Open Source Monthly Donation System for F-Droid Apps

1

Hey everyone,
I had an idea I wanted to share and discuss with you:

What if there was an open source donation system integrated into F-Droid, where users could easily support their favorite apps?
The idea is simple: users would set up a monthly budget (a few bucks per month) and allocate percentages to different apps — like 20% to App 1, 30% to App 2, 50% to App 3. (Or split evenly)
Once configured, donations would run automatically each month without any extra effort from the user.

This would massively lower the barrier to support open source developers, especially smaller projects that focus on privacy and quality.
It would work similarly to platforms like Patreon, but fully open source and directly on F-Droid.

I think this could motivate more people to contribute financially and help make open source development more sustainable.

Are there any ongoing efforts in this direction already?
If not, who could I talk to about making something like this happen?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

2

For Apps in the F-Droid repo only? That could lead to more intensive debates why one package is included and why another isn’t.

Fraud follows money. That is no argument against it, but be careful when contructing such a system.

I am unsure if many people will use it. I would maybe spend a 1€ per month altogether.
This topic could be relevant to What types of apps are you missing from the FOSS ecosystem?

How much would you spend?

3

Why not donate directly to the devs?

4

Maybe 5-50 bank transfers per month for a sum of some bucks?
Every month you would have to calculate the amount.

It would be easier if a donation app lists all the (installed) apps from F-Droid and you give a 0-100 to every app and a sum for all apps and the donation app spreads the money over all apps.

The problem could be programming and maintaining the donation part.

5

The problem is that every time you need to handle money you need to get deeper into legal stuff… banks, etc

2 Likes
6

I have a crude idea of a donation assisting app, that supports myself in doing this on my own using bank transfer, paypal, whatever.
The problem maybe could even be solved by entering the data in a spreadsheet calculator.

The app offers to give points to each app, e.g. 0-100. The points are summed up each day/week/month for each app. The more points an app has the more money will be spend.

The user enters a value which he wants to spend each week/month and how many transfers he is willing to do by bank transfer, paypal etc and how many transfer he accepts per month in total.

The app generates a list and shows the target(s) the user should send money to. It is likely that the apps are overpaid because of the limited transfer numbers, especially in comparison to the apps that didn’t get money. The money transfered to an app is recorded and subtracted next time a/the targeted apps is/are recomended. Therefore other apps should get to the top.

1 Like
7

Why don’t user just pay whatever they wants to each developer?

8

It’s hard if not impossible to decide which apps get the money.

Let’s say we made a voting system where users vote to the best apps. How could you make sure that bots did’t vote too?

If the F-Droid team decided which app gets the money then developers would make arguments like “Why my app is not included?”
“This list is not fair”.

9

Github sponsorship and similar programs could fill this gap. While there are certain projects that don’t use Github, Gitlab, or Codeberg, many can be supported that way.

10

I thought of a local app running on my phone, configured by me. I will transfer the money to the project(s). Nobody else is involved. Voting is just for setting the personal importance of the apps, e.g.:

I spend 2€ per month and want to do just 1 transfer per month and the monthly sum of points is 36:

month 1

  1. F-Droid 20
  2. Trail-Sense 11
  3. Yes xor no 5

=> 2€ to F-Droid

month 2

  1. Trail-Sense 2*11=22
  2. Yes xor no 2*5=10
  3. F-Droid 2*20-1*36=4 (because 2€ of 2€ got spend to F-Droid in month 1; sum of all points is 36)

=> 2€ to Trail-Sense

month 3

  1. F-Droid 3*20-1*36=24
  2. Yes xor no 3*5=15
  3. Trail-Sense 3*11-1*36=-3

=> F-Droid wins again

month 4

  1. Yes xor no 4*5=20
  2. F-Droid 4*20-2*36=8
  3. Trail-Sense 4*11-1*36=8

=> 2€ to Yes xor no

month 5

  1. F-Droid 5*20-2*36=28
  2. Trail-Sense 5*11-1*36=19
  3. Yes xor no 5*5-1*36=-11

=> F-Droid gets 2€

month 6

  1. Trail-Sense 6*11-1*36=30
  2. F-Droid 6*20-3*36=12
  3. Yes xor no 6*5-1*36=-6

=> Trails-Sense 2€

After 6 month

F-Droid 6€
Trails-Sense 4€
Yes xor No 2€

Maybe it is better to calculate the percentage per month of the point: F-Droid 20/36 ~ 55% of the monthly points. The next month the sum of the points could be different but the % could work.

1 Like
11

It takes too much time, we need something that only needs to be configured once and then runs forever.
If something takes too much time, nobody will use it.

12

Wouldn’t it be easiest if the 55% of the €2 were transferred directly? So €1.1 per month?

13

That all sounds ideal from a users perspective, but I can foresee all sorts of practical difficulties in implementing such a system, particularly when it comes to international transactions: taxes, fees, fraud, administration etc.

However even if all those problems could be overcome I am not convinced it would increase the likelihood of anybody donating. Those folk who are committed to supporting F-droid will surely be donating already.

14

It already works with buymeacoffee. And I use several apps where I want to give a little to everyone and not just a lot to a few. If we don’t try it out, we’ll never know.

15

buymeacoffee is not in F-Droid

16

I am not donating to open-source software at the moment.

17

neither is liberapay not opencollective nor ko-fi nor paypal nor etc