Website and services sustainability. Would you donate?

[van p]

Moonchild, I've donated using the Donate button on your home page 2 or (I think) 3 times. I don't know if that money goes to something specific. Does that type of donation count for what you're talking about here, or are you talking about a donation specifically for what you mention in this post, in addition to whatever else we've donated?

[Octopuss]

So what is the total cost of operation of PM then? Just to keep all the tech working. Monthly or yearly.

[superA]

So what is the total cost of operation of PM then? Just to keep all the tech working. Monthly or yearly.

How do other small browsers like Vivaldi support themselves on the financial side of things? Maybe there are some lessons to be learned there.

Sorry, but I can't get your point.
What these things have to do with us, the users..

We're all using a soft and the author wants from us to donate or keep our blocker off here and in main homepage.

IF we want to support him and keep the project alive, IF we trust him, we donate OR keep the adblockers off.
IF we don't, for our personal reasons, we won't do either.

Simple as that..

[Octopuss]

You seem very confused.

[half-moon]

Another thought would be to contact organizations like Apache, the Free Software Foundation, and so on and so forth to see if they are interested in supporting the project with developer time or money.

I think Moonchild has made it clear he is anti-FSF.

[joe04]

How do other small browsers like Vivaldi support themselves on the financial side of things? Maybe there are some lessons to be learned there.

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... browser/2/

Building a new browser is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those seeking to raise tons of venture capital in hopes of a huge IPO (or these days a massively profitable sale). While there probably are venture capitalists who'd love to invest in Vivaldi, they'll never get the chance. Vivaldi isn't taking funding. Instead, initial funding has come out of von Tetzchner's pocket. Like other browsers, Vivaldi hopes to make some money from searches and some money from prominent placement in Vivaldi's Speed Dial features.

This works out to about $1/year per user of profit for Vivaldi (roughly the industry standard). So long as Vivaldi the company stays lean and can maintain a reasonable user base, it will never hurt for money and will never feel the pressure of venture-backed companies.

Keep in mind that Pale Moon is a bare-bones operation compared to Vivaldi, which had a small full-time staff from the beginning (due to "von Tetzchner's pocket" -- he was an Opera browser founder who made millions from it).

I applaud Moonchild for his entrepreneurial drive and ambition -- he's the only person* to truly fork the modern Mozilla codebase. If he can do this with a modest income from donations + adverts + DDG search engine revenue, then hats off to him.

* (The other so-called "forks" are toy rebuilds plus SeaMonkey, which passively goes along with whatever Mozilla has done in recent years.)

[joe04]

FYI for search engine revenue

When using DuckDuckGo stand-alone be sure to have the "&t=palemoon" flag in the URL so that Moonchild gets revenue credit for it. (It's standard practice; other browsers, including Firefox, also use their "&t=" flags.)

I often use this bookmark:
https://start.duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon

[dark_moon]

If i use the DuckDuckGo search engine, it add automatic the t=palemoon so no need for a special bookmark

[Moonraker]

So what is the total cost of operation of PM then? Just to keep all the tech working. Monthly or yearly.

How do other small browsers like Vivaldi support themselves on the financial side of things? Maybe there are some lessons to be learned there.

Sorry, but I can't get your point.
What these things have to do with us, the users..

We're all using a soft and the author wants from us to donate or keep our blocker off here and in main homepage.

IF we want to support him and keep the project alive, IF we trust him, we donate OR keep the adblockers off.
IF we don't, for our personal reasons, we won't do either.

Simple as that..

Well considering "users" are donating money to this project i think it has everything to do with them does it not.?
Its as simple as that!.
If people are donating money then they have every right to know how and where that money is being used.
I find your comment puzzling to say the least.

[superA]

Well considering "users" are donating money to this project i think it has everything to do with them does it not.?

I know my English is poor, but..
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/donate?s=t

If people are donating money then they have every right to know how and where that money is being used.

So, according to you, when you give a gift to a friend, you have every right to ask him what he is going to do with it, why he hasn't bought it on his own in the first place, what is his financial income, if he is married, e.t.c..

Sure.

[Quorx]

I am quite motivated to donate, because I consider PaleMoon as a valuable software.
So I'd sometimes hit the Donate-button. The only possibility for me to pay is PayPal. But there are only payments in US-$ provided. I'll have to pay conversion charge (in unknown height) for all payments in other currencies than Euro.
– Therefor I always stopped at that point, thinking: Ok, if there are only people from the $ currency zone addressed, let them do that job.

Ads are not acceptable for me for more than one reason: Even if they were absolutely safe, they are distracting and steal my time. I want t o see the pure information without any frills. (In some forums I even use adblocker to block some intrusive ugly avatar pictures...)
Also I really do not want to increase Google's wealth. They make the main profit and give just a small part to the webmaster.
And I think that the load of adds makes our lifes more expensive. Producers pay für advertisement, consumers pay for products, so we all are paying for that annoying features which claim to make the internet zero-priced. That's a wrong way.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

The only possibility for me to pay is PayPal. ... than Euro

I use the browser as well as most other "free" s/w at work and for work and therefore so far I never contributed to shareware donations (it would be rather difficult to make official payments with our administrative bureaucracy). If it is a matter of a small amount, I could consider a(n anonymous) personal payment, but then I'm in the opposite situation of the poster. I never used PayPal, and I am quite reluctant to online payments, even more to more exotic means. I do them only either using a "one shot" virtual credit card my bank generates from my Master Card (so I never give out the real card number), and that would be free for me, or via a bank transfer (which should cost me 1 euro) ... if an IBAN number were published on the web page I could consider it. So I ticked the second item of the poll, not because of lack of money but of a payment procedure I trust.

[TwoTankAmin]

I have used PayPal now for about 15 years with no issues, In the states it is the primary payment method used in the fish keeping hobby. So from that side of things, I can tell you it works fine and is safe. I even buy things on Ebay from the UK and use PayPal for that.

You can use a credit card to fund Paypal payments, even one of those temporary cards, I believe. But as far as doing CC transactions on the net, your risk is no greater than using that card in a store of over the phone. Your credit card info is stored in a CC database not matter how you ave used it to make a purchase. A lot of the hacks in which CC infor is stolen are Database hacks as opposed to other methods. This is not to say it is the only method, just the highest yielding one for hackers.

When I donate to the site using the Paypal system in place here, I never see any charges for currency conversion. But lets assume that Moonchild is paying a big 3% charge. This means he would only receive $9.70. But it is $9.70 more than could be used to support this project than was available before you sent the money.

Stop making excuse folks, the only one that is truly acceptable is from those who actually cannot afford to donate anything at all. What this means is the rest of us need to donate a it more where we can.

However, I also feel very strongly that there should be some basic form of accounting. Not because we need to hold Moonchild accountable, but so we can see how our donations are used in general. I believe if users were able to have an idea of what it actually costs to make Pale moon available to us, more folks would be motivated to contribute. However, even without this sort of information being made available to users, I would suggest you consider this every time you use the browser:


Which would you rather have each year $10 more to spend and no Pale Moon or $10 less to spend and having Pale Moon?

[Moonchild]

Moonchild, I've donated using the Donate button on your home page 2 or (I think) 3 times. I don't know if that money goes to something specific. Does that type of donation count for what you're talking about here, or are you talking about a donation specifically for what you mention in this post, in addition to whatever else we've donated?

That is the type of donation I'm talking about.

[joe04]

If i use the DuckDuckGo search engine, it add automatic the t=palemoon so no need for a special bookmark

Right, if you use the browser search bar or default start page, Pale Moon will automatically append the t=palemoon flag to the search query.

What I wrote is different. I don't use the search bar or default start page but my own bookmark. I was just saying as FYI for others who do the same as me to be sure to add the ?t=palemoon flag for revenue purposes (so DDG will credit Moonchild properly).

Thus my own bookmark:
https://start.duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon

[joe04]

Stop making excuse folks, the only one that is truly acceptable is from those who actually cannot afford to donate anything at all. What this means is the rest of us need to donate a it more where we can.

However, I also feel very strongly that there should be some basic form of accounting. Not because we need to hold Moonchild accountable, but so we can see how our donations are used in general. I believe if users were able to have an idea of what it actually costs to make Pale moon available to us, more folks would be motivated to contribute. However, even without this sort of information being made available to users, I would suggest you consider this every time you use the browser:

Which would you rather have each year $10 more to spend and no Pale Moon or $10 less to spend and having Pale Moon?

Very well said, TTA. I agree that having some sort of basic accounting report by Moonchild would likely encourage good-hearted users to contribute. (Of course there will be freeloaders and cheapskates who won't donate even a modest $10.)

That said, I did vote "No, but disabled blocker" on this particular poll for a specific pledge drive to get this site ad-free. I don't like pledge drives unless they're truly necessary.

[half-moon]

Stop making excuse folks, the only one that is truly acceptable is from those who actually cannot afford to donate anything at all. What this means is the rest of us need to donate a it more where we can.

However, I also feel very strongly that there should be some basic form of accounting. Not because we need to hold Moonchild accountable, but so we can see how our donations are used in general. I believe if users were able to have an idea of what it actually costs to make Pale moon available to us, more folks would be motivated to contribute. However, even without this sort of information being made available to users, I would suggest you consider this every time you use the browser:

Which would you rather have each year $10 more to spend and no Pale Moon or $10 less to spend and having Pale Moon?

Very well said, TTA. I agree that having some sort of basic accounting report by Moonchild would likely encourage good-hearted users to contribute. (Of course there will be freeloaders and cheapskates who won't donate even a modest $10.)

That said, I did vote "No, but disabled blocker" on this particular poll for a specific pledge drive to get this site ad-free. I don't like pledge drives unless they're truly necessary.

for some people, $10 is a lot of money.

[Cassette]

I think that the accountability excuses are a little silly. This isn't like a charity that feeds children in far away foreign countries. It's a browser project so you are the beneficiary of the effort that Moonchild and others are putting forth. All of the accountability you need is your satisfaction of the browser and related services. If you weren't satisfied, you wouldn't be using Pale Moon. A breakdown of where the money goes would account for service fees for server space, bandwidth, hardware, etc, but some things would be harder to account for like development time. Money would also go to things like toothpaste and toilet paper because this project provides income for Moonchild. It might even goes towards extravagances like ice cream and I'm personally OK with that.

[davews]

Well as the only one who has chosen the last option in the poll.... I did that because none of the questions in the poll reflect my views. I don't want ads on websites, they just consume bandwidth and I would never ever respond to an advert shown on a website or anywhere else, just like if somebody knocks on my door and tries to sell double glazing I send them away on principle. If I want double glazing or some item of computer hardware I would do my own research.

Secondly, I don't have an 'ad blocker', I use MVPS hosts. It is not straightforward to 'turn off' MVPS hosts. Popups on websites telling me to turn off my ad blocker are an annoyance for sure but I can live with them or in many cases just not visit those sites. Please do not resort to one of these popups whatever your decision.

I don't use DuckDuckGo, Google gives far better search results which is why most people use it as their preferred, or only, search engine. I don't agree with Google's tracking policies but accept them. I am puzzled why Moonchild has moved away from them for revenue raising purposes, but that is his decision.

I am not against making donations for things I find useful and will be shortly making one to Palemoon (hopefully in UK pounds...), just as I did to Opera many years ago when they were in a similar situation.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

davews.. The reason Google not being a primary source for search or ad revenue at the Pale Moon project is in explained here: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12193 and here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12749

Anyway..

You guys have to understand that beyond providing Moonchild his base income to continue to keep.. living and have this project BE his full time job the entire operational assets that provide all the sites and services have to be funded not to mention development hardware and software and the ridiculous amounts of money for HTTPS/SSL and code signing certificates.

There are several servers in operation directly funded by the Project and a few that were donated that provide:

• The various Websites
• The Add-ons Site
• Sync server
• The Code Cross Reference
• Keyserver for Sync (it has to run on a separate server)
• 3 geographically important Release Mirrors
• Email server
• 2 ftp servers (one for contribs and beta the other for storage for all the old versions and other data)
• The Developer Wiki
• This forum
• And several other small items

Of those servers that have been donated they could always be revoked at any time. In such a case new servers would need to be directly funded to replace them. Such as the Add-ons Server that also houses the Developer Wiki.. Which I have personally been funding and administrating since 2014 my self but as I am not really apart of the project anymore.. Eventually it should be transferred over.

Funding a project such as this on a shoestring budget while pulling off nothing short of impossible miracles isn't easy and it has gotten harder as of recent. While I disagreed with the blocking wall page that was temporarily up for testing and responses the new method being tested is a perfect non-blocking compromise. It asks you to whitelist the Project's sites in your adblocker or look into other ways to support the Project. I also know for a fact that funding coming from search, ads, and directly from you goes where it needs to to keep this Project going and no one is making a profit if making anything at all.

I hope the half of you that dislike me can put that aside for a few minutes and read what I have said above. For the rest of you.. I do thank you for your attention.