The topic of sponsored work comes up surprisingly often. Now, many KDE developers are already sponsored by businesses to work on KDE software, either on a full-time-work basis, or for specific areas of work. But what’s less common is for a specific person to sponsor another specific person to work on a specific bug or feature. I’m talking about short-term gigs paying most likely a few hundred euros or less. This can work well for getting persistent bugs in the yellow boxes fixed. It does happen, but it’s not as common as I think anyone would like! There’s a lot of untapped potential here, I think.
So today I’d like to announce the creation of a “Sponsored work” category in the KDE forum! This is a place for people to come together for the purpose of sponsoring work on individual bugs or features. If you’re willing to sponsor work for something, post about it here. If you’re open to these kinds of micro-sponsorship opportunities, look for them here!
Since we are a free software community, sometimes concerns about money and sponsored work arise. Therefore, let me bring up an additional option, originally thought up by Jakob Petsovits the last time someone offered to sponsor work: offer an option to donate the sponsorship money to KDE e.V.! This option can be more motivating for passionate KDE developers who don’t personally need the money, and might otherwise ignore such opportunities.
On the subject of donating to KDE e.V., we have a fancy new donation web page that makes it much easier to set up recurring donations! This being too hidden was been a very valid complaint in the recent past, so it’s wonderful to see a better UX here. This work was done by Carl Schwan, Paul Brown, and others at this weekend’s Promo Sprint–which is itself funded by KDE e.V.
And at this point, KDE e.V. is funding quite a lot of initiatives. Sprints have come roaring back, and we’re sponsoring people to represent KDE at more external events than ever before. We also have a whole bunch of employees and contractors doing meaningful technical work on core KDE software. It’s a lot!
Needless to say, this isn’t cheap. KDE e.V. has been funding this major expansion by deliberately spending down its reserves for a few years to avoid getting in trouble with the German tax authorities for having too much money (yes, really; this is actually a thing). But that can’t last forever! We’re going to need help to sustain this level of financial activity.
If you can, consider setting up a recurring donation today! It really does make a difference. Anything helps!
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
I hope the category also allows for setting up crowdfunded sponsorships – like, “I don’t have all the money this might take, but are other people willing to add to the sum so that we can get this fixed”? 🙂
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At the moment it’s just a simple text forum, not a complex crowdfunding platform. This is much more complicated and has financial and legal risks associated with it, so I don’t see it happening in the near future.
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A hint regarding to Your request for Sponsorship – all Brave Browser users – like me – get money (Cryptocurrency -BAT) for viewing advertices.
In Brave Browser there is an option to donate to web-pages which have been registered as Brave Creators ( https://creators.brave.com/ ).
KDE or none it’s sub-pages – as KDE Donations page – have not registered yet as Brave Creator.
For example I have 1,55 US$ available in my Brave Browser account (see: https://janhefaistos.imgur.com/all/?third_party=1 ) – and more coming every month – which I would happily donate to KDE – if KDE would just registrate as a Brave Browser Creator.
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This is a great idea! Unfortunately KDE does not accept cryptocurrency as it prioritises Ethical Source over Open Source (currency) – which is a flagrant violation of its manifesto.
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That’s interesting and we can look into it!
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Sponsored work is a fantastic idea! Any options that can support individual devs to spend time on bugs is great! As Peterson Silva mentioned, we also need fractional contributions from multiple people when it comes to bug bounties. Hopefully in peer to peer format with Open Source currency!
I for one am happy to sponsor individual devs. I will not be sponsoring the KDEev as long as it sanctions and supports political/environmental agendas particularly when this clashes with its mission to support Open Source.
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“I will not be sponsoring the KDEev as long as it sanctions and supports political/environmental agendas particularly when this clashes with its mission to support Open Source.”
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t remember reading anything about this last time I saw the KDEev sponsorship page.. unless I did not read closely enough. I will no longer be contributing whilst this persists.. a misappropriation of money as far as I’m concerned.
Where is this information available please?
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KDE & Sour Pineapple
“We cannot condone the use of Bitcoin”
https://barkingbandicoot.com/sour-pineapples/
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Could the KDE e.V. accept cryptocurrency donations, either directly or through one of the existing payment processors?
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KDE use to use Bitpay as a payment processor but (unfounded) environmental concerns now trump its values of promoting Open Source (currency) unfortunately.
KDE needs to do an audit of its stated principles and ensure they are upheld and that other concerns are downstream and do not conflict with its core values.
More here:
https://barkingbandicoot.com/sour-pineapples/
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@OpenSourceCurrency KDE has no principle of using cryptocurrency. I get that you wish we did, but we don’t. So I don’t think we’re being inconsistent with our values given that what you’re promoting isn’t one of our values.
Personally I have no strong opinion on the matter and would be fine with KDE e.V. accepting cryptocurrency donations as long as we could convert it into real currency immediately, so as to avoid the tax headaches and volatility involved in holding cryptocurrency.
I believe in the past we removed our support for it because of low usage. Other than the few big donations like the pineapple fund, we almost never actually got any donations via cryptocurrency. So it was deemed not worth the headache.
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How does the “Sponsored Work” actually work?
Let’s say someone pays $500 for a specific feature, which then will be implemented, but it turns out later, that it’s not working well and thus it is removed again: Is that a risk the sponsor has to consider?
Will there always be a discussion of the KDEev dev team if or what parts of a feature request make sense?
Let’s say someone offers $500: Would they need to pay to the first dev who accept the offer in advance or in the end?
Let’s say someone offers $500 and in the end only a part of the features are implemented but otherwise the request would be considered to be completed: Would this person need to payout the whole amount anyway?
Would it make sense to collect the money first at KDEeV’s banking account and let KDEeV pay out the devs in the end?
What would be the preferred way to transfer the money?
Is there some contract which will be made so that there’s some kind of insurance that the money will be actually used for what it is meant or otherwise be transferred back?
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I mean if a sponsor pays or at least make a small deposit in advance, you can at least consider the offer to be more serious otherwise there could be a risk that the dev has worked for nothing in the end.
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Everything is worked out between the two parties. KDE e.V. is not involved as we don’t want to be custodians of random 3rd-party funds. 🙂
Presumably the money would be paid once the code is merged upstream, or released to users; it would depend on the deal worked out between the two people.
In general, when paying for upstream contributions, the implicit deal is that getting the changes merged is a part of the work, so if you fail to do that, you haven’t fulfilled the contract yet. So a certain amount of diplomacy is expected. This could be made explicit.
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Hello Nate. Thanks for the reply.
“KDE has no principle of using cryptocurrency. I get that you wish we did, but we don’t.”
Sorry, but you are missing the key point of that article though.
KDE has CORE principles (stated in its Mission, Manifesto & Vision) of supporting Open Source – of which cryptocurrency is! It is Open Source software! It is not specifically named – but neither is any other software named or excluded in those documents.
Open Source currency is rejected according to the Twitter account because it is accused of being environmentally unfriendly and therefore against the KDE sustainability goal.
The sustainability goal is a short term goal. It should not over-ride the higher principles of supporting Open Source. The same way as some government initiative should not negate something in the constitution.
It should not matter that some individuals find it against their personal principles. It is Open Source and if some KDE volunteer wanted to work out the particulars of payment channels then it should be supported.
I would like KDE to accept cryptocurrency, sure! Moreover though I would like KDE to stay true to its core principles and the reason why it has developed a community.
Personally, I would pay devs in crypto or server fees etc rather than convert. Sorry to hear there were not many crypto donations. I wonder if that would be the case to day as bitcoin is multiple times higher in price making many wealthy. Podcasting has popularised it in the Linux world now also.
Thanks for the response.
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In KDE we of course try our best to use FOSS solutions where possible, but there’s no requirement to support ALL FOSS projects (surely we don’t need to promote GNOME, do we?) or even any specific one. Sometimes it’s just not practical, or conflicts with another goal, and then we need to take them on a case-by-case basis and make a difficult judgement. In this particular case, the benefit to KDE has been deemed low compared to the potential costs.
If it ever became possible for us to easily and inexpensively accept cryptocurrency donations without having to hold funds in crypto form–which as I mentioned presents significant challenges for KDE e.V. as an org–I would be open to revisiting the topic.
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Why is there no option to set a custom amount? Or did I somehow miss it?
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The person offering the sponsorship can offer any amount they want.
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When is KDE going to start reporting exactly how much money in total it takes in and where/how it is spent between how many employees.
Look up how thunderbird reports its finances. https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ This is how it should be done.
I’ve tried reading your financial reports and it is the most obscure garbage I’ve seen. So reading you’ve gotten in trouble with tax authorities is nosurprise since you have very very suspect reporting.
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Spending down unused money is something that any registered charity has to do, in numerous jurisdictions. Nate didn’t write that KDE e.V. got in trouble with tax authorities, he wrote that KDE e.V. wants to avoid getting in trouble. One would think that after like 25 years of existing, the e.V. will have figured out a system for not getting into trouble.
Note that I’m not advocating against clearer reports, I agree that the Thunderbird blog post very nicely demonstrates finances over time and paid positions. The e.V. report could indeed learn from that.
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I should add that “how much money it takes in” and the rough spending categories are listed in the report (https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2022/) under “Financial Working Group”. Likewise, there is a page at https://ev.kde.org/corporate/staffcontractors/ – linked from the “Highlights” summary of the yearly report – that shows the current set of employees and what their roles are.
This isn’t hard to find for someone specifically looking for that information, it took me a few minutes max. That said, links are perhaps not great for static documents such as yearly reports, it would be great to have static information that will still be accurate when I open the report in a few years’ time.
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Yes I did find that the total revenue was supposedly EUR 285,000. But I don’t believe that for a second. A small app like thunderbird took in $7M in a year and KDE as a whole only a tiny fraction of that? WTF. Also, staff costs of $200k? How is that possible – do you have only like 2-3 full time paid developers?
This seems very fishy to me.
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In the FOSS world, unfortunately Thunderbird’s tremendous fundraising success is the exception, not the norm.
It may be unbelievable, but the figures are accurate. KDE e.V.’s finances are audited annually by a professional accounting firm as well as two volunteers from the KDE e.V. membership with financial expertise. And the GNOME Foundation’s annual budget is pretty similar to ours; their 2022 revenue was 342k€. Same ballpark.
Let me clarify a few more things. First of all, KDE e.V. never got in trouble with the German tax authorities; rather, we took great pains to *prevent* that from happening by working to spend down our large reserves. Those large reserves became in the first place from two unexpected large one-time donations a few years ago. At the time KDE e.V.’s budget was very very small, mostly just sufficient to fund Akademy, some development sprints, server hosting, and admin stuff. So quickly spending that money was a challenge. It’s a good problem to have, really. And since then, KDE e.V. has been working to spend those reserves by ramping up employment and funding sprints and conference attendance. Doing this even faster was one of my campaign platforms when I ran for a seat on the board, in fact. We have succeeded largely by hiring a couple of KDE community members as contractors, and are indeed spending down our reserves now, as is legally required. It may sound really weird, but that’s the way it is.
Still, most KDE developers are not paid by KDE e.V. at all. Most of us are either volunteers, or paid by companies in KDE’s orbit, such as Blue Systems, KDAB, Valve, SUSE, and others.
KDE e.V. in fact has no full-time developers. We have three part-time developers, one part-time documentation writer, and two part-time marketing people. If we had Thunderbird’s money we would 100% convert these part-time contractors to full-time employees as much as possible, and hire a bunch more. Alas, we do not have Thunderbird’s level of income. I wish we did, and trying to get there is why we’re currently running a fundraiser: https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member.
So if you think KDE e.V.’s budget is unbelievably small, I would agree with you, and the best way to help fix that is to donate. 🙂 If you don’t want to… well, that’s an illustration of why it’s so unbelievably small!
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