There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

e8d79 ,
@e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

KDE is great and this reminded me that I wanted to donate anyway.

hornedfiend , (edited )

I didn’t get that notification yet,but when I do,l’ll be sure as shit to donate as large amount as I can afford.

Edit: I know I can and have donated already,but just to highlight the idea

Hadriscus ,

I have tried once, but passed out after like five minutes. The volume they were asking for was just too much

phoenixz ,

Volume? What do you mean?

Hadriscus ,

ok… I scroll too fast… I thought this was about plasma donations

dinckelman ,

A lot of people here have such a bizarre stance.

People have put work into this, for free. And the moment they ask for support, you immediately bring the pitchforks out, over a singular pop-up you can permanently disable? That’s just plain disrespectful, at the very least

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

From experience with Windows "freeware" some of us have seen what happens when such pop-up notices become commonplace. It is not pretty.

dinckelman ,

This isn’t Windows, and this isn’t freeware

superkret ,

If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
Then you also don’t cause any more cost to the KDE project.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

The claim that more users increases costs for the KDE project in any meaningful way is another thing that might be disputed. The examples given do not seem convincing.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

So the reason it makes me uneasy is that at the same time as I do want KDE to succeed, I do not want this tactic of begging for money in annoying little on-screen pop-ups to succeed. If it does, then perhaps it might spread to other free software projects. If all of the hundreds of them that go into a linux distribution start feeling free to make their demands it will be a real mess. As some old philosopher said: To judge the morality of an action, consider what would happen if everyone did it.

I remain an Xfce user. They also accept donations.

9488fcea02a9 ,

This isnt freeware.

“Free” in free software is free like free speech, not free as in beer.

This is one of the places where english fails. Libre vs gratis

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Sorry, I was assuming everyone knew that. Should've said "nagware" instead.

Adderbox76 ,

Unfortunately, there has always been the issue that a not-insignificant percentage of users of FOSS software believe the FREE part means “free as in beer” and take umbrage when asked to contribute.

I’ve long been a proponent (and I know I’m in a minority) that has advocated for a shift in the marketing of FOSS applications from “donation based” to “value based”. Meaning that the expectation is that if you enjoy the software, you pay an amount that you believe is commensurate to your use. This is voluntarily of course…if you can’t pay, than please use it and enjoy it. But those who can pay, should pay…at least a little bit, to offset the costs for those who can’t.

It’s more or less that the wording of FOSS apps needs to change so that you are expected to contribute if you can.

Just my opinion. Like I said, I know I’m in the minority. Just not a fan of the percentage of users that has always existed that (falsely) think that asking for money for your project is somehow anathema to the Open Source ideal and whine whenever they’re asked to contribute.

oberstoffensichtlich ,
@oberstoffensichtlich@feddit.org avatar

Maybe donate 50 cents for every hour you used the software and it was useful to you.

conciselyverbose ,

It’s not complicated.

It’s an ad.

There’s no version of advertising I will ever be OK with.

orsetto ,

Not an ad. No one is trying to sell you anything.

(If you get the notification) you’re already using their product.

conciselyverbose ,

Yes, it is an ad. Any call to action is an ad.

And its mere presence will ensure I don’t give them any more money. The core concept of inserting any ad in an OS is not behavior I am willing to reward.

Cris16228 ,

So, asking you to VOLUNTARILY donate IF YOU WANT to with a pop-up you can simply ignore and/or disable is advertising? I don’t understand… I mean, they give you a product for free, full of good features and updated regularly, and the moment they ask you to donate, again, IF YOU WANT to, it’s considered advertising…

You’re so sad, dude.

conciselyverbose ,

Yes. It is literally impossible for an organization asking for money not to be an ad.

And yes, showing me a single ad once means I never give them money again. I am not OK with ads.

Cris16228 ,

Don’t use KDE then🤷‍♂️

Those assholes! They should make an OS for free!!! How dare they ask for support?!?!

No one forces you to support them, if it’s so annoying just disable it. I wonder if makes you happy work for someone for free… Hope it will happen to you so you’ll understand how bad it is :)

Cya

9488fcea02a9 ,

This is not an OS behaviour. KDE is a desktop environment.

If it bothers you so much, remove the DE and use the command line, full time

orsetto ,

Ads try to sell you something, there is no “call to action”. Here, there is nothing to sell, so by definition it’s not an ad.

They are just asking you if you’d like to help them in providing you the product you’re already using.

conciselyverbose ,

You pretty clearly don’t know what a call to action is, or an ad is, because “please give money” is very obviously a call to action, and many ads make no effort whatsoever to sell any product.

Vincent ,

Then just not use it? You could even ask for a refund, I’m sure they’ll give it to you.

null ,

You’re advertising your opinion here, is that okay?

nef ,

I’m not against the idea, but I do think it’s a bit unfair. There are dozens of projects KDE relies on that never even get the chance to ask for donations this way, simply because they don’t need a GUI.

I believe KDE should at least offer to share the donations with other projects, projects that would otherwise have no voice. Something like the old Humble Bundle donation method would work really well, and let users to choose how their money is allocated.

conciselyverbose ,

It’s implemented as a KDE Daemon (KDED) module, which allows users and distributors to permanently disable it if they like.

Eh. I guess good enough.

But I’m still opposed on principle.

mactan ,

cool and good. thunderbird is also very good about this and more projects should present their donation stuff just as tastefully

k_rol ,

I personally think once a year is not enough. Every 6 months might be better. Also people already spend a lot during December that they might not prioritize donating to KDE.

For those complaining… Well I don’t know what to say to them. Such a big complex software which is 100% free should be allowed to remind us that they need money.

Don’t forget they said it’s running as a daemon specifically so you can easily disable it if it triggers you so much.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

it's running as a daemon specifically so you can easily disable it

It occurs to me that even if I were a KDE user, I probably wouldn't see it. I'm not a DE developer, so I'd be getting the packages through Debian, and the people who package things for Debian tend to remove such prominent features that for the users are all cost and no benefit.

I suspect that none of the people who are "complaining" are doing so because it's some kind of personal inconvenience that they'd find intolerable. The only thing it does to make my day worse is to slightly cheapen the reputation of the KDE project, and by extension — since it is such a popular and highly visible project — that of free software in general.

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

I mean, at least I’m not paying $200* for the privilege of being advertised to… I’d like an option to disable it permanently in the popup but it seems mostly reasonable?

^* This is the first price I got for a Windows licence when I searched for it. I know you can probably get them cheaper, but that’s the price they’re advertising, so eh.^

starshipwinepineapple ,

There is an option to disable it permanently. Otherwise it is once a year and easily dismissed

phoenixz ,

Why?

People spend countless hours building the software you use for free. Now they need to buy actual hardware yo build and test that software and what? They have to pay with their own money besides all that time they spent already so that you can continue to use this for free?

You’re not forced to pay anything, they’re asking for small donations

starshipwinepineapple ,

Either i wasn’t clear or you are replying to the wrong person, but i am in support of foss projects asking for donations in a reasonable manor such as this

LostXOR ,

Seems like a reasonable donation prompt; it's infrequent, unobtrusive, and can be easily dismissed and disabled. Some people are so sensitive to the idea of any sort of soliciting that they forget projects do need money to function.

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Some people just don't like their OS being used for that purpose and want it to be just a tool that shuts up and does exactly as it's told and no more. I can see that point of view. Our computers aren't free billboards. It's like when car dealers stick their own custom logo on the cars they sell to people.

FQQD ,
@FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

The difference is, that you’re using something for free, and you can disable this very easily.

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

I get that. I was just saying why it might tick some people off. My idea of a good OS is one that you don't even notice while using it. It just sits in the background doing its thing and you don't have to think about whether you're using KDE, Gnome, or whatever, because it never makes itself known and you just happily use your programs.

uint ,

In my opinion no OS manages such a feat of making itself unknown, there are always some problems, and I think you agree with that in practice (it’s more a matter of thresholds). So there is continuous improvement. The question is then whether or not the possible financial boost from the donations will improve the OS in such a way that the net benefit is positive with respect to the negative value of the donation notification (a utilitarian viewpoint, I guess). I would say it will be a net benefit, not least because the negative value of the notification is so small.

Ptsf ,

I understand this, but we need to be reasonable and avoid extremes. This software is extensively free (as in beer) and requires development support. As long as the prompt doesn’t cross any lines into exploitive territory I think it’s fine. It would be nice for them to have explored other fundraising avenues first though and have saved this as an exhaustive “final” option.

Adderbox76 ,

This software is extensively free (as in beer)

No…it’s not. It’s free to download and to use, but the expectation that people contribute in exchange for using it is how FOSS has always worked.

That doesn’t necessarily mean monetary. But contributing can be helping with user guides, or making youtube tutorials, or even just extending the reach of the program to friends and family by talking about it.

There are many ways to contribute, and money is one. But the notion that Open Source software is “free as in beer” has never been correct. Users have an expectation to contribute…period.

Ptsf ,

Not sure what part of the open source community you’ve been diving into, but the expectation of contribution to the project is not realistic nor logical as there’s not “always” something a person can contribute and you’d absolutely run afoul of “too many chefs in the kitchen” (even Wikipedia acknowledges this and has structured editing in a way to help alleviate the issues). Though open source for me, and a lot of others, has always embodied passion, a desire to aid the community, and a drive to prevent closed alternatives. None of that is based around “co-op” style expected contribution development. Hell, even Stallman famously addressed my “free as in beer” statement, saying that open source is more akin to “free as in speech” overall, but since this particular project is not monitizing and are GPL 2 licensed, they are absolutely free as in beer.

(www.wired.com/2006/09/free-as-in-beer/)

Adderbox76 ,

I’m not really talking about development as simply programming. There are a lot of aspects that go into development, yes…programming is a big aspect.

But there’s also bug reporting (every user should know how to report bugs because it’s contributes to making the program better).

Heck, you can even download the documentation and give it a proof-read if you’re good with grammar and spot some errors if you don’t want to commit to helping to write it.

I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time in the various subs for the software, taking care to answer questions from other users who need help doing this or that. That again, is contributing.

Then there’s simply what we’re doing right now. Bringing attention to the projects online getting them more visibility.

Development of a successful FOSS app isn’t just about programming. And even small contributions count. If you can donate some coin, great! If you can’t, or don’t want to, there are a thousand other things that you can do to contribute to that apps community.

I emphasized the word community because that is exactly what it is. The ethos of Open Source; what makes it different than Propietary software, is that the users are an inherent part of the development process in ways both big and small. In propietary software, there is a distinct line between the developers and the users. Developers have multiple stakeholders of which the user base is certainly one, but also include advertisers, software makers, hardware makers, etc…

FOSS software, in contrast, is much more a communitee effort with the involvement of the community in the way of bug reports, literature, education and even simply championing the project because they don’t have millions of dollars in advertising budgets.

Sorry, I get a little passionate, so this is longer than I intended it to be.

But tl;dr, contributing isn’t just about money or just about programming. There’s a thousand ways big and small, and my issue isn’t with people not “paying” necessarily. But people who use it for free and don’t bother filing bug reports, don’t join the community online to help answer user questions, etc…

A good FOSS citizen should be an active part of the community. Or donate money to the project if they’d rather not.

Ptsf ,

I see what you mean and understand you. It’s very idealistic and I appreciate the thought of it, but it just won’t apply to a modern world full of varied people in the way you wish. The reality of it is that most people simply are not interested in participating and it’s not in the best interests of any project to expect to change that. Contributions from someone who shares no passion or interest will be less qualitative at best. That’s not even to mention that you’re likely missing the forest for the trees, as most open source software is built upon hundreds of other projects. You cannot reasonably expect participation on that scale. You can encourage, desire, or structure an income stream to support it; but you cannot expect it as it’s just not rational.

that_leaflet OP ,
@that_leaflet@lemmy.world avatar

Yup. I like their just in December approach too. I have a problem with distrohopping so I’m often re-setting up my system. Every time I do, Thunderbird pops up donation prompts both in the app and in my browser. I get why they do it, but it’s annoying when that happens. KDE’s approach avoids this pitfall.

Plasma ,
@Plasma@lemmy.ml avatar

As long as the “No Thanks” button is a one and done go-away button, I think this is a decent idea!

starshipwinepineapple ,

It’s once per year, easily dismissed, and can be permanently disabled. Seems entirely reasonable for a piece of free software that someone would use everyday

MyNameIsRichard ,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

I do suspect a small but vocal crowd of people will spread doom and gloom about it on social media anyway, of course.

I see they’re here already

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Wow. Just when their excellent marketing tactics over the past few months had almost persuaded me that I might give KDE another try some day.

unexposedhazard ,

I use it. I like it. But i admit its fucking bloated to hell.

derbolle ,

well thats unfortunate. Personally I’d rather click away one message per year while knowing I donate 40 euros every quarter than having the project die or degrade in the long run.

I think if you complain, you should contribute(either through effort or donation) to make such pop ups unnesseccary.

KDE Plasma albeit a bit bloated in default state is freaking amazing and getting better with every update.

Enjoy whatever DE you Like and complain as you like but just complaining is not going to fix Problems

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

I've contributed to various projects when I had money, but this would probably make me less likely to do so if I were a user. It's unquestionably true that some people "hate pop-ups and this is going to turn them off" and I am among them.

kylie_kraft ,

checks if it’s April 1

no? just no. please don’t open a door to Microsoft BS.

just_another_person ,

It’s open source. You could go in and just edit the code to show some ASCII porn if you want. Or just disable it.

thecheddarcheese ,

i honestly don’t see the issue here. kde is free, and the popup really doesn’t seem all that annoying.

TheImpressiveX ,
@TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml avatar

Now this is much better than getting ads in your Start Menu.

kde.org/donate/

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