FreeTube

I feel like talking about money with projects like this ends up a bit touchy, so I'll try to make this quick. A few generous people from the community have reached out asking about wanting some method to donate to FreeTube. Thanks to each and everyone of you that have made this offer. Today I can finally say that donations are open, but I want to make one thing very clear:

I do not need the donations, nor will I ever need them.

I really want to stress that donations are optional and will have no effect on the lifespan or future of this project. I already have a steady income and am more than comfortable making payments for things myself. This allows me to work on FreeTube in my spare time without any worry of the success or lack thereof. The other side of this, is that the development of FreeTube will never be faster or slower because of donations.

Having said all of that, I'd like to announce that the FreeTube Liberapay account is now live. If there are other methods that you would like to see supported please let me know.

I will also be opening up a Bitcoin address. You may send Bitcoin donations to this address:

1Lih7Ho5gnxb1CwPD4o59ss78pwo2T91eS

What will the donations be used for?

Any donations sent to me will primarily be used for domain and hosting costs of the website. If I somehow exceed that amount, then they will be used for something else.

You've probably noticed at this point that my release blogs mention something about the releases not being signed. There's a reason why they have yet to be signed.

Code signing is the process of getting a certificate from a verified publisher and bundling it with a unique signature so that the user knows that the application that they just downloaded is genuine and not something malicious. Using unsigned software is typically not recommended and can cause issues if you run the wrong software. At this time, any release of FreeTube is not signed.

The reason for this is because obtaining the certificate from these publishers is rather expensive. A Windows certificate starts at around $200 a year while Apple requires you to sign up for their developer program, which is another $100 a year. If we somehow exceed the cost of domain and hosting, extra donations will be used to fund these certificates.

If we combine the cost of everything (About $45 a year for the domain, and $180 a year for hosting), the total cost of running FreeTube is about $525 a year, or $44 a month. I am fully prepared to make these payments without donations but I want to be fully transparent so that everyone knows what it would take for FreeTube to be fully sufficient on donations.

I will likely make a transparency report every quarter to talk about what kind of donations are coming in so that I may be transparent to everyone, so be on the look out for that. I want to mention one more time that donating is optional and will have no effect on the growth or success of this project. I would like to thank each and every person who ends up donating, it means a lot that you like the project enough to donate.

Take Care!