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Hi people,

a few days ago KDE e.V. announced
http://dot.kde.org/2010/06/09/announcing-kde-ev-supporting-membership
the supporting membership http://jointhegame.kde.org. I think this is a good idea (and yeah, I joined), but there are some improvements needed.

First:
100 Euros per year can be not much or very much money, depending on the country you live in. I believe the supporting membership should not only be about collecting money, but about showing the willingness to support the KDE community. For the average person living in e.g. India, Eastern Europe, Mexiko (just examples) 100 Euro mean much more money and so it may be difficult or impossible to show the support in this way. Therefor I suggest KDE e.V. to find a way to calculate a fair amount for every country. There are other international organisations like Couchsurfing.org and EYFA having systems like this in place http://eyfa.org/activities/ecorates. Or there is the not so serious Big Max index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index. I do not know of very good index for calculation, but may be someone else could provide a good source for this.

Second:
I would suggest to the word "minimum" to the conditions for the supporting membership. There might be people who could donate more, so there should be encouragement for this.

Third:
There should be a lower minimum fee for students who normally have less money.

Markum

These are good points. At the moment we are trying to keep things simple by going with the existing rules, but we'll revisit this question in the future, when we have gained some more experience, and see how we can best adapt the supporting membership to be beneficial for as many people as possible.

I think we could actually set four level membership

KDE Gold supporter = 100 euros ($123) or more
KDE Silver supporter = 50 euros ($61) or more
KDE Bronze supporter = 20 euros ($24) or more
KDE supporter = 10 euros ($12) or more

In some countries even the 10 euros can be very much money. It can be two days payment. Somewhere else it is still pretty much Like in Kenya, where it would be 999 shilling.

So there would be need to have a 5 euros ($6) supporter level as well.

But that would always be by steps. What you could be be growing among the time. Every year.

Like if you support KDE with 20 euros in January, you would gain "KDE Bronze Supporter" status. But if you give 80 euros more in may, you would gain "KDE Gold supporter" level then.

In the time, even students could give 5 euros now and then when they afford. And thinking how the school clans could make efforts for classes to support KDE, there would be easily 24-30 * 5 euros payments. What would be 120 euros together at least. And if some of them can give same payment few times a year, it comes big sums in fast rate.

Like I am a student and I could not give 100 euros ever. Because I have usually only after rent and bills about 38 euros to use for month living. That is very little after you have paid 400 euros (cheap) rent and 30 euros bills. And usually that goes for books (one book can be that 30 euros). And when you do work in weekends, you get the extra what you need for living (gas, food, books) like 50 to 90 euros depending where you work, on sundays.

Then it would be easier to pay after month about 5 to 20 euros to support KDE.

But I know there are the persons who can have partial job next to studying. When they can get about the 1500 euros per month. For them the 100 euros is not so much after two months. And like my friends who just finished scools and they get 4800 euros per month, the 100 euros is not problem at all. If they spend 600 euros to bar in one night two times amonth, the 100 euros can be used much better way then for KDE as well, especially when they all use KDE SC!