[pmtarantino]

I understand your feeling, but I used it in a startup I work for. As I was responsible for this feature (customers uploading their csv files), with PP I did this task in half a day when it could have took me a few days. I told this to my boss and I asked him to donate to PP from the company, but I never heard about it again, so I will ask him again on Monday.

Thanks again for this library.

[mholt]

See, I love hearing stuff like this (but also am sad for the realities of donations from companies). Thanks for your comment!

[abeyer]

Donations from companies are notoriously difficult to push through for any but the smallest/newest companies. Any more established ones tend to have rules and bureaucracy built up around the process of making donations (if they do at all), and individuals within usually have little direct influence.

Paying license fees for tools or software, on the other hand, is commonplace enough that small amounts are usually at a manager's discretion with little oversight. Offering to send an invoice for a 'license' that doesn't offer any additional benefits may be a way to simplify things for companies like this that want to pay to support the open source they use.

[tajen]

I second this: Open-source projects, please send invoices so companies can bury them in their accounting. Even postgresql.org let me down with a "the only invoice is the CC receipt from paypal", which triggered a specific discussion with my accountant about the legal limits of donations (France).

[regularfry]

It can also be straightforward to get individuals in to give a talk, or training, on what a bit of software can do. I've done that in the past where paying directly for the software or service itself isn't an option for whatever reason.

[haser_au]

I third this.

An invoice is enormously easier than making a donation. Most large scale organisations give even low level managers an authority limit (up to X amount) where they don't need to engage the full Contracts and Procurement process. If you're asking for less than $1k per annum, you'll find a lot of large scale organisations will happily pay. And the people using these tools are often very supportive of open source, and want to support these projects. It's in their interests; you maintain the library, they get the benefits of having bugs fixed.

[skrebbel]

You also make Caddy, right? I've been impressed by how you encourage donations to that project. The copy on the caddy site is totally different from nearly all other OSS that asks for donations, very well done.

Does it work? Do Caddy donations and support contracts cover your bills?

[mholt]

Thanks. We recently moved away from a donation model, and we now seek sponsorships and subscribers: https://caddyserver.com/pricing

Donations never did cover more than a few meals per month. That was nice, but sponsorships and the Engineering Package allow me (and my business partner) to dedicate more time on development and invest back into the community for the project's growth. Still not at the break-even point yet, but I'm hoping that won't take too long...

[skrebbel]

> We recently moved away from a donation model, and we now seek sponsorships and subscribers

Ahyeah, so the sponsorship part is what I meant by "better copy for getting donations" :-) Hope you'll go break-even soon!

[protomyth]

I wonder if a site that sells minimal support for open source projects as a broker / support tracking site passing the majority of the money to the developer/ project would work for companies.