Im seeing an awful lot of plees for donations to the amarok project, a bit more than id like, and a good bit more than im seeing from other open source projects. Now the developers have done an outstanding job, and we all love you for it! And il admit, one of those amarok hoodies probably will get me more girls.
But i mean what next, a banner popping up when you open amarok saying \'donate now to make this go away\'..??

What are you crazy? There is a donate button, so what. I don\'t see where you\'re getting at with saying there is too much about donating money. And amaroK gear, most projects have there own gear, checkout cafepress sometime, you\'ll see.

Second of all, look at the hours the devs put in just so that you can use the best audio player known to the OSS world. I think these efforts deserve something don\'t you? So if a little spare change is all they ask so be it. Remeber, OSS projects are only there because people give what they can to support the community, so if the devs are lacking money, it\'s our jobs to help them out, besides not having to be stuck with the likes of XMMS and RythmBox is worth something isn\'t it?

Oh, and one last note, what have you done to support an OSS project lately?

So, have you donated?

Oh, and one last note, what have you done to support an OSS project lately?

What have i done? What have i done?! Shut your **** mouth. And thats the exact issue im talking about, the software is free, but people like you are trying to say that your not fully part of the community if you dont donate money. I wasnt getting angry, I was just a little surprised when i saw the amarok gear, i havent really seen that kind of thing before. FYO ive dontated numerous bug reports, thanks, feedback and small code patches to many different OSS Projects. So who are you to say.
Also, and i dont mean this in a bad way or anything, but theres not just a small donate button, theres also the gear page, a sticky note on the forum, and im not sure if its appeared in the irc channel topic or not so i wont comment there. Contrast this with the kde home page(the project that is basically running the whole show). all i can see there is one non-intrusive link along the right that says \'support kde\' which encourages people to contribute if they feel so inclined.
I feel i need to say that amarok is the best media player in the world and yes we would be lost without it. And im not saying that anyones doing anything wrong asking for donations. all i am saying is that we just need to be careful where we draw the line on such issues. There are people who are happy to contribute if they have some spare cash, and there are people who just want to use the software and should feel happy doing so without been asked

what have you done to support an OSS project lately..?

could we please stick to the words our mums taught us? thanks.

madpenguin8 did quite a lot of stuff for amarok, so much for that issue. we dont force anyone to donate, neither do we ask you unless you\'ve just clicked on one of the mentioned links. so we don\'t force you to even read anything about donations.

if you\'ve never seen such donate buttons and project gears: welcome to the real world. amarok is a fulltime job of at least three man atm, who are willing to invest all their time and knowledge to bring you the best media player around. and we\'re not going to make big business with amarok. (just in case you were envy of the big $$$ we make with donations)

regards,
muesli

Post edited by: muesli, at: 2005/01/19 19:42

Post edited by: muesli, at: 2005/01/20 10:19

eean:
\"So, have you donated?\"

Sure, have a look.

http://amarok.kde.org/component/option, ... Itemid,32/

If the devs ever need my money to, I\'d be happy to help out in any way possible. I also donate to KDE, which without, amarok would have never been possible.

joe:
\"And thats the exact issue im talking about, the software is free, but people like you are trying to say that your not fully part of the community if you dont donate money. \"

If you consider the bills the devs have to pay, cost of hosting the web site (until hosting was just recently donated), and hardware costs and such there is no such thing as free beer.

\"FYO ive dontated numerous bug reports, thanks, feedback and small code patches to many different OSS Projects. So who are you to say. \"

Thats nice, glad to hear it. But the fact is many people tend to complain about things in the OSS world without ever helping in any way.

\"Contrast this with the kde home page(the project that is basically running the whole show). all i can see there is one non-intrusive link along the right that says \'support kde\' which encourages people to contribute if they feel so inclined. \"

Bad example, KDE is not only supported by donations from the link on there web page. If you take a closer look, KDE is supported by many private organizations as well. I also wouldn\'t say that KDE is running the whole show, amaroK was started as a personal project by markey, we use KDE\'s cvs servers (which is great), but other than that amaroK is pretty much independent of KDE which is why it\'s in kdeextragear.

\"There are people who are happy to contribute if they have some spare cash, and there are people who just want to use the software and should feel happy doing so without been asked \"

With this idea, the OSS community would fall flat on it\'s face in no time. Now I\'m not saying everybody should donate, many people can\'t. But in order for OSS to work there needs to be a constant feed of people helping, not just taking.

I\'m not trying to down on anybody for not donating, but please don\'t complain when they ask for your support. I\'ve been with the amaroK project for quite a while now, and have spent countless nights watching the devs fix bugs, add features, and all the while provide tech support to people having trouble with amaroK. This deserves something, as muesli noted, amaroK is a full time job.

This isn\'t all about money, it\'s just the fact that I get tired of people getting up in arms about helping out a project that they have taken from. amaroK is the perfect proof of concept for an OSS project. Everybody gives as much as they can where they can and the end result can be great. But if you go through life and just take and take from the community, shame on you. OSS only works if we give, not just take.

\"what have you done to support an OSS project lately..? \"

First, start by following the link I left for eean. I maintain the Handbook for amaroK, which except for the kind words from the devs is pretty much a thankless job. I\'ve contributed to many other projects in other ways also. But this isn\'t about who has done what, it\'s about giving a little back to the cause.

Don\'t take what I wrote as a personal attack, I just have the need to make sure that people don\'t think the world is comming to an end just because the devs could use some help, remember most people have more money than code skills, and it\'s an easy way to lend a hand.

Cheers,
Mike

Post edited by: madpenguin8, at: 2005/01/20 02:08

A lot of people wrote to us asking for the chance to donate so we gave them that chance. The merchandise is a service kde-look has presented us as a result of the icon contest. The timing is just a coincidence.

Personally I don\'t need any donations, even though I spend every waking hour I have working on amaroK. We\'ll use the donations to cover expenses (serve costs, etc.) and to help us get to the kde conference once a year.

You don\'t have to donate, and I don\'t have to be civil. Joe, it frankly amazes me that people like you in the world have the nerve to actually say things. Don\'t you get smacked in the mouth everytime you open it?

Mike, use the thread view. I was responding to Joe.

\"Don\'t you get smacked in the mouth everytime you open it?\"
Heh, I often wonder about this with people online. I don\'t see people being smacked very much, so I assume folks are just jerks online.

stop feed the troll...

eean, ok, using threaded view, my mistake sorry.

ok.. looks like you set me straight. oh well, might as well go out in true troll fashion..

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

{ rest of mind-fart deleted by muesli }

ok, let us try to figure out what happened to our beloved joe:

a) his brain went into standby mode while looking for the next letter on the keyboard for too long.

b) happy 12th birthday, joe.

c) you\'re the author of another media player and couldn\'t yet figure out how to get your own paypal donation button.

...muesli