Dude! That was post had some seriously negative mojo, @TheGuyWhoLovesChill. Why all the hate? From that single post it seems that you have a serious beef with… PayPal, elementary, anyone in “the 1st world” and the entire USA.
… or …
U mad bro?
Your right, your right, Lunduke, your right.
1st Rule of badvoltage = Don’t be a dick.
I signed off with dickishness, and I sincerely apologize. But what drove me to do that ?
Well I became slightly para. because this entire discussion :
(pretty much the exact accountable-type of question),
has already been approached by myself on reddit
(-excuse me if I don’t give the link; as the similarity worries me).
Basically, it was well past my bed-time, I flinched and became a dick for a day.
I have self-edited. Thank-fully. And mean no harm to the entire USA at all. and hopefully I’ve learned.
Those feelings are over now. They’ve passed. And I want to just read an honest discussion, like this is.
Sorry @bryanlunduke & Team.
it was before I saw Jono’s video.
No worries. I get the same way (as the Internet’s history shows quite well). High five, duder. 
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Sorry for late reply. No we are not a non-profit organization. We are an LLC.
Out of curiosity, has anyone requested Canonical or Redhat send out a detailed report of how their income is used?
Maybe there’s a perceived difference between selling a product or service and asking for a donation to support a product or service, but as a general rule I’m thinking that dog won’t hunt.
People ask, sometimes. Canonical don’t have to say, and generally won’t; they are a private company. Red Hat are publicly traded and thus must file public financials, which they do at Red Hat Investor Relations. I don’t understand how Open SuSE’s governance works well enough to know which legal entity would be involved here and whether they’re public or not; @bryanlunduke?
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So the question is: How much ElementaryOS users care about where money goes and will increasing the transparency of expenditures be followed by increase in donations?
I don’t know right answer to that one. For what it’s worth Martin Wimpress did a poll on Ubuntu MATE G+ community and it looks like there is a interest in transparency and donations did rise. Though, YMMV.
I mistrust polls on this front. If you ask the question, of course everyone will say yes. If I ask a hundred people if they want a free ice-cream, they’ll all go “mm yes please!”. But were they sitting around being annoyed that they didn’t have an ice cream before I asked? I doubt it.
Also, if you give a hundred people a free ice-cream, fifteen of them will bitch that they didn’t like it or that they prefer mint choc chip or that you’re oppressing the lactose-intolerant, and they’ll bitch a lot more loudly than the other 85 will say thank you.
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FWIW, I’m a current supporter of Ubuntu MATE (both through past one-off donations and an admittedly tiny but recurrent Patreon donation). I commonly donate to open-source and freedom fostering projects, from the EFF to Mozilla, typically picking a different project monthly. I say this not to brag, but rather to establish that I am a person that commonly donates.
Not to speak for Martin, but I don’t think a driving goal behind Ubuntu MATE is to make money via software sales. That does not appear to be the case with ElementaryOS. I have no issue with anyone making money off open-source, nor do I feel that there’s a need or even a right to know where the money they make is being spent.
Donations to a non-profit should be used wisely and reported openly, IMO… but this strikes me more as payment for a product, which is an entirely different beast.
I haven’t tracked this too closely, but perhaps some of the issue could be from a fledgling outfit not being clear enough from the outset. “We’re a LLC and we’re here to make a finished product… and we’d like to be paid for it.”
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Judging from the elementaryOS’s main page
Our code is available for review, scrutiny, modification, and redistribution by anyone.
I do believe that folks behind the project have their harts in the right place and I admire to those that are trying to make a new model for living out of FLOSS.
Being privileged to take Dan Ariely’s course, on behavioral economics I have (some) ideas on how people could be irrational and in regards to elementaryOS’s donate-zero-to-download I understand that you need to constantly remind people of this-system-does-not-perpetuate-on-his-own.
That being said, I do understand but do not like the current implementation. There has to be a more subtle way to achieve the goal of:
- Increase the perceived value of a project. ($25-to-download-by-default)
- Change the social norm of participation to majority adds whatever it have (code, art, money…) ($0-to-download)
I WAS!
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I don’t doubt it 
Word Up ! I may beDrunk over at UOS : but NEWSFLASH: MARK IS OPEN TO BOUNTIES.
Stay on target,
Stay on target … I’ve just realised. Anyone can do a UX course for $600.
Also, I just received an eMail from bountysource to say that
lementary OS receives $400 a month to basically code and keep the site running.
Source:
The day they get it to run with a decent software centre on a tablet is the day I’ll install it. #BuiltforTablets
The Link in the eMail was to a bountysource project called SALT. Link here.
Apparently you can get a T-shirt (upto 2XL) for $15, one off payment, if you like.