Donations

[Fred]

Using Ubuntu Software Center you can purchase proprietary software, but there is no functionality to donate money to free, open source software.

I would like functionality to donate money to free, open source software through Ubuntu Software Center.

[Jarrod Henry (jarrodhenry-gmail)]

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. Since what you submitted is not really a bug, or a problem, but rather an idea to improve Ubuntu, you are invited to post your idea in Ubuntu Brainstorm at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ where it can be discussed, voted on by the community, and reviewed by developers. Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion!

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

I'd like the status to be set to Wishlist.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Jarrod, donations are already in Brainstorm: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/9016
And the beginnings of a specification: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareDonations

Fred, the main difficulty that we've been stuck on is policy for who should receive the donations for a project. Should we require projects to set up a legal entity of some sort? Should we just give all money to the submitter and let them share it amongst contributors? What happens if someone submits a copy of an application that differs only in name from an existing application, and starts accepting donations on it? What happens if it differs by 1%? Or by 3%? Or by 10%?

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

You do have a point.
So you could make initially just require a non-profit legal entity.
Then it wouldn't satisfy everyone, but at least be useful.

So I can donate to GNOME, KDE and Mozilla.

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

I'm impressed this hasn't been implemented yet.

The Software Centre should definitely give this option to the user.

An easy way to do it would be to make it possible, in the process of adding a software in USC, to add a link to a donation page. If this option is filled, then a button appears in the description of the app, and clicking on it just opens a browser displaying the donation page of the project/foundation/organisation/developer.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Stéphane, there's nothing to stop a developer from putting a link like that in their application's description right now. That doesn't fix this bug because it requires each developer to set up their own donations service; and it requires users to learn, trust, and enter their details for, multiple donations services.