[qutebrowser] GitHub Sponsors dropping PayPal, alternative ways to donate, and the current state of things

[Florian Bruhin]

Hey!

An update about the current state of things is long overdue, and the
recent news of GitHub Sponsors stopping PayPal support finally pushed me
to write one, given that the change has a rather big impact for me:
https://github.blog/changelog/2023-01-23-github-sponsors-will-stop-supporting-paypal/

Judging from the sponsorship transactions from December, if I'm guessing
correctly based on the information I get from GitHub (transaction IDs),
40% of people donating are currently doing so via PayPal, which is
around 30% of my total donation income.

It's not the end of the world, and things will largely continue as-is
even with some people perhaps jumping ship, but I can't say I'm happy
about it.

GitHub Sponsors are my preferred way to take donations because they take
no fees and I get the money as Swiss Francs with a good conversion rate.

However, if people who are currently using GitHub Sponsors with Paypal
want to continue to donate, yet don't want to switch to credit card
payments on GitHub, here are some alternative ways to donate:

- Via Liberapay which I set up recently. You can pay via Credit Card,
  SEPA bank transfers, or Paypal. Payment fees are paid by me, but they
  are relatively low (though Paypal fees are around double of credit
  card payment fees, which is probably why GitHub discontinued that in
  the first place): https://liberapay.com/The-Compiler

- If you're in Europe, via a SEPA bank transfer without any fees at all:
  If you do this, please consider switching to a (semi-)yearly donation,
  as I need to track the individual donation transactions in my
  bookkeeping software (rather than a monthly combined payout), which is
  a lot of overhead.

- Directly via PayPal. Please only use this as a last resort, as fees
  seem to be very high (up to 40% for small donations), and I have the
  additional overhead explained above.

Details for SEPA/PayPal can be found here:
https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser#donating


With that being out of the way, just a couple of words about the current
state of things: Since August, I've been busy teaching Python to
students again, so qutebrowser development has slowed down a bit (though
not stopped at all!). A lot of work is still happening behind the scenes
to get the Qt 6 branch finished, so that we can finally merge it and get
back to working on more interesting features and such again. It's been a
long ride, but unfortunately we still have some loose ends to pick up.
It's more than it looks like though, as some of those issues are already
fixed in the qt6-v2 branch, just not merged yet.

For January, so far I've been even more busy than before, as I'm
currently grading over 100 student projects (taking me around an hour
each). The deadline for handing in the grades is in mid February, and I
still have around 60 to go, which is why things are a bit silent at the
moment. On the positive side of the same coin, after that deadline and
some well-deserved holidays, my day-job work at the university will be
done again until August 2023, and I'll focus on qutebrowser and other
open source work (plus the occasional pytest company training) in that
time!


Finally, the sponsorship rewards... I've been doing a horrible job at
keeping up with my promises on that front, I realize that.
Unfortunately, it still stands that a lot of unexpected events made this
a lot more difficult than what I originally envisioned (and pulled off
for the previous two crowdfundings): GitHub Sponsors exports not having
all the information I need, COVID making international mail difficult
even today, UK tax changes, and then the Swiss Post dropping sending of
goods via international letter entirely.

Despite all the difficulties, I still intend to getting stickers and
t-shirts out to people, because it makes me happy to see some
qutebrowser merch around the world. However, given that I've gotten
feedback from various sponsors about this not being very important or
urgent for them, it's not currently my top priority. If you feel
differently, please contact me, and I can at least send you some
stickers. For everyone else, I intend to find a solution for this as
soon as the Qt 6 stuff is taken care of (which impacts a far greater
circle of people, and is getting more and more urgent).

One possibility I'll still need to explore is to partner up with a
fulfillment partner to take care of some of those things for me. But my
experience with Spreadshirt makes me very hesitant on that, since their
shirts are nowhere near the quality of what I've shipped off myself for
the previous two crowdfundings. I'd rather have a solution which perhaps
takes a bit longer still, but ensures you're getting some quality merch
(but still at a cost which doesn't make it prohibitive for me).

Thanks everyone for your understanding and all the support - you all are
who keeps me going even after over 9 years! <3


Florian

-- 
            me at the-compiler.org | https://www.qutebrowser.org 
       https://bruhin.software/ | https://github.com/sponsors/The-Compiler/
       GPG: 916E B0C8 FD55 A072 | https://the-compiler.org/pubkey.asc
             I love long mails! | https://email.is-not-s.ms/
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