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

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.

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hombre_fatal 2 hours 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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bachmeier an hour ago | parent [-]

> 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.

You've twisted the timing. My comment is about

"Give me money." "Okay, tell me why I should give you money."

not

"I gave you money. Tell me what you did with it." It's a big difference. It's easy for me to just not give them money if I don't know what I'm donating to.

	▲	hombre_fatal 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Those two examples map to the first and second parts of my claim. Though I'm making a general reflection rather than trying to antagonize any individual here. I was already thinking about this when clicking into TFA to see that yes, it's another donation beg. The answer to the person I replied to is basically: yes. There's a nit in human psychology between mutual transactions (even lopsided against our favor) and voluntary unilateral ones (like donations) where the latter results in disproportionate scrutiny and entitlement compared to the former. I once started accepting donations on my forum. I noticed people acted like they were about to make the grandest gesture in the world, would I be so lucky to deserve it after answering their questions despite having built a forum they spend four hours a day on. (They gave me $5) And once they donated, they saw themselves as a boardmember-like persona with veto power and a disproportionate say on what I do, often pointing out that they're a donor. (They gave me $5) I'm exaggerating a bit to paint a picture of what I mean. I think it's all unintentional, and they might be embarrassed if I'd told them this. But I ended up refunding everyone after a while. Yet when I charged $5 to let users expand their PM inbox size or max avatar resolution, nobody ever brought it up. They understood the transaction ended there. What is the $5 used for? -- What do you mean? It doubled my PM inbox size. It's a funny quirk of our brain. I think a license purchase aligns expectations much more than groveling for donations, and it creates a natural freemium model for open source (or source-available rather?) projects.