When I (and the other original folks) decided to fork Emby to make Jellyfin, we had seen exactly what trajectory other projects in this space had been taking:
1. Start off small and FLOSS.
2. Attract a userbase.
3. Start requesting more and more money.
4. Start "paying full-time developers" or similar.
5. Add nagscreens, premium features, and the like to "increase revenue".
6. Go proprietary.
My extremely hardline stance on this has been to nip this trend in the bud right at steps 3 and 4 by taking ALL money out of the development process.
What we use donations for is a very small list, as mentioned on the OpenCollective page:
1. Paying for Infrastructure. Domains, VPSes, etc.
2. Each team member (contributors who are distinguished and invited into the org) gets a single one-time $300 USD credit for buying a client device to help them work on the project.
And that's it.
This is why I made this post, to basically say - in many more words - "hey, we have enough runway for a few years. Donate to individual people or other projects instead".
When I (and the other original folks) decided to fork Emby to make Jellyfin, we had seen exactly what trajectory other projects in this space had been taking:
1. Start off small and FLOSS. 2. Attract a userbase. 3. Start requesting more and more money. 4. Start "paying full-time developers" or similar. 5. Add nagscreens, premium features, and the like to "increase revenue". 6. Go proprietary.
My extremely hardline stance on this has been to nip this trend in the bud right at steps 3 and 4 by taking ALL money out of the development process.
What we use donations for is a very small list, as mentioned on the OpenCollective page:
1. Paying for Infrastructure. Domains, VPSes, etc. 2. Each team member (contributors who are distinguished and invited into the org) gets a single one-time $300 USD credit for buying a client device to help them work on the project.
And that's it.
This is why I made this post, to basically say - in many more words - "hey, we have enough runway for a few years. Donate to individual people or other projects instead".