Donations

[Axsyrus]

(EDIT: Please read also Talad\'s answer below)

I\'ve seen a lot of people asking if/how they could donate to this project so I\'ve decided to make a page with other projects that planeshift uses that do need donations.

CrystalSpace
CrystalSpace is the 3d engine PlaneShift uses, you can find the donation page here .
If you donate to this project you will help CrystalSpace(and PlaneShift) in the following ways:

• The CrystalSpace devs will be able to buy better hardware.
• The CrystalSpace devs will be able to buy better software.
• The CrystalSpace devs will be able to advertise the engine and PlaneShift in newspapers, websites and other magazines.
• When 1.0 is released the money can be used to help create a CD-ROM for CS.
• Paying for Crystal Space server(s).

SourceForge
\"SourceForge.net is the world\'s largest Open Source software development web site, providing free hosting to tens of thousands of projects.\"
PlaneShift is one of these projects, and it would greatly help if you donate to sourceforge as it is their only way of raising money while they make up loads of money every month just to maintain all the servers they have. You can donate to SourceForge here .


That are all projects you can donate to right now(I think), there are some other important projects PlaneShift uses too, here are the links to their webpages:
- CEL (http://cel.sourceforge.net/ )
- Cal3d (http://cal3d.sourceforge.net/ )

However if you really want to help planeshift, the best thing you can do is simply advertise the game or join the dev team(only if you\'re sure you can help, planeshift is not a simple project for people that just started coding/art etc.)

[Talad]

At present time there is no way to donate money to PlaneShift. We decided to avoid it because the current release (Molecular Blue) is not mature enough and does not provide a great experience to players. With next release it\'s possible that we will open an account for donations.

Donating money to crystal space or sourceforge does not speed up PS development. Donate to those projects if you know their purposes and aims.

[Seytra]

With the arrival of a donation link reviving this thread seems justified.

I'm quite torn about that issue. Once money is involved, things always show a tendency to stray off the originally intended track, heading where the money is coming from.
A tendency. Next comes, of course, the obvious issue of "I want some of that money, too!", i.e., internal struggle.
If none of these happen, and several projects (seem to) stay on track despite taking donations, one thing is still making me nervous:

On the paypal page, be sure to specify a feature or area that you would like to see expanded or improved in "Payment For" field.

With all the posts about the devs doing their thing and developing their vision (Wish-list: "Post here, and the devs might consider it"), this little sentence takes me by surprise. Does this mean that I can donate 1000000$ and effectively purchase open PvP? Even if not, does it mean that I can purchase almost exclusive development in the fighting system? Overall, it quite obviously does mean that the one who donates is getting something in return, more like a purchase than a donation.
What is wrong with that? Superficially, it looks as though there's nothing wrong with it. However, it quite clearly means that the ones who have more money get more say than anyone else (which traditionally has been "none"). So I think that there actually is something wrong with it. A better approach would have been to conduct an anonymous poll that is not connected to the, just as anonymous, donation system, asking everyone to vote for areas to focus on, and then allocate the donations accordingly.
PS is moving towards the "Premium user" domain, it seems.

[acraig]

I donate $100 to my university every year and they ask me how I want to direct my funds ( I always direct to the Engineering department ).  That doesn't mean I get a say in what courses are being taught or who graduates, just that the money is directed to that department.  Also they don't send me anything ( besides a tax write-off ) and I don't get any bennifits from it.  This is the intent here, to be a 'general' idea of where you want the donations to go.  Perhaps it might be better if we gave a list of options there to avoid this type of confusion. 

[DaveG]

The donation thing was just added because people asked for it, and hey, we're not going to turn it down. 

We expect that it'll probably go to servers, advertizing, or some other stuff like that.  It's not going to people.

By the way, we've had open PvP code for a while.  It's just not on because we haven't had the room to set up propper PvP regions.

[The Wandering Djinn]

Would it be possible to investigate setting up donations via this online method

http://www.paybycash.com/

PayByCash.Com already have quite a few Online Games who use their services in addition to and instead of PayPal donations and payments.

No Credit Cards involved - payments from Players are made through bank account transfers. I have used this secure method before with PayByCash and there were no glitches in either direction of the transfers. 

[Seytra]

Looks good, superficially. Having read their customer agreement, however, they seem to be way too much focused on protecting themselves from any and all eventualities, usually involving customers paying fees of some sort that are IMNSHO unreasonably high. I haven't yet looked at the one from PayPal, though I expect that to be quite similar, and I have yet to read their privacy statements.