Not Dead Yet

brent

the middleman from the beginning of time has scraped a percentage off the top for their fee. 5%-8%, I concur, is a lot. As a comparison, however, when you see how NPOs/NGOs are allowed to operate then opencollective looks downright benevolent🙂

blueicetwice

brent ", however, when you see how NPOs/NGOs are allowed to operate then opencollective looks downright benevolent"

Could you give the audience an explanation or examples, please?

blueicetwice

blueicetwice brent ", however, when you see how NPOs/NGOs are allowed to operate then opencollective looks downright benevolent"

Are you suggesting [that Open Collective]
are operating independent non-profits??
No LARGE donor in his or her right mind, is going to pay a eight percent
transfer fee!! Not a single on

WhiteWolf

For me best way to donate would be crypto. I'm doing already for other projects and XRP is awesome and so cheap.

WetGeek

WhiteWolf

My concern would be volatility ... this morning the news indicated that a Bitcoin is now worth about half what it was a few months ago. Also, "crypto" isn't legal tender anywhere. Paying the Solus bills might be a bit difficult.

Staudey

blueicetwice

See the blog post for an explanation why OpenCollective was chosen:

https://getsol.us/2021/05/29/funding-solus-development/

tl;dr:

"We have been working to find a neutral host for Solus that satisfies our requirements for a fiscal host to relieve various tax and administrative burdens, providing a pathway towards growth and longevity for the project, and enabling us to focus more on development and taking care of the needs of our users. After considering / exploring many options ranging from various third-party hosts, establishing a 501(c)3 in the United States to a kommandiittiyhtiö (limited partnership) in Finland, some form of split model, a German GmbH, etc. we have come to the conclusion that the Open Collective platform (with Open Source Collective as the fiscal host) represents the best fit for our international team and project."

blueicetwice

Staudey I am not sure what this means? "our belief that future funding should be done through a responsible fiscal and/or project host." So Open Collective is now the project operator?

Why do they not said, it is more convenient for us? They could have their own merchant account
at a cost of 3% or less and then transfer the donations to a certified non-profit. How does anyone
know whether the third party processor transfers the money or makes an error?? I do not remember
receiving a note of our donation from Solus.

It is a snap to use Western Union, to a individual. [none to businesses] It is done within 24 hours
and a receipt from the donoree to the donor, whom pays all the fees. Hence, Solus receives 100%
of all contributions.

WetGeek

blueicetwice So Open Collective is now the project operator?

So, "host" == "operator"? That's the first time I've heard that.

Staudey

blueicetwice They could have their own merchant account
at a cost of 3% or less and then transfer the donations to a certified non-profit.

I'm not sure how clean that would be for tax (and other legal) purposes, which was the main reason to choose OpenCollective.
In any case this conversation has become severely sidetracked as donations only relate tangentially to the topic of the post. You can start a new thread if you want.

brent

blueicetwice Could you give the audience an explanation or examples, please?

Nope. It should be apparent what I meant.
We're offtopic enough.

brent

blueicetwice Are you suggesting [that Open Collective] are operating independent non-profits??

Nope.

blueicetwice

The developer of "Dark Read" actually listed all of his donors on this extension!

blueicetwice

WetGeek "Credit cards charge retailers less than it would cost most of them to fund their own credit departments, for example." That is true, depending on charge volume. Most large retailers offer their own
plastic because of the large profit from balances. Most retailers also markup every item 1 to 3% to cover the
cost of plastic.

As they say, this item has free shipping, after you pay for it.

WetGeek

blueicetwice Most large retailers offer their own
plastic because of the large profit from balances

Decades ago I had store cards for Penney's, Macy's, Sears, and a couple of others. For the past 20 years or so, I've used my ViSA and AmEx cards to shop at all those stores, and they've accepted them gladly. And I've earned "rewards." I have a feeling they still support those legacy credit departments for reasons that aren't entirely financial.

However, none of this has anything to do with Solus or Open Collective.

Harvey

OpenCollective does not run the project it is exactly what it says it is, a fiscal host.

A Fiscal Host is an entity that holds the money on behalf of a Collective, and takes care of accounting, taxes, and invoices.

Which was talked about briefly in the announcement blog: https://getsol.us/2021/05/29/funding-solus-development/

This is a great benefit to the project and the fee is reasonable. If you do not like this, then you are unable to contribute to Solus.

But as has already been discussed this is off-topic.

WetGeek

Harvey But as has already been discussed this is off-topic.

Indeed, it drifted dramatically. My only remaining on-topic curiousity concerns the current relationship with Budgie. Now that it's no longer part of Solus, is it getting its funding from Open Collective as well? I'd be more comfortable if I could believe that my monthly contribution to Solus is actually going to Solus. (I use Plasma, not Budgie.)

Staudey

WetGeek Budgie has their own OpenCollective now:
https://opencollective.com/buddies-of-budgie

So rest assured that the Solus OpenCollective is really Solus-specific 😉

Brucehankins

Soooooo......getting this back on Topic, can we expect a new blog post in the near future outlining some of the goals or aspirations of Solus and the core team? I know a lot is still in flux, but you know... curiosity.

Harvey

Brucehankins
When Beatrice/Datadrake has finished defining the new roles, adding relevant permissions to peoples accounts and of course writing an announcement, there will be an update.

When this will be ready/announced? Solus does not give ETAs 😛

If you are talking about an actual roadmap. It would be my hope that we never have a public roadmap. We had one before and it resulted in people demanding updates every 5mins or making assumptions that no progress had been made on anything because things were not yet complete.

There will of course still be the goals which have been discussed ad nauseam of sol, ypkg3, software center, usysconf, ferryd etc.

DataDrake

Good lord this thread went off topic.

A few quick things before I lock this thread:

OpenCollective was chosen for the simple reason that it is the easiest way to manage the finances of Solus without having to create a business entity to act on Solus' behalf. There are a litany of legal hurdles to creating such a business entity and Solus is not in a position to do so at this time.
Solus relies on the Open-Source Collective as its Fiscal Host on OpenCollective. They are a 501(c)(3) charity which is able to handle all of our donations and expenses, without incurring taxes due to their non-profit status. Should funds be disbursed to individuals, they also handle annual tax documents.
In exchange for a 10% overhead on donations (excluding processing fees), we are able to accept donations without having to worry about collecting the appropriate taxes from contributors, handling corporate taxes for Solus, or having to accept all donations as taxable income for a single person on the team.
OpenCollective also allows us to create virtual credit cards which can be used to directly pay for services and hosting, without having to constant reimburse team members for handling this.

I want to reiterate that Solus is a volunteer project, not a business. For the current team size and financial capabilities of the project, OpenCollective provides the best option for handling our funds. Full stop.

« Previous Page