Hello everyone!
We have had almost five years of support on Patreon from our sponsors. We are very grateful! This support has helped keep OpenFL moving forward with better, faster releases with new features, and my goal for this year is added stability and ease of integrating new performance and outside contributions. OpenFL is here to serve the needs of the community, and we want to provide the testing and organizational changes needed to keep OpenFL growing and being your go-to for creative projects.
Patreon has provided the foundation to cover our ongoing expenses, such as this website, our cross-platform build servers and other operating costs.
However, some businesses have desired to give in the past, as a one-time donation, outside of a general fund to one specific feature, or even bounties have cropped up that circle additional testing, documentation, new features or focused improvements to the library. In the past, some of these approaches were difficult, or impossible using Patreon only.
I would like to announce that today, we’ve opened up a new Open Collective for the OpenFL project.
- Donations can be made one-time, or recurring (small recurring donations are more valuable to the team than single donations, usually, but now there’s the option)
- (I believe) It’s simpler to get invoices for donations
- Contributions are made to a 501c6 organization, which is not tax-deductible, but is clearer for donations in taxes
- There is transparency, so donations and pay-outs are visible. This will help for ear-marked funds, bounties and for companies wishing to have more fiscal accountability in how funds are used.
- Bookkeeping on our end is simpler for paying developers outside the USA
- The cut Open Collective takes is a bit higher than Patreon
There’s enough pros and cons that we will be keeping Patreon open, while providing Open Collective as a new platform for funding open-source development on OpenFL, Lime and other projects here.
We appreciate your feedback, especially on how we can help serve you better!
Joshua