Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Some countries have strict rules about soliciting or collecting donations.

People in those countries want to avoid the small possibility of legal trouble. They want to opt out of the project.

The project refuses to allow any form of optout.

This means that some people in some countries may have to sepnd time (and this money) talking to police and explaining what's going on.

Dumping this time + cost burden on someone else when they have specifically asked to avoid it is sub-optimal.

As an example of a group who were interviewed by police and who had to explain that their local group was not soliciting donations - the US parent group was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543640

There was another problem which has since been fixed. The project would send out an email when a tip had been donated, even when it was a tiny donation and even if the receiver was not able to withdraw that tip. This is unsolicited and probably bulk and thus meets the treshold for spam.

Finally it's not really clear what happens to the money. Say you're involved in $OpenSourceProject. Now imagine I donate a few US cents (but in bitcoin) to GhotiFish for a commit you made to $OpenSourceProject and you never collect it. This thread uas clarified that the money goes into a pool for $OpenSourceProject. But what if they never collect it?

Tl:dr get permission from people before you use their name or project-names in your stuff.



Well all that is fair, the devil definitely is in the details here.

I can empathise with the reasons to avoid opt out for them, if they view themselves as a transparent third party, then their perspective would be the same as the suggestion I put forward. That people are putting their money towards a project by their own volition. From that perspective, there's nothing the owner can do about it but ask people not to do it.

My post was made before I had gone through the bulk of text in this discussion, so I can see the issue there.

I have to agree with all your points, but your conclusion and ours are different.

Despite the complications, I don't see why a projects head have an innate right to prevent donations to that projects developers. I keep seeing this sentiment come up over and over. I do disagree with that.

Thanks for summarizing the issues!




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: