Donations welcome!

[raboof]

As many of you may remember, I took over the responsibilities for linuxmusicians.com from Nathan about half a year ago. Among other things, we moved to a more reliable hoster, as I believe was noticable.

To get things started I put in EUR 120,- in our hosting account. At EUR 10,- per month, EUR 60,- is now left.

I've brought down the monthly cost to EUR 6,- now, and would like to ask you guys for donations. Donations can be private or public. I'll post updates on the total amount of donations and their targets (for now: just paying for hosting) every now-and-then.

You can donate through paypal (paypal@bzzt.net) or bitcoin (1EhUSroL4FWaM1qypYbXfBxUQv1zGDZ16H, see QR below)

I'm also open to tasteful, on-topic banner ads on the frontpage. For example, we've had a (paid) banner from one of our active forum members' label/studio for a while - those kinds of things are fine.

Bitcoin:

[DoosC]

Um... I must that stupid...
I'm used to "donate" buttons. I don't understand how I can donate via paypal without it

[dednikko]

To donate via paypal, you'll need to be signed into your paypal account and go here:

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/send-money-online

Just put in the email adress and the amount you wish to send.

[DoosC]

Brainlessness confirmed
Thanks dednikko that was THAT easy
In my defence, I have used paypal for countless years but only using "donate" and "buy" buttons, that's the first time I went to the actual website.
Anyway let's say I was just a bit tired... it happens to the best of us

[raboof]

Thanks!! Much appreciated.

Would it be nice to add a thank-you note ('This month of LinuxMusicians hosting was brought to you by DoosC') and link to this thread to the frontpage? Could be a nice way to show our appreciation and remind others to donate as well?

[dednikko]

Thanks!! Much appreciated.

Would it be nice to add a thank-you note ('This month of LinuxMusicians hosting was brought to you by DoosC') and link to this thread to the frontpage? Could be a nice way to show our appreciation and remind others to donate as well?

I think that would be ideal I think. I hadn't heard of this donation through paypal until this thread was linked elsewhere.

[DoosC]

Thanks!! Much appreciated.
Would it be nice to add a thank-you note ('This month of LinuxMusicians hosting was brought to you by DoosC') and link to this thread to the frontpage? Could be a nice way to show our appreciation and remind others to donate as well?

You're welcome, just a drop in the ocean. I consider as important to donate to this forum as to my favourites open source projects. After all we all here make use of the forum!
You can go for the banner if you want. I don't particularly want to advertise myself as a donator but if it can help motivate other regular users then be it!

Direct "donations" (sending money through paypal to another account) do not have fees, so it's a better option when compared to donation buttons.
/me thinks I should probably setup that too for kxstudio...

As a complement yes. But please keep the "subscribe" button alive, it is important to be able to make small but regular donations to promising and deserving projects.

[raboof]

A quick update: I received several donations from the community, many thanks!

I was recently offered a paid engagement to help someone with another OSS project I'm involved in. As it was a small task and I'm not the main developer on that project, I wouldn't really feel comfortable getting paid for it - but I expressed I'd appreciate a donation to our forums. This also resulted in a nice contribution.

Those combined will cover our hosting costs until somewhere in 2016, so we're OK for the foreseeable future!

[raboof]

In the name of transparency I thought I'd give a quick update of our financials:

Costs:
* 2014/1: -E36 domain/DNS costs
* 2014/1-7: -E60 hosting costs
* 2014/12: -E36 domain/DNS costs
* 2015/12: -E36 domain/DNS costs
* 2016/11: -E13 domain transfer
* 2014/8-2017/1: -E180 hosting costs

Income
* 2014/7: +E121 various contributions

As you can see we've been running out of funds again. I'm not planning to ask for individual contributions this time: it turns out this is hard to scale, and I have no problems footing the bill myself for now.

Still, it would be good if these costs wouldn't have to come from my own pocket anymore. For this I'd like to look for a grant or corporate sponsorship: as you can see a relatively small sponsorship can go a long way here. Let me know if you're interested, or know someone who might be.

[raboof]

Did me a small donation too.

Although, small? If all users did the same you would be good for some years.

- it was cool to see a donation come in within minutes after this post - thanks so much!

Ik wist niet dat dit forum in nederlandse handen was??

Jup stiekem veel hollanders hier ook!

[raboof]

After my previous message a number of kind users donated anyway, but we ran out of hosting funds again this month.

I (happily) put in E100,- of my own money again to cover hosting for some time.

I'm not planning to ask for individual contributions this time: it turns out this is hard to scale, and I have no problems footing the bill myself for now.

Still, it would be good if these costs wouldn't have to come from my own pocket anymore. For this I'd like to look for a grant or corporate sponsorship: as you can see a relatively small sponsorship can go a long way here. Let me know if you're interested, or know someone who might be.

If you know (or are part of) an organization that might want to help out, do drop me a note. If I get around to it I'll probably reach out to some businesses to see if they'd like to sponsor. I'll give them credit in this thread but I'm not planning on providing any other perks such as advertising at this time.

[tavasti]

Did 10€ donation, hopefully many others will do also!

[Lyberta]

How many projects are hosted on this server? I pay 3Euro/month and get unlimited bandwidth.

[raboof]

How many projects are hosted on this server? I pay 3Euro/month and get unlimited bandwidth.

I'm not paying for bandwidth per se, but more for the fact that the machines are administered by the good folks at https://uberspace.de/ . We're paying E6/month for hosting, which I feel is fair and would like to keep doing.

[raboof]

There have been some extremely generous donations coming in! I'll respect peoples' privacy and not share further details, but this will last us for quite a while again - to all who donated, thank you!!

Also I reached out to the marketing departments of a couple of relevant companies to see if they'd like to sponsor. Don't worry, we'll not 'sell out' and put obnoxious banners anywhere or sharing personal information, but of course if any of them agree to sponsor we'll find a reasonable way to give them credit.