The defining difference about paying money to a corporation in exchange for a product is you're paying for something already there, an agreed exchange of value. The whole point about a donation is it's given not in exchange for doing any particular task, but gratuitously.

It's not a weird sentiment to want to know what benefits a gift is providing. That's all people are asking for when they want transparency around donations: tell us how you're benefiting from it so we can feel good about gifting you.

Is it necessary? No. The point being made is that people would be happier and potentially gift more if there was more transparency. If your argument is transparency costs more than the extra gifts then the solution to that is - ironically - be transparent about it and people might gift means to make transparency cheaper and make donations viable.

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multiplegeorges an hour ago | parent | next [-]

So, if Thunderbird instead asked for users to sign up for an annual software subscription, it'd be fine?

	▲	gjm11 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If Thunderbird required users to sign up for an annual subscription, then that specific problem -- not being able to tell what good one's payment would do -- would go away. There would be a very specific reason to pay the money. (In practice, they presumably couldn't do that, at least not effectively, because the code is open source and someone else could fork it. But let's imagine that somehow they could require all Thunderbird users to pay them.) That doesn't, of course, mean that it would be better overall. Thunderbird users would go from getting Thunderbird for free and maybe having reason to donate some money, to having to pay some money just to keep the ability to use Thunderbird: obviously worse for them. There'd probably be more money available for Thunderbird development, which would be good. The overall result might be either good or bad. But it would, indeed, no longer be unclear whether and why a Thunderbird user might choose to pay money to the Thunderbird project.
	▲	hombre_fatal an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Aside, they should. This thread is a good example of how groveling for donations distorts what should be a simple transaction. Instead, people act like they're buying in to a 50% share with their $5 and then act like they cofounded the project forever after the donation.

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groby_b 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's not a weird sentiment to want to know what benefits a gift is providing.

"I bought you tickets for your favorite artist for your birthday. I expect a detailed trip report" :)

Yes, you're right, personal gifts aren't donations, but then maybe we should stop calling donations gifts, too. Gifts are given without any expectations attached. Donations do and should have expectations.