First off:
www.moneybookers.com is a good replacement for paypal.
Second, technically under new US DRM regulations, ScummVM may be seen as illegal (circumventing copy protection for any reason).
Mark
We can no longer accept Paypal Donations
Moderator: ScummVM Team
Re: Donations
how new?markbond1007 wrote:new US DRM regulations
and scummvm isn't US-based
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Adventureguy
- Posts: 162
- Joined: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:09 pm
- Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
While surfing the web I found this site: http://paypalsucks.com 
Maybe you could mention your trouble with Paypal there, too.
Maybe you could mention your trouble with Paypal there, too.
Idea: creating a Non-profit Foundation in the Haiku OS style. This could help to solving financial problems, probably the donations issue, saving taxes and improving other stuff like a even better visibility of the project. Think of this future foundation as one that "supports the development and success of the ScummVM project and the support of the adventure game genre" 
http://haiku-os.org
http://haiku-os.org
http://haiku-os.org/node/19Haiku Inc. is the non-profit organization supporting the development and success of the Haiku operating system.
Look, folks, it's not as if we had a serious money problem. Most of our devs, including some of the most active ones, have never ever seen even a *single cent* of that donation money. The presence or absence of donations is *not* influencing this project very much at this time.
The donation money is (or was) used to sponsor the server hosting wiki & forum; but should that no longer be possible (lack of money), it should be possible to find alternative means for hosting those, maybe even a sponsor hosting those servers for us. Heck, in the worst case I could afford to pay for them myself.
The donations are a nice way to show your appreciation to the team. And in some cases, might even help the development of certain features. But overall, we are volunteers. Personally I am very reluctant to accept direct donations, because I am not willing to "gurantee" to anybody I'll work on something or not -- whether I do that depends on my spare time and my mood. Of course other devs may think different -- but you can always donate to individuals, too (PayPal can't ban that, after all).
Now, suggesting various obscure (or sometimes not so obscure) money transfer sites is not helpful. First off, at this time SourceForge.net only allows us to take donations through their donation system, which in turn is tied to PayPal. Bummer! So we can either
1) leave SF.net and use another donation service
2) stay at SF.net and convince them to allow us something else
3) stay at SF.net and get along w/o donations
Option 1 really isn't one at this time, since we'd loose far more than we'd gain. Again, I'd rather pay the forum server out of my own pocket than to go through all that hassle.
Option 2 is what we currently try to do, in the meantime we are stuck with 3.
That said, as a reminder, it's still possible to donate to individuals.
Besides that, an alternative to PayPal would have to operate internationally (given that the team is spread over the world, with the leads sitting in Australie, Germany and Ukraine). And it won't help if they decide to ban us after a couple weeks, too, so check their terms of service carefully.
Forming a non-profit is out of the question, too. It's far too much work compared for the gain. Plus, it wouldn't solve the problem we have (not being able to receive money); instead it would solve a problem we don't have (maintaining that money), plus make it slightly more attractive to donate (tax deductible etc.), which is kinda pointless, as long as one can't donate at all... And of course the internationality problem crops up again (non-profit where? Germany? Australie? Ukraine? US?...)
Finally, while I am not happy at all with PayPal and their decision, we are *not* going to launch (or participate in) a crusade against PayPal. There is nothing to be gained for us in it.
So, while, I know you guys are only trying to be helpful -- you really aren't.
The donation money is (or was) used to sponsor the server hosting wiki & forum; but should that no longer be possible (lack of money), it should be possible to find alternative means for hosting those, maybe even a sponsor hosting those servers for us. Heck, in the worst case I could afford to pay for them myself.
The donations are a nice way to show your appreciation to the team. And in some cases, might even help the development of certain features. But overall, we are volunteers. Personally I am very reluctant to accept direct donations, because I am not willing to "gurantee" to anybody I'll work on something or not -- whether I do that depends on my spare time and my mood. Of course other devs may think different -- but you can always donate to individuals, too (PayPal can't ban that, after all).
Now, suggesting various obscure (or sometimes not so obscure) money transfer sites is not helpful. First off, at this time SourceForge.net only allows us to take donations through their donation system, which in turn is tied to PayPal. Bummer! So we can either
1) leave SF.net and use another donation service
2) stay at SF.net and convince them to allow us something else
3) stay at SF.net and get along w/o donations
Option 1 really isn't one at this time, since we'd loose far more than we'd gain. Again, I'd rather pay the forum server out of my own pocket than to go through all that hassle.
Option 2 is what we currently try to do, in the meantime we are stuck with 3.
That said, as a reminder, it's still possible to donate to individuals.
Besides that, an alternative to PayPal would have to operate internationally (given that the team is spread over the world, with the leads sitting in Australie, Germany and Ukraine). And it won't help if they decide to ban us after a couple weeks, too, so check their terms of service carefully.
Forming a non-profit is out of the question, too. It's far too much work compared for the gain. Plus, it wouldn't solve the problem we have (not being able to receive money); instead it would solve a problem we don't have (maintaining that money), plus make it slightly more attractive to donate (tax deductible etc.), which is kinda pointless, as long as one can't donate at all... And of course the internationality problem crops up again (non-profit where? Germany? Australie? Ukraine? US?...)
Finally, while I am not happy at all with PayPal and their decision, we are *not* going to launch (or participate in) a crusade against PayPal. There is nothing to be gained for us in it.
So, while, I know you guys are only trying to be helpful -- you really aren't
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JohnnyWalker2001
- Posts: 405
- Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:27 pm
- Location: London, UK
*sob*
Well since I can only see that your interpreter (NOT emulator) allows some games to be played on different platforms, why not have a separate site for a "ScummVM+" where such features are included, and ScummVMs for different platforms are kept.
Keep this site for a PC only, PC games ScummVM and they can't complain, can they?
Keep this site for a PC only, PC games ScummVM and they can't complain, can they?
I think he's suggesting creating an 'official' build of ScummVM which would only run PC games on the PC platform, thereby picking around PayPal's wording, with the multiplatform functionally annexed into a seperate 'sideproject' called ScummVM+.
All of which sounds like it would take a lot of time which could otherwise be used for core ScummVM development, and PayPal probably wouldn't buy it anyway.
Given as people clearly want to contribute, perhaps it would be good to emphasise the best ways they can contribute to the project? I'd imagine this would be playing the games, helping with pre-release testing, filing good bug reports and helping out the project with any expertise of their own.
Developer software wish-lists would be natty too, as covered earlier in this thread. Some games are a breeze to get hold if in some countries, but not in others.
All of which sounds like it would take a lot of time which could otherwise be used for core ScummVM development, and PayPal probably wouldn't buy it anyway.
Given as people clearly want to contribute, perhaps it would be good to emphasise the best ways they can contribute to the project? I'd imagine this would be playing the games, helping with pre-release testing, filing good bug reports and helping out the project with any expertise of their own.
Developer software wish-lists would be natty too, as covered earlier in this thread. Some games are a breeze to get hold if in some countries, but not in others.
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Adventureguy
- Posts: 162
- Joined: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:09 pm
- Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
I may be wrong, can you STILL donate to ScummVM via Paypal? At the sourceforge page of the project you can click on the button "donate to project". It leads to this page.
Or is that just something you didn't remove when Paypal contacted you? If so, if I would donate you money via those Paypal donation buttons, would it go to the project's Paypal account or would it go nowhere?
I'm just asking because that's a bit strange with all those paypal issues.
Or is that just something you didn't remove when Paypal contacted you? If so, if I would donate you money via those Paypal donation buttons, would it go to the project's Paypal account or would it go nowhere?
I'm just asking because that's a bit strange with all those paypal issues.
Thats correct, the SF.net links DO still work. However, thats only because we are awaiting the result of a dialog between SourceForge and Paypal... Paypal only asked us to remove donation links from our site, which we have complied with. Its a bit of a technicality... they probably shouldn't be enabled, and will most likely be turned off when SF.net get back to us :)Adventureguy wrote: Or is that just something you didn't remove when Paypal contacted you? If so, if I would donate you money via those Paypal donation buttons, would it go to the project's Paypal account or would it go nowhere?
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curtesgsmith
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Wed Oct 18, 2006 8:00 pm
I really enjoy ScummVM, up until i discovered it i had (and still do) a 486DX66/2 with a 512kb (ooo) graphics card to play all my favourite games such as Monkey Island and DOTT - I'm really disappointed that the PayPal twats have thought "best avoid a lawsuit from the companies that actually support ScummVM and take it off our books" but hey - they'd have probably only have screwed u guys up some other way anyway! Best of luck to you in finding a new way of receiving donations, i'll b sure to chip in!
Curt
Curt
regardless of the unfortunate predicament of scummvm, i think this precedant is horrible really in general. Because, to use your bank analogy, heres the case where a bank, and one with huge share of the particular market, refuses its life-essential service because the user does something that some other power find unacceptible regardless of its legitimacy - for instance refusing the account of an abortion-making doctor.larien wrote: Are banks found liable if they hold accounts for criminals? No. Worst case, the courts will issue an order to freeze the accounts under suspicion.
Really, in effect, this unacceptible discretionary clause has the effect that corporations can design their own laws over and above their influence in the parliaments.
Really I would find it absolutely unacceptible even if they refused their services to someone who used PayPal to get payed for murders he was to do.
In my country I cant use PayPal anyways yet, but after this incident I certanly will never use those plutocratic bastards...
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onceandagain
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:20 pm