We have quite a budget collected over the last 5 years, and while we’re really happy to see so many in the Jellyfin community contribute to us, we want to ask you to stop!
No, really. We don’t actually need your money. At least, not here and now.
We have over $24,000 in the bank, and with average monthly expenses of only ~$600, that’s over 40 months (3.3 years) of runway! So, we have plenty of money for the near future.
Thus, at this time, we want you to seriously consider donating to the authors of Clients you use, instead of (or in addition to) the main project. Client support is the hardest part of the Jellyfin ecosystem to keep going, and most of them are maintained by only a single person or very small team. With the API changes in 10.9.0 and the upcoming 10.10.0 releases, they’re going to be very busy trying to keep up, and thus could really use your support in a way that the core project here doesn’t right now.
So, if there’s a client you use every day and that you love, consider finding it’s author in our list of official clients, and sending them a little something instead (or too).
No, this doesn’t violate our policy of “no paid development”, because donations are just that - donations. We will still not honour bug bounties or similar, and still not use our collective finance here for paid development. So don’t feel like you’re doing something wrong, you’re not!
I’ll leave this notice up until we drop to ~1 year (12 months) of remaining runway, at which time we can re-evaluate where we’re at.
Happy watching!
I personally would rather see then take some of the “extra” money and apportion it to suitable client projects themselves, but I can understand them not wanting to become financial administrators in that way.
Wow. This is actually really touching. Shout-out to them. I’m so glad I installed this.
Jellyfin is such a great piece of software and I’m so glad the main project has the funds they need. I follow one of the lead android tv app developers and I’ll absolutely plug him as a great place to send some donations. These people do enterprise grade work as a hobby and absolutely deserve a few of our dollars.
@hetisniels@mastodon.social
Companies: Will slurp up and sell every last bit of your user data to the highest bidder just to make one fraction of a cent extra profit
Open Source Projects: Stop giving us money!
It feels like I heard that somewhere before and looking at my profile, I did cancel Jellyfin at some point.
I supported Finamp for a while until they removed sponsoring, guess I’ll do Findroid now.
So heartwarming to see some of the key open-source projects having more than enough for development! Yay for the devs!
Why don’t they donate to related projects
If I donate to a project or charity, o would not be happy of my money went to another project I didn’t agree with. Especially when bad things could happen our of their control. It is all risk, no benefit. Advising donators to donate where its needed is better than using their donated funds.
If they donated to a client for a niche device and it turned out there was code in it that gobbled up peoples data without consent it would backfire horribly.
True, maybe create a list of projects that need funding.
Or just let the users decide for themselve?
They are grown up enough to install a program. They are probably old enough to just take their money elsewhere and as the Jellyfin team asked to, donate to some other Jellyfin 3rd party dev.The average person isn’t going to delve into the nuance of open source project structure. If I wanted to support the jellyfin ecosystem, I would probably expect that donating to the jellyfin project is sufficient.
How can costs only be $600 / month. Do they not pay themselves? I guess that’s admirable, but it doesn’t set a good precedent. Will any young developers read this and internalize that they shouldn’t ask for money? OSS maintainers deserve to get paid for their efforts.
Hard to believe, but there is still people out there doing thongs for fun or to make the world a better place.
Its very sad to think that all efforts shall be rewarded by money alone.
All the open source contributions I do, I do for free, just because I feel obliged to give back to the community, and I think its the right thing to do.
I don’t condemn devs who want to make money out of open source, but I applause those who truly understand what is at the base of the concept of open source and are able to contribute for the fun or for the good of it.
Including Jellyfin people.
Thanks guys!
I fully agree with everything you said. I too have contributed countless hours to open source for personal enjoyment or for the good of the community and never been paid a cent.
The thing I lament is this sense I’ve seen in some circles that accepting donations or getting paid is somehow shameful. That the mere act of being compensated somehow diminishes the contribution. You can be paid and do it for the love of coding and do it for the benefit of everyone.
Everyone has the right to refuse payment, and people who do’s wishes need to be respected. And I don’t know the beliefs of the Jellyfin devs. But to me, a post like this feeds into that vague feeling that being paid somehow makes your contributions less “pure” or “desirable”, than if you’re solely doing it for fun or selfless reasons.
It’s my strong belief that for open source alternatives to truly take off and go toe to toe with big tech, there needs to be a robust funding model underpinning it. If we as a community even see accepting donations as somehow “lesser than”, what chance do we have of ever getting there?
