Donations

[Paul Brown]

Hello Ricardo,

> What is this asking for donations?

As a non-profit charity, we are not in the business of selling products or 
services. We give our stuff away for free. We also do not want to rely on big 
tech corporations for funding, as that would put us in their debt, a position 
we would prefer not to be in.

Therefore, funding our operations via user donations is one of the only 
resources we have. We like to think the KDE is (funded) by the people, for the 
people 🙂.

> now i'm afraid to keep using KDE,

Oh no! Why?

> i think nme like 90% of linux users don't use windows because of our wish
> to not support money grabbing/powersick apes,

We actually like apes. Not so money-grabbing/powersick techbros. Way worse 
than apes, I assure you.

> Now you're telling me you don't do this because you want to?

Oh, yes. We do it because we want to. Unfortunately doing what we want often 
costs money too. If we organise an event, say, in Germany, and we want to fly 
one of our contributors in from Vietnam, and that contributor does not have 
much money, we want to help them arrange their visa, get a ticket, have 
somewhere to sleep, and food to eat when they get here. All that costs money.

If we want to allow people from all over the world to download our software to 
enjoy (for free), we have to have space where we can set up or repositories, 
servers available 24/7, Internet connections, and so on. All That costs money.

If we want to help people discover our software and stop being exploted and 
abused by proprietary software producers, we need to take our stuff to them, to 
their congresses, we need to rent booths, pay for tickets, travel expenses and 
accommodation (again!), hire equipment to display things properly, print 
stickers... All that costs money.

If a developers need a break from their day jobs to spend time on their free 
projects because users are demanding a new feature or they need to stabilise 
the code, they (and often their faimilies) will need to eat and live during 
the months they are working on that. All that costs money.

> if so, then don't do it, get a job at Apple or Microsoft

Oh! Most our contributors have second jobs, I assure you. And thanks to that 
you are enjoying our software for free. But, as implied above, creating and 
distributing free software is much more expensive than you are imagining.

> and forget you had
> a role in helping human freedom become a reality
> you want money go do something else ,

The money ensures the survival of the project. If we did not look for funding 
one year, I can assure that the next there would be no more KDE for anybody.

We wish we did not have to pay salaries to contractors, for an office space, for 
travelling, for equipment to test our software on, or lawyers and accountants 
to keep us safe, for servers and Internet connections, et cetera, et cetera. 
We wish all these things weere given to us for free. Unfortunately that is not 
the reality we live in.

> very simple
> wanna help humanity get rid of sick apes, then i REALLY trhank you for
> youtr time and effort, and if you ever need help (free help) ill be VERY
> happy to assist in anytrhing i vcan witrh ALL my free time for you,
> I ma 3d artist and know a thing or 2 about python so just give us a shout,
> but PLEASE dont fuck up what you worked on so far, the line is VERY thin

That is a very generous offer! Please take a look at 

https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved

It will help you get an idea of how and where to start.

Have a nice winter holiday!

Kindest Regards

Paul
-- 
Promotion & Communication

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