AppStream Donation Capabilities?

[Richard Hughes]

On 20 February 2014 14:58, Jason Harrer <jazzyeagle79 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, that's the idea. We were thinking about having a <url
type="donation">http://foo.com</url> in the AppData specification,
although Allan (cc'd) was worried about how to put this in the UI, and
how the UX should be. Flattr seems like the obvious choice, although
it's not exactly free software and there are a ton of legal issues
too.

Richard

-> rest of your email left for Allan....

> 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