VOGONS


First post, by humppaman

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Is there any way of microdonating to Dosbox? I see a Paypal button but using that is too much of a hassle for small donations. Another thing is that I (and many others) try to avoid using Paypal.

I wish the Dosbox project had a flattr-Button.

If you don't know what I'm talking about:

Flattr is a Micropayment system in which you specify "I want to donate X dollars per month" and then start clicking these buttons on all project sites that you like. At the end of the month all projects whose buttons you clicked get (X dollars)/(number of buttons you clicked). They take ten per cent.
Everything is described in more detail on their site http://flattr.com

It is currently quite popular in Germany and Sweden but sadly completely unknown/unused in the US.

There is actually a guy doing his Masters Thesis on flattr usage and he found out that micropayment options such as flattr or kachingle are used in a more casual way than paypal/credit cards and really help to get more people to donate (obviously small sums though). He talks about it in this podcast: http://medienradio.org/mr/mr032-flattr/ (german only, sorry).

I'm a dosbox fan since it years ago revived my collection of old dos games and I think the project could really benefit from this (or something similar).

Reply 1 of 8, by swaaye

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You could probably call it "impulse donating" because it's small sums of money combined with ease of use. It's the same idea as the high discount game sales at the various digital download sites. It might work. People spend much more freely when perceived risks/costs are minimized.

I don't know what's wrong with PayPal though.

Reply 2 of 8, by Tetrium

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humppaman wrote:

. Another thing is that I (and many others) try to avoid using Paypal.

May I ask why?

Reply 4 of 8, by humppaman

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The most high-profile story I can think of right now is how Paypal denied the Minecraft guy access to his account (some hundreds of thousands of dollars in there) without any clear reason.

Also there are a lot of horror stories out there about how they treat you if something goes wrong. Maybe I'm kind of paranoid here but still, I think there are quite a few people that don't use it for just this reason.

Reply 5 of 8, by Dominus

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yes Paypal is nice and dandy if everything works right and fits into nice categories. If there is something out of the ordinary or even goes wrong there are quite some horror stories, especially if you are supposed to receive money.

In my case I'm a German but live in Austria but also got business and most of my income in Germany. So my main credit card stuff is for my German address. This was no problem while Paypal was just an American company that also made it possible for foreigners to use the service for eBay. When they moved to all the countries this became troublesome. I fell out of the category "Account in Germany = German address". So I still have some Austrian addresses (I moved some times) registered on paypal from before their move to the countries but can't change them to my actual address as the German Paypal only accepts German addresses not foreign ones. No bigie, except for dealings with ebay sellers where this strange combination looks shady and ebay itself discourages you to send stuff if paypal address and ebay address do not match...

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 6 of 8, by humppaman

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Before this gets lost: How about I sponsor you three monts of flattr?

Then you (i.e. the DOSBox team) could try out the buttons and if you don't like them (or you don't get enough money) remove them again without having lost anything.

If you don't know what I mean by sponsor, one thing to know about flattr is that everybody who wants to receive something has to give something (i.e. click somebody elses buttons). The minimum is 2$ per month. I would be willing to give you 6$ so that you can try it out without ever investing any of your own money.

Of course once you have taken in some, you can fuel your monthly 2$ from that.

All I would need is a way to actually get the money to you that does not involve Paypal. Maybe a Bank account with an IBAN number?

Reply 7 of 8, by collector

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If you want to help DOSBox, buy games from GOG through the link on http://dosbox.com . You will get games cheaply and help DOSBox.

Reply 8 of 8, by MissEmily

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Same to me - got the Flattr reminder today "you have not yet flattred anything this month". Immediately thought of Dosbox but this is not flattrable.

** Isn't Dosbox exactly what flattr is made for ? **

And the Paypal thing ... While trying to bypass Paypal whenever possible, I'm loading my Flattr account via Paypal transfer currently 😉