Özgür Kesim
@oec@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

To all developers of #FOSS:

I'm interested in your experiences and opinions of funding #FOSS. How to maintain freedom and secure financial stability.

Which strategies work, which don't? Like: grants from public institutions, donations from companies, donations from users, subscription models, ad revenue, sponsors, etc. etc.
What are your experiences with those strategies?

And: Do you think an anonymous payment system like #GNUTaler, along with its anonymous subscription service capabilities, could be helpful and to what degree?

What other ideas do you have?

I'm looking forward to answers, comments and shares!
silverpill
@silverpill@mitra.social  ·  activity timestamp last week

@oec

Do you think an anonymous payment system like #GNUTaler, along with its anonymous subscription service capabilities, could be helpful and to what degree?

Taler is not anonymous. In the past, this fact was stated on their main page, but it seems that they removed the text. Instead, they now advertise the system as taxable: "when using Taler, merchant's revenue is transparent for tax collection authorities". Which means, our confidential transaction data can be viewed by anyone who is considered an authority and can be leaked at any moment. It is like end-to-end encryption with a backdoor.

An example of a truly anonymous payment system is #Monero, which protects senders and recipients equally. I use it to receive donations to my FOSS projects, it's a great tool.
Özgür Kesim
@oec@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp last week
@silverpill
Good catch. However, payment with GNU Taler is anonymous for the buyer during purchase, and also all subsequent purchases remain unrelatable. (Of course, only as long as the purchases do not involve additional identifiable information, such as name, address etc.).

The taxability aspect refers to the seller: Whoever receives money is identifiable in the payment system.
This makes Taler less interesting for being used in criminal activities, such as tax evasion, ransom etc.