As planned, we opted for creating a collective at opencollective.com/jmonkeyengine, since this is the most future proof and community oriented alternative out there.
OpenCollective is a trusted platform that provides funds managment and fiscal hosting for many opensource organizations like us. This comes also with full transparency for the community as it is possible to see where donations go and to whom.
OpenCollective should cover pretty much all the options, since it has one-time, monthly, yearly and custom tiers and accepts bank transfer, credit card and paypal. However I am also planning to re-enable donations through Github Sponsor that will be also connected to OpenCollective, this will require some extra integration so it will be done at a later time.
A new Backer Badge will be automatically asigned through a bot to every backer within an hour from the donation. Note: To receive the badge you must use the same email address in both your OpenCollective account and hub account, since they are matched with the given email address.
The plan for now is to create a fund for the future of the project, when we will deem that this goal is reached, we might decide to redirect some of the donations to specific engine related projects, obviosly we will do this in full transparency by consulting the community and the backers.
Last but not least I want to thank @adi.barda for the valuable contribution of 500$ worth of aws credits that will cover 1 year of hosting with the current configuration on aws ec2.
That’s all for now. A new thread will follow this one when I will have more updates to communicate.
So if someone does not want provide credit card to OpenCollective for monthly payments,
can just make one-time donations using Paypal/transfer from time to time.
Thats at least how i do.
btw. Badge will not replace “Contributor” so no worry about Badge too.(you choose what to use in settings)
I’ve been sitting on $1350 USD in royalties payments from the book we published way back in the day. The money belongs to jME and this seemed like an opportune time to finally get that transfer over and done with, so I sent the money over just now:
My sincere thanks and admiration goes out to everyone who’s making sure the wheels are still turning after all this time
That is very kind of you to say Unfortunately I do not have the bandwidth to take any active role in jME ever again. I would however be happy to connect with whoever is leading the project right now and keep an async line of communication open. I’ll find ya’ll on Discord!
I was curious why no expenses were showing up at Open Collective, so I asked around. Here’s the situation as I now understand it:
So far, $207.72 of the AWS credits contributed by @adi.barda have been spent. Those expenses don’t go through Open Collective. The credits will expire in October.
Before spending project funds on development incentives or bug bounties, there ought to be a proposal and a community discussion. That hasn’t occurred yet.
I agree. I donate because I trust you to make good decisions about the use of that money. Transparency is good, but only you guys know what is truly needed.
That’s not great news - unfortunately, to prevent creating tax issues for those routing the funds towards jME expenses, I think we’d need to pursue a 501(c) (which has all its own paperwork and oversight overheads) or some other form of corporation (though I rather doubt a corporation that’s not a non-profit would fit this community well at all). Neither of those make sense unless the flow of funds is pretty significant.
Interesting. Not a tax expert by any means, but been around the Self-employed/contract worker space most of my life. If the person handling these expenses is already in a tax situation where they are itemizing deductions, I’d expect that the entire amount that is passed on to AWS or other service providers could be written off as a business expense. Basically a net zero on the tax return. YMMV, and probably best to discuss with your tax accountant.
It says receipt reimbursements don’t count toward the $600 limit, so the AWS receipts can be reimbursed without having to worry about taxes. It seems like the only time they will email for tax info is if someone invoices $600 in one year (money paid out to an individual as income, which it looks like the jmonkey opencollective hasn’t done yet?)
sorry for ninja post hehe
Unfortunately I do not have the bandwidth to take any active role in jME ever again. I would however be happy to connect with whoever is leading the project right now and keep an async line of communication open. I’ll find ya’ll on Discord!
also we all should donate more anyway.