Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Tim McNamara]

On May 28, 2012, at 1:46 PM, Hannes Kuhnert wrote:
> Tim McNamara schrieb:
>> Sending money directly to developers instead of to a central Lilypond
>> account cuts a lot of costs and eliminates much of the need for
>> organizational bureaucracy (e.g., an accounting department).
> 
> On the other hand donations to a non-profit organisation would give the 
> contributor a benefit on income tax (think as higher donations at same 
> effort).

That's not a bad point an there is some truth to that, but I don't feel the 
need to get a tax break in order to feel that my donation to Lilypond has value 
to me.  Lilypond already has intrinsic value to me-  I have dozens of clean, 
readable lead sheets done for my jazz combo (which takes me about 20-30 minutes 
to have a lead sheet typeset for concert, Eb and Bb instruments).  I've 
tried/seen some others- my trumpeter's Finale lead sheets are hard to read, 
MuseScore sheets tend to look a little awkward and take me longer to do, etc.  
Lilypond's output is superior IMHO.  So on those grounds it is worth paying 
some money whether I get a tax break or not.  It is one of the two 
contributions I can make- I can't write application code, but I can use the 
software and offer feedback and suggestions from userland and I can donate 
money.

I think the most sustainable approach is to get a lot of conscientious Lilypond 
users to commit to donating a fairly small amount.  There are thousands of us, 
after all.  500 of us donating €10 a month ought to make this work.  If someone 
set up a non-profit to collect and distribute contributions to Lilypond, a 
goodly percentage of those contributions would necessarily go to run the 
non-profit:  legal fees, registration fees, accounting costs, etc.  Paying 
developers directly sidesteps that stuff.  There is the perception of that 
being a less accountable approach and I think that some may be uncomfortable 
with that- it took me a little thinking to get over it.