Developers who aren't providing a 'Donate' link, maybe add one to point to your favourite charity?

I don’t know where to put this idea, but hopefully here is good.

I’m working full time and have been all through the lockdown period and I know I’m lucky to have been in this position. I haven’t been spending money on the things I usually like doing that on and I have got into virtual modular software (VCV Rack and cough others that may exist) which has been a fantastically interesting way to spend time and I’d like to give something back to some of the developers whose modules I’ve enjoyed using. Sometimes that can be done from purchasing a premium module if they make them, but many times they don’t.

I asked the other day if it would be possible to donate to developers via the Rack and was told you could Donate directly in the menu on module(s), but the link isn’t there for a lot of them, I could only find one working Donate link out of a number I tried so I thought I’d ask developers if they don’t personally want to get donations that maybe they could use their Donate links to point to a favourite charity web site that takes online donations maybe local to them or international if they’d like.

Just an idea.

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There are donation links in the library pages for some modules. You need to look at the plugins page like this for count modula:

Not that this discredits your idea.

There were donate options on a minority of modules I’d opened and many without donation options on the library pages so making the assumption some didn’t want to receive donations, perhaps to avoid personal income tax headaches, asking if those devs could provide donate links for charities instead.

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I’m speculating, but I’d assume both the donation link in the Library and the “Donate” item in a module’s context menu have the same source (donateUrl in plugin.json). If a developer has a donation option in their Github page but it’s not in the module’s context menu, I’d assume it’s an oversight rather than a choice, like it happens sometimes with missing links to module manuals. In such cases I’d tell the developer (I’ve checked out some of my favorite plugins but they all had the “Donate” link in both places, or in neither of them)

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This is a nice suggestion, and one I considered when I initially released my modules but decided against… May I suggest if anyone would like to donate but the author has not provided a link, to simply donate to your own chosen charity if you so wish as I feel people are more inclined to donate if they feel a connection.

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That’s a nice idea. I usually ask people to go buy more VCV modules to support the ecosystem. Not exactly a charity, of course. If VCV were to go away my favorite hobby would go away, so I want them to stay around.

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