There should be an affiliate program where for every donation dollar secured, the affiliate gets a small cut (I.e. 10%).
And almost anybody should be allowed to become an affiliate (I.e. me).
No.
“We regret that we cannot provide personalized support to donors or implement specific features based on donations. In both cases, the reason is that our resources are limited.”
I only suggested this because it sounds like Qubes OS needs the help.
Also “No.” isn’t very constructive lol (also confusing since you liked my post haha).
Anyways, I mostly expected this to get rejected, I was just hoping there would be more of a discussion of the pros and cons. Or a more restrictive/useful version would be suggested (I.e. rules/hurdles for affiliates).
My first thoughts…
Cons:
- Donation amounts are topsliced, again, after bank/financial handling charges
- Cost of establishing the scheme…
- In money for legal, contractual, website and management systems costs, …
- Cost of ongoing administration, in money as above, and team time
- Risk of becoming a money laundering target…
- Other legal risks (tbd)
- …?
Pros:
- Some unknown level of increased revenue…
- …?
Must be lots more.
If one is wholeheartedly concerned about project’s lack of resources, why would one ask for 10% of its income?
Ultimately it is up to the team, and OP probably should contact them instead of asking on the forum. Unless they want an opinion instead of an answer, of course.
Maybe something like business@qubes-os.org or funding@qubes-os.org ? Also check out qubes-project mailing list
How is this a problem for Qubes OS? Correct me if I’m wrong but expecting any serious trouble if some kingpin decides to sink 90% of their revenue into a nonprofit is unreasonable, and any not-so-serious trouble is probably worth it.
Better than not having them in the first place.
Much bigger issue is the incentive to make people give money via referral link by any means necessary.
Also OSS projects don’t benefit from advertisement as much (or the same way) as commercial ones: only a fraction of users turn into revenue, while probably larger fraction turns into moderation and review burden. Just my opinion, but user quality is over user quantity.
First of all, it’s 10% of it’s increased income, meaning 90% of every new dollar is going to Qubes OS. The people who are already donating won’t bother using an affiliate link.
Second of all qubist, people aren’t purely selfish or selfless, and thinking of them as such is naive.
Yes, I want a small slice of the pie, but the vast majority of it I want to go to Qubes OS.
And thank you for otter2 for the links, I’ll use those after getting as many ideas/criticisms as possible from the forum.
And thanks to phceac for the constructive criticism, I appreciate your points but those are mostly one time or fractional costs, for potential increased donations for many years to come. You know, assuming humanity lasts that long =p.
Also, their is the overall goal of making humanity more secure by spreading Qubes OS to as many people as possible, but I appreciate this could put more burden on the team. Hopefully, the increased donations would offset that but maybe I’m being naive lol.
This is the most important one, I bet there are a ton of politicians that are trying to find a reason to shut qubesos down, this is THE PERFECT EXCUSE like
“Look y’all, not only are they helping criminals hide their network usage from our noninvasive client side ai scanning, screenshoting and rootkit-non-rootkits but they ALSO launder money, I say they are a secret drug and human trafficking empire, let’s arrest them”
Edit: also this is the first time I ever heard of an affiliated link on donations, especially in FOSS and OSS software
Edit 2:also you COULD copy paste the donation links, information etc of qubesos on your blog, video description etc, I’ll say it again, this is the first time I have EVER heard on affiliate links on DONATIONS, not PURCHASABLE GOODS but DONATIONS
Inappropriate
, this is borderline malicious
Edit 3: honestly just leave this project alone, don’t even advertise it, its better to get a advertisements from a friend not an enemy
To be honest, I was only thinking of the massive disruption and cost if local fiscal authorities decide to do a deep investigation to be sure there is no collusion.
I think 10% is too low to be very appealing to big crime, but just the slightest risk would make it not worth it for me. OTOH, maybe @Coalms has a point, that there are other hazards there…
Qubes OS needs developers, not an affiliate program where Qubes OS users are tracked from clicking a bunch of links.
Right, and money can buy more developers…or is my math wrong?
Fine, maybe letting anybody become an affiliate will cause a lot of problems so I suggest the following
-
Charge $10000+ to become an affiliate
-
Must be a big name, (I.e a big youtuber or game maker) - Someone who can clearly show where their affiliate clicks are coming from
As for the tracking issue, wouldn’t there be a way to anonymize it? I mean I am only a security enthusiast but is that not possible?
And as for politicians, they will shut qubes OS down for any reason in the coming decades. If anything the qubes team needs a big budget so they can sue the shit out of the government, ie massive legal team.
And I’m not sure why I’m being labeled an enemy, but clearly outside of the box thinking is illegal here. Yes, it’s never been done, that’s called progress and innovation.
Look you can stay inside your pure garden and ignore the raging fires outside, but eventually it will burn down everything including your garden.
Or you can expand your garden and use it to quell the fires, ie think big not small and cowardly.
I’ve said my piece, and frankly it’s not worth replying anymore because of how hostile people are being. I may make my suggestion to the team anyways but I’m pretty disillusioned.
You are asking for developers to divert resources from maintaining Qubes OS to create an affiliate program to fund their development, which is a circular dependency.
Okay, one last reply, if I ever win the lottery or become a big success, I’m going to the Qubes Team to fund this idea and the project itself. And, I still think it’d be worth it in the long run, it’s an investment/expansion tactic.
If it is worth it in the long run, become a developer and create it.
Sadly I have health problems, but thanks for all the likes.
I can’t speak for others, but I suspect a lot of folk here are thinking it’s the platforms that are the enemy, not you… the YouTubes, FB/Meta, and the like, where we see these affiliate links.
As for the thinking… maybe we’re just seeing a lot of potential unintended consequences and risks, with a very doubtful benefit to Qubes.
For example, $100000 of new donations sounds very optimistic for a single affiliate - maybe those arrangements can work with high margin product sales, but it seems doubtful for charitable donations to a small org.
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That brings the same question:
If they want to donate to the project and obviously have experience in that, why would they want to divert part their donation to a 3rd party, thus effectively reducing the amount the project receives?
FWIW, 10% of 0 is 0, but the cost of developing an affiliate program is not 0.
Second of all qubist, people aren’t purely selfish or selfless, and thinking of them as such is naive.
I am talking simple logic and arithmetic, not people.
Investment and donation are very different things. I haven’t read anywhere that the project is looking for investors.
The pool of people and organizations who want to donate to Qubes is probably limited.
This isn’t like NordVPN where you can expand the donor interest and increase donor dollars by going “Bro! It’s so qubical! Just donate bro!”
There is something slimy about affiliate links (including that they are a form of tracking) and with the ongoing enshitification of everything underway, no one who likes Qubes would want this.
The reason FrankyFlawless said “No” and that’s it is because although you may have good intentions, the sort of people who like Qubes are the sort of people less likely to like affiliate links.
This would be accounting nightmare because Qubes would have to be paying particular people and then trying to say it’s a expense for marketing and would need to keep records of each person and retain compliance information regarding each person. It would be a more complex accounting and with legal compliance exposure which means more costs.
The increase in donations minus the decrease taken by affiliates minus the increase compliance costs (including the uncertainty cost of not knowing when a large compliance cost could hit and psychological cost of this uncertainty) is unlikely to be positive unless there’s a large increase in donations. Compliance isn’t just expensive, it is psychologically incredibly annoying to deal with. Programmers want to spend time programming, they don’t want compliance to take up 20% of their brain thinking.
There’s also nothing to stop you from making TikTok videos and YouTube videos about Qubes and increasing engagement and asking people to donate both to your channel and to Qubes.
There seems to be some choice…