Hi,
I just found out about the existence of OSMC.
It saved me from spending $150 on a poor Android TV experience.
Thanks a ton, this is a much better experience than the alternatives.
However, I wanted to donate to people behind the project, but:
- PayPal doesn’t work properly in India. It’s not allowing me to send the money. -_-
- Crypto is a highly regulated industry here and I can’t pay in cryptocurrency either.
I would really appreciate if you introduce other modes of payment.
Wise (transferwise), Librepay, GitHub Sponsor or any other payment tool available here would allow me to sponsor the project.
Thanks,
A.
4 Likes
Thanks for your kind words.
To be honest, we get less than $20 a month on average in donations and this has been the case for years.
There is one guy that makes a regular donation of $5 a month. We never really push donations on anyone and as you’ll see, the donate button is kept subtle and small. We’ve always preferred to make it up by providing users with a physical, tangible product that they can value,
If we relied on donations, we wouldn’t be able to survive (project costs on infrastructure alone are expensive). At one point we had (numbers have declined) 1 million Raspberry Pi users. Fortunately we didn’t burden the full cost directly because we have mirrors and some hardware assistance. Obviously there is time spent on developing for Raspberry Pi however which can’t be subsidised by hardware or mirroring.
I’ll take a look in to the proposed suggestions you have as well as look at adding a Sponsoring section to GitHub. I think one just needs to add a SPONSORS.md file or something like that.
We have a Wise account. Is it as simple as providing account details in USD/EUR/GBP or is there a way to provide a link to receive money to make things a bit easier.
I think I’ve set up Sponsor @osmc on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub (but no idea if it works).
Cheers
Sam
1 Like
Hey Sam,
Thanks for the response.
I agree that providing a service or product is the only reliable way to do business in this day and age, so I really support Vero V being the front and center revenue generator.
To my knowledge, on average 1-3% of free users ever consider donating to the open-source projects they use; hence donations not generating considerable revenue for a project which I will consider niche in the days of Netflix & Disney+ is harsh but sounds about right given the broader market patterns.
That said, for a tinkerer with a lot of Raspberry Pis around the house, buying Vero V doesn’t make sense. Hence, the only way I can give back value to the project is donations every time I install OSMC on a Pi. As long as these donations don’t require more work than they’re worth – I think they’ll be very useful for a minority like me.
I think I’ve set up Sponsor @osmc on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub (but no idea if it works).
I did a test transactions on GitHub sponsors, it seems to be working! Thanks a ton.
We have a Wise account. Is it as simple as providing account details in USD/EUR/GBP or is there a way to provide a link to receive money to make things a bit easier.
You can make a “payment link” on wise that works for multiple payments.
However, it’s not very flexible because you’ll have to set an amount on that payment link and the payee cannot adjust the amount.
The simplest way I can think with wise is sharing the (@wisetag) or email ID of the receiving account so that the payee can search for the receiver’s account information on their own.
Feel free to share that and I’ll help test it too!
Best,
Ajay T.