Consider that some of the projects they collect on "behalf" of already have donation mechanisms in place, both from a technical and legal perspective, and would prefer to see those mechanisms used.
And that is a choice they get to make because it's their project. They also don't accept mitten donations as far as I know. Are you going to collect mittens from people on their behalf and email every committer to receive their mittens?
Overloading productive open source devs with spam and administrative bullshit is parasitic. (Allegedly) collecting money after a project has told them to stop is parasitic at best.
Not all open source developers want money for their open source software. You think collecting money using someone else's hard work isn't a bad thing. A hard work that the person explicitly went to the trouble of making free and abstained from any income derived solely from it.
This project is only directly, which violates indirectly. Lots of people don't want to be paid directly for their open-source projects.
Mainly because that's precisely what open-source isn't: it's not distribution of software services. There isn't a consumer-producer relationship.
Indirectly is what works great: someone with a vested interest pays an open source developer for his expertise to make sure the open source project continues on. The developer is backed by the full extent of labor laws, welfare services and all other work-related niceties her or his country might have. Or the developer provides a service with clear boundaries which other people pay for, helping provide income for the project's developer and possibly giving it guidance.
Directly there's none of that. There's only people giving money to someone who now has to bear the full legality of it, unaware of the purpose or source of said money. If they don't want it, don't force it on them. Not to mention most projects which want money already have a system set up for it, a system which they explicitly decided was the best for them.
There are loads of other ways to support open source developers other than forcibly putting them in a situation in which they need to hire a lawyer.
I agree that an open source developer can object to donations on a personal level and I think it's a very reasonable request to personally unsubscribe from communications from some entity.
What I don't agree with is complaining that you're being spammed after you put your contact information in the public domain and receive a notification that somebody would like to give you money. I also don't agree that a "project owner" should get to deny any potential contributors to receive donations based on his own personal objections.
First I don't agree a request should be made to unsubscribe. There shouldn't have been anything to unsubscribe from.
Second it's not the project owner's fault simply because their contact information is out and about. You're saying spamming people with promises of money that has their legal name attached to is just fine and it's the people's fault they allowed themselves to get spammed.
The worst thing, even, is that the people doing the donating have no idea if their money actually got to the person they intended it to.
> I also don't agree that a "project owner" should get to deny any potential contributors to receive donations based on his own personal objections.
This is the part I most strongly disagree with. You're trampling over people's livelihoods, principles and personal choices. Accepting donations has legal repercussions. Legal repercussions the top4commit owners wilfully disregard and have no intention of paying attention to. There are countries with laws that'd make the open source developer liable to damages and tax evasion.
That is only the legal part. The principle part is that many people don't write open source software to get paid from it. They have abdicated from gaining monetary advantage from distribution of knowledge. If you want to pay them, hire them and pay them for their expertise. It's a personal choice, one that is being disrespected here.
This project should simply work on consent-only or be dismantled. Remove all current repositories and advertise to gain project owners who actually want to be there. The people who created tip4commit have no legal expertise or intent to get legal advice, they're not helping the Open Source community, and most of all they have no transparency or accountability in the event of fraud.
