kyrios At the moment it is not, expenses are at the charge of the core team.

I don't know... I think you guys should really find a way to get some donations. I'm sure a lot of people would be happy if they could support you that way and it would certainly not hurt the project, even though everyone always says Solus is fine and theres no need to worry that it's going away.

To be honest, I'm a little bit afraid that the future of the project might not be as rosy as everyone is saying and I would hate it if I had to go back to Ubuntu, Debian or something like that. I love Solus and i would like to continue to use it for years to come. But thats just my opinion and i don't want to spark a discussion on that topic, therefore please ignore my comment, was just thinking out loud 🙂

      rare Don't you think that if money was an issue for Solus to keep on rolling, the core team would have already put things in place to get some incomes instead of waiting that someone suggest them to do so ? 😉

      It will come one day, but it is currently not a priority, when the time will come, be sure Solus will communicate about it. For more info about this topic, you can read this blog post.

          rare I've seen no evidence of the future not being rosy, but if I had a hunch I'd say you have 2 things going on: 1)Obviously a selfless global team working working for free, often unappreciated by us, making this a successful operating system and 2) there probably is a mystery patron floating the bills right now because no one seems to sweat the bills. There has to be monthly/yearly costs to digitally run this operation.

          I share your fear. I don't like any other 'flavours' and I'd probably have to take a time machine back to W7.
          My Solus dream? NPO, then merchandising. You do not know how bad I want a legit Solus t-shirt.🙂

              darkshark I think this too, it should reopen the patreon account with paypal account of core team members!

                kyrios As much as I revere selflessness and passion, I think it's very important to show the community that concrete measures are being taken in order to support Solus in the long run. As Solus is already a good reason to stop distro-hopping, it would be sad if users left because of the obscurity around its financial health.

                    So, if y'all read that Blog post that @kyrios kindly linked, you would already know what I'm about to say. Given the volume of donations we were previously accepting (2500-3000 USD per month) none of the current Core Team members are prepared to take on the tax burden of accepting those donations. Ikey had been doing so in the past and this made sense given his financial situation while at Intel or working on the project full-time. If I were to personally accept donations on behalf of the project, I would have to set aside 20% to pay for taxes at the end of the year or even more if I am forced to claim it as self-employment / contract income. Until such a time as Solus has a relationship with a non-profit organization with charity status that can accept those donations as tax-exempt, the Core Team have decided that we do not want to accept these donations.

                    Now, for those concerned about the financial viability of the project in the near-term, I would say to you that these concerns are unwarranted. The "mysterious patron" of day-to-day operational expenses is the Core Team. We are more than able to cover the current operating expenses and have been diligent in keeping them low.

                    For those of you concerned with the long-term viability of the project, we have already expressed a desire to become affiliated with a non-profit in order to allow us to accept donations for operating expenses, hardware upgrades, and eventually part-time and full-time developers. Given how long this relationship has the potential to last, we see no need at present to rush and join an organization. And no, Solus has no plans to become a stand-alone non-profit any time in the foreseeable future.

                      Nycticorax Well didn't Solus welcome new global maintainers last year, aren't the tooling being reworked to make Solus ready for the future, weren't these new community forums deployed, what about the new weblate instance that was setup to allow community to actively participate in the translations of Budgie & Brisk Menu ?
                      Weren't Solus 4 and Budgie 10.5 released this year ?

                      Aren't these concrete things ?
                      And about obscurity how could it be more transparent than this ?

                      The moment Solus will get ready to accept donation again or to sell goodies, a nice blog post and messages on the social medias will be posted, don't worry. But you have to understand that core team want to get a structure in place that guarantee same situation as before can't occur anymore. This take time and is not a priority.

                      Perhaps it's hard to accept for some that not everything revolve around money... Those could donate to some other positive projects that really need money until Solus is ready for it. People who are really willing to help could donate some time (i.e.: to help with packaging & testing, reporting bugs, helping other users, etc.) . Of course it isn't as easy as giving some coins and it requires some personal involvement, and there is no fancy tshirt or mug with a Solus logo in return to show off but this is currently what Solus needs most.

                          kyrios Well said. I think we (speaking collectively) feel bad that the people putting time/effort in are also having to put money into Solus as well.

                          DataDrake It's daunting to think about 20% taxation on donations and good to know.

                                Well, i know it isn't the best place to do so, but I really want to thank everyone involved in this project, from the bottom of my heart. All the care, passion and love put into this is really something awesome to see. I've been distro hoping, and man, when i've got my hands on Solus it was something else entirely. God Bless you all.

                                Dear Team:
                                thanks for footing the bills at your own expense. Look forward to a legal apparatus that eventually allows us to help you. No one needs the Tax Burden

                                Wasn't there a foundation somewhere that was specifically set up to handle the financial and legal sides of things for any open source projects that needed it?
                                EDIT2: BTW where are the devs located in the world?

                                  xahodo

                                  1. See the blog post I already linked twice in this thread
                                  2. See the team link on the official site

                                    It's also irrelevant where we are when Patreon is involved. They are charged VAT on your donations based on your location, not theirs or ours.