About the Financial Contributions levels on opencollective

MichelDwo

Hi all,

despite all the work to be done on the technical side to put the distribution afloat again, I wanted to highlight a misunderstanding that may affect more than just me.

On the financial contribution page, there are different titles and corresponding perks.

I've been told on reddit that even if not donating, anyone can contribute to the project ( which makes both the titles and the perks... untrue.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to update this ?

Why not pirates / on-boat ranks ? (From ship's boy to captain ?)
Or any funny geeky idea that does not bring misunderstanding to complicated minds like mine 😉

Also, as stated before, I understand that the perks are exclusive. I mean, you don't pay, you don't get it.

In another community I'm part of, the website displays the donation status and informs for how long the website infrastructure is paid : https://www.lairdubois.fr/financement/ (with the current status of the donations, the hosting - which is in the case of lairdubois.fr is only the hosting + the domaine name - is paid for the next 45months).

I think this would be clearer in people's mind and therefore encourage the donations.

tomscharbach

MichelDwo I read this post and the earlier Reddit post when you posted.

Without commenting on the names and corresponding benefits of the different monthly levels, I want to point out that the purpose of OpenCollective is to provide ongoing financial support for Solus. That -- not the names of the different monthly contribution options or the benefits corresponding to each -- is what is important.

You posted "How I Chose Solus" last December. I assume that you are now using Solus.

The days when distros could be funded out of thin air are long gone. If Solus is to continue to develop and remain innovative, Solus needs your financial support.

I hope that you will join the 450+ members of the Solus community who provide funding through OpenCollective, and by your example, encourage others to do so as well.

JoshStrobl

Yea the tiers / rewards are in need of some refinement but I don't think it's unrealistic to have, for example, weekly snapshots again when things aren't bork.

"Crew" being called that is actually aligned with the theme of being on a ship, the other two are less fancy titles I will admit. Maybe some new names are needed for that.

informs for how long the website infrastructure is paid

I don't think it is the best way of looking at it. The money does not go to just infrastructure. It goes to compensating people when reasonable / possible (we haven't defined anything on that yet), making sure our hardware matches our needs (from a project level like servers and also from a personal level like ensuring folks like @ZachBacon get the hardware they need or they are severely underpowered and it's harder for them to perform maintenance tasks for packages / stacks), and so forth.

Even if it was just for infra, right now we are increasing infrastructure costs (which people have mostly been shielded from due to the RIT servers not really costing anything per month and networking being handled there rather than a CDN) to improve resilience and in general make sure we are on substantially more modern hardware than even the "new" RIT servers would have been, however the problem arises that the "how much infra is paid for" needs to account for the variable costs (CDN, variable expenses from snapshotting server, etc.), variable existing pool of money as well variable as monthly "income" from contributions (one-offs and monthly tiers). Not impossible mind you, just think we are better off not framing it in that mindset.

MichelDwo

Thanks a lot for the quick reply Josh !

I was just comparing to another use case but I am aware of the lot more complexe needs and organisation here 🙂

Not detailing costs is also a totally valid choice (especially in order to avoid people focusing on costs and ignoring the level of service you get for the currently made choice).

My main request is just to make clear that if someone would like to contribute, they can, they don't need to pay up to 25bucks a month to do this 🙂

JoshStrobl

MichelDwo My main request is just to make clear that if someone would like to contribute, they can, they don't need to pay up to 25bucks a month to do this

Not sure I understand, isn't already quite clear? Could you clarify the confusion? There are tiers that you can opt into for financial contributions. It's not just 25 USD or nothing.

MichelDwo

JoshStrobl

example: I am an individual with a computer and some computer science skills, I would like to contribute to Solus.
I want to test and maintain some packages on a weekly basis for every Solus edition.

Can I do it without paying anything ? Apparently yes, but...
But then I go to the Funding page, and I see that:

if I give 1 -> 2$ per months, I support Solus development... but I cannot get access to news/updates or testing ISOs unless I pay 3 -> 9$ per months. I neither have any news about what is happening in background.
if I give 3 -> 9$ per month, I have access to news and updates AND the testing ISOs the week of the Release. But I don't have access to a weekly generated ISO.
if I give 10 -> 24$ per month, I don't have access to the weekly ISO for all editions.
if have to give at least 25$ per month in order to contribute the way I intend to.
if I pay once per year instead of monthly, I don't fit any of the categories and I am at most a "Backer", even if I donate 300$.

With the current page content, this is what I understood/interpreted.

And the suggestion of this topic is to groom all this so that people who think like me are not confused 🙂
(Moreover, it does not fit the described plan in the new voyage post 🙂 )

I hope this explains better what I meant.

stalebrim

Are one-time contributions supported?

JoshStrobl

stalebrim Yes if you go to the OC you can see the custom donation option.

JoshStrobl

MichelDwo but I cannot get access to news/updates or testing ISOs

That's not at all what it says. It says early access. "Perks: Early access to news/updates"

I neither have any news about what is happening in background.

Not accurate.

Staudey

That comment on reddit was literally the first time I've seen anybody be confused about this. Granted, currently some of the information about contributing is not readily available because our Help Center isn't online, but when you visit our website there is nothing at all that implies you need to pay to contribute. Same thing on the dev tracker. Even if the first thing you see about Solus is the OpenCollective (which I think won't apply to very many people), the phrasing seems clear enough to me to avoid such a confusion.

As Josh said there are certainly things we can improve here, but this particular issue doesn't seem pressing to me.

MichelDwo

Thank you for your answers and your time guys.
The devil hides in details and it looks like I have missed one... not hidden at all.
(And I accept being the only human that misinterpreted the relation between the donation level name and the possible involvement in the distribution's development 😳)

@tomscharbach I've been silently using Solus a bit longer, I'm not the one that created the topic you quote 😉
But indeed, I'm part of the 450+ recurring funders (incognito 🙂 )

tomscharbach

MichelDwo But indeed, I'm part of the 450+ recurring funders (incognito 🙂 )

That's great!

Staudey

MichelDwo The devil hides in details and it looks like I have missed one... not hidden at all.
(And I accept being the only human that misinterpreted the relation between the donation level name and the possible involvement in the distribution's development 😳)

Well, as said above there is of course room for improvement on the OC page, so thanks for bringing it up in any case! It will probably receive an overhaul at some point, after more pressing matters have been dealt with.