AppStream Donation Capabilities?

[Jason Harrer]

Hello, everyone -

I heard about AppStream just last week, which is unfortunate, as I had
started a project last year (and I'm not the greatest of programmers, so it
isn't very far along yet and has been restarted several times) that I think
would have better coincided with what you're doing.  At this point, I
wanted to pitch the idea to you to see if you'd be willing to have it as
part of your project.  If so, I plan on abandoning my current project.

The general premise is this:  There should be a way for users to donate to
a project/developer when they go to install the software.

We are a community of users and developers.  A lot of the developers are
open to donations and post information on their respective websites on the
various options on how to donate when folks go to their websites to
download the source code/binaries for the program.  With the inception of
repositories and PPAs, however, the websites for the individual projects
are, for the most part, generally bypassed by the end-user, and so they
generally do not see anything about donations.

My vision at this point is to have icons along with the rest of the
application/project information that allows users to donate.  If the
project/develoepr has a Flattr account, there'd be a Flattr icon for a user
to donate via Flattr.  If the project/developer accepts BitCoins, there'd
be a BitCoins icon for a user to donate via BitCoin.  For those donation
websites that have APIs to allow donations without using the web pages
directly, the API would be connected to the icons.  For those that do not
have an API, the icon would be a hyperlink to the projects page on the
donation website.  It would be nice for whatever solution is handled to be
easily extendable to additional donation sites (I know there is a group
working on a new donation site at http://www.snowdrift.coop that is still
in the works, as an example).

I know adding such features into a software center of any type won't mean
that the user will necessarily donate, but it at least gives them the
option to.  Nothing would be forced.  It would merely be a way to provide
visibility for the capability of donating in an easy-to-use centered
fashion.

Please let me know if you think that this is something that you would be
willing to have included in AppStream.  If so, and you'd like me to develop
it, let me know.  Again, I'm not the greatest programmer, and it'll
probably take me a long time to do it, but I turly believe this is a need
for the community of developers that make Linux what it is, so I'm willing
to learn what I have to learn and do what I have to do in order to make
such a capability happen, be it through AppStream or some other avenue.

Thank you for your time.  Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

- Jason Harrer
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