations. We’re not expecting a windfall of cash to drop on the project. It would be nice just to see what the project gets for a year and cover the existing costs so we can get an idea of how much people are willing to support the project.

@ByteHamster

Having a “donate” section on the website seems enough to me. Also, I think that the website should even state that donating your time (user support, translations, development) is much more appreciated than money.

I don’t see it as nudging. I think every donation page should say “we prefer your time over your money!”

It makes sense to put it on the F-Droid page since there’s a section for that, and the website. That should be enough.

[keunes]

@Podder

but first we need to actually begin accepting donations.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let’s try and avoid repeating the same comments. As noted, I’m all in favour of accepting donations asap, but we also have to respect the wish of the only person who can decide on this: the person spending the money aka the main developer.

@Podder

It makes sense to put it on the F-Droid page since there’s a section for that, and the website.

Agreed.

@ByteHamster

I think writing a general guidelines document would be good. Doesn’t have to contain precise numbers but just as a general agreement what we want to do.

Great. I’ll set up a wiki post tomorrow, so that we can all contribute to getting to the next stage!

[keunes]

Allright - the wiki document is created!
@ByteHamster @Matth78 @Podder @tonytamsf @tenkara_vt and anyone else with an opinion:
please share your ideas/thoughts in this document: Donation spending guidelines

[tenkara_vt]

@ByteHamster

Not even sure if the forum server should be paid by AntennaPod because I sometimes use it for my own projects, too.

I completely understand this dilemma, because I was in a similar situation myself, with my own forum. I would suggest that if people are willing to make donations to cover the expenses, you could migrate it to a new server (it’s easy, I did it in about 30 minutes).

I was also going to say, once some guidelines are set in place, every six months or once a year (or whatever you wish) you or a team member could make a post. On it you could share (with screenshots or PDFs or whatever you wanted to do) about all donations that were received, as well as all expenses they were used for and whether any balance remains. That would show users what was going on, not mention have some transparency. Similar in a way (though without the legal requirements) to what most NGOs are required to do with their donations.

Obviously it’s not a requirement, I’m fine with you or the Team doing what’s best for you, it’s just one idea.

[tonytamsf]

@keunes Could you open the forum thread for that wiki to replies?

[keunes]

@tonytamsf

@keunes Could you open the forum thread for that wiki to replies?

I was thinking to keep the discussion centralised here, to keep the guidelines a clean ‘document’. I think you should be able to edit the wiki despite the thread being locked (but do let me know if that’s not the case).

[tonytamsf]

@keunes

. I think you should be able to edit the wiki despite the thread being locked (but do let me know if that’s not the case).

I did a minor edits and 2 additions.

“Core AntennaPod Team Members”

1. unforseen expenses
2. fixes issues that are highly voted on vs just the most issues fixed

[keunes]

@tonytamsf

unforseen expenses

I realise this is a bit contradictory to what you have shared (as we can’t foresee the unforeseen), but what kind/type of unforeseen expenses were you thinking of? E.g. would buying equipment to debug a Chromecast issue fall under this?

[tonytamsf]

I was thinking of things like legal lawsuits, hosting fees thst that spike due to high loads, or the hosting provider leaving and we need to switch.

[thevenin]

You can also donate a part of the donations you received to fyyd.de or other services/libraries you use in AntennaPod.

I’ve added hundred of podcast to Fyyd, some of them before the availablity in iTunes or Google Podcast, and then spammed “you can find it on an app that supports fyyd like AntennaPod”

[inkspreads]

Hi all!

I am a Antennapod user for a while now and after the latest redesign I felt obliged to join this wonderful community. I am happy that the community is talking about donations and what is next.

I agree a lot with starting slowly, probably with stickers etc. But I can also see @ByteHamster slightly restrained about accepting money (when it is a lot I guess?) and I hope he gets more comfortable with that soon though. Having a strong community oriented project for podcasts is important and Antennapod is in a great position to be leading the way.

@keunes - I just joined the forum an hour ago and I can still edit the donations guidelines. While I don’t expect anyone to do anything bad intentionally, I am a bit worried for the possibility of someone new to the forum removing or editing out some part of it accidentally leading to unnecessary complications. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case you haven’t noticed this. Maybe a higher privilege necessity to edit it might be better? Not sure, I am still catching up on things here.

[keunes]

@thevenin Nice idea. Same for gPodder and the Podcast Index. While discussed here, IIRC they weren’t added to the list yet - would you mind doing that?

@inkspreads Welcome to the active community! Always happy to hear the redesign efforts paid off If you want, you’re very welcome to also reply to this thread: “How are you part of the AntennaPod community?”
About the editing of the wiki post: I thought it required trust level one, but even if it doesn’t, it’s ok: the edit history is saved so if things go wrong we can roll back. And once it’s finalised it’ll move to a more static space (the website).

[ByteHamster]

@keunes

I thought it required trust level one

@inkspreads you already are trust level 1 It can be reached by:

• Entering at least 5 topics and
• Reading at least 30 posts and
• Spending a total of 10 minutes reading posts

So, congratulations - you already did that

[thevenin]

I’ve added it to the list. Thanks!