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 an...

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.

  • ssm@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    27 days ago

    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!

  • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    it’s worth thinking if they put that money in a basic account with 5% interest (I get 4.5% in one of my accounts and 5.2% in another, so I’ll simplify), with $24k in there, that would be $100 per month, or 20% of their monthly budget. 7% is quite common with basic etfs, but it’s more annoying to move money back to pay bills then. My point is: this could/should last even longer. Money which doesn’t increase in value, loses value (inflation).

  • ahal@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    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.

    • Shimitar@feddit.itEnglish
      1·
      25 days ago

      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!