Re: Freexian-like contribution page in dollars?
Hello Ivan,
On Sun, 27 Jul 2014, Ivan Kohler wrote:
> Regarding Freexian's contribution page at
> http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
>
> Is there any interest in a similar service, but from a US-based company,
> priced in dollars?
>
> I know that speaking with my company hat on, it would certainly be a lot
> easier to e.g. commit to a recurring contract at a fixed rate in dollars
> to a US company where I can pay by credit card or check. I also see
> that all of the existing listed sponsors are from Europe (yes, except
> Freeside).
Note that I have no problem in offering the possibility to pay in dollars,
I just can't offer any guaranty on how many hours a given amount in dollars
will represent. It will vary with the EUR-USD rate. For a yearly payment,
it's not so much of an issue as we do a single conversion and have one
year of visibility, but for more regular payments it's more likely
to cause regular changes in the number of hours sponsored.
Even if we find LTS contributors willing to be paid a fixed rate in USD,
it's almost impossible to spread the work in a fair way and have the
amount of money in each currency match exactly the split between
both kind of contributors.
So we will have to deal with currency conversion and the consequences
of their variations in value.
As for payment methods, I can easily offer paypal (rather expensive, but
supports credit cards and wire transfers) or transferwise.com (much less
expensive, wire transfer only for now, needs some paperwork:
https://transferwise.com/support/identification-business). Payment by
checks would not be possible.
If you believe that it would be worthwhile, I can certainly work towards
that.
Note that the limiting factor is mainly our ability to contact Debian
using companies and convincing them one by one. The communication campaign
over the web is not enough to trigger a concrete decision. So while
allowing payments in dollars is a good idea, it probably won't be enough
to have more US-based sponsors join the project.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
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