[Scummvm-devel] Donations disabled

[Max Horn]

Am 09.03.2009 um 09:58 schrieb Henry Bush:

> Hey guys,
>
> Just wanted to point out that it seems donations are disabled: is that
> deliberate?
>
> https://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=37116

Hehe, Eugene and me were about to mail on that matter..

Yeah, they are deliberately off. Because all donations used to go to  
Ender's account: Sadly, it is rather difficult to contact Ender, and  
in addition. we never got much of any accounting data from him (i.e.,  
I have no idea whether he still has any money from donations left...  
my last email on the subject went unanswered).

Therefore, I chose to disable donations for the time being. That was  
actually quite some time ago (basically when Ender stepped down from  
the lead). The main issues why we haven't setup a new Paypal account  
for donations yet:

1) We need such an account :). Well, I could use my personal one, but  
I have some mixed feelings about that. Or, we could register a new  
ScummVM paypal account -- but the one we used to have was closed by  
Paypal in 2006, to quote Ender from back then "since apparently any  
kind of cross-platform device is illegal under their AUP." Of course  
this may well have changed.

2) After we settled on which account the money needs to go to, all  
SF.net project admins need to approve it. This means Ludde, Vicent,  
Ender, Eugene and me. For the last two in that list, getting approval  
shall be easy.

BTW, I have set up an Google Docs spreadsheet with our financial data  
I have (what money we got when from whom, i.e. mostly GSoC money), as  
well as expenses: Paying for some games on ebay; paying for software  
licenses; webhosting; Joost's flight to the GSoC 2008 mentor summit.  
It does *not* contain any data about donations (because I have none)  
nor GOG.com money (Eugene has that data, and the money...). Anyway,  
while I don't want to open this to the general public, I guess I can  
give project members read access to it. I first want to update it with  
some stuff (in particular, some expenses I paid from my own pocket for  
are still missing ;-).


All in all, we sit on quite a bit of money, and don't use it ... :).  
If we participate again in GSoC this year and get another 4-6  
students, then we have even more money without ever spending it... :).

Some ideas for spending:

* Games: If somebody wants to work on a game, and needs a copy from  
ebay, then I might be able to pay for it using our money. Obviously,  
we shouldn't use this to let everybody complete his personal library.  
But when somebody wants to work on support for a new game, or fix  
bugs, then I can help with that.

* T-Shirts: We could get free T-Shirt for all active members

* Paying for hosting: We are lucky that qvist very generously provides  
us with a host. If that host shouldn't suffice, or qvist needs to kick  
us out (because we suck up to much power and bandwidth :), we can  
afford getting a good replacement. Alternatively, we could "donate" a  
bit to qvist regularly to at least somewhat compensate his expenses.

* Buy me a new car. Hah. Just kidding ;).


Cheers,
Max