What's the best way to donate to the phpbb team?

[WWu777]

I'm not sure where to post this, but I was wondering. What's the best way to donate to the phpbb support and development team?

If I donate to the PayPal button on this site, will it go to the website owner or be pooled and shared evenly among every member of the support and development team?

Or is it better to donate to individual support staff using the donation link in their signature?

Thanks.

[Elias]

PhpBB.com does not accept donations, of what I understood last time someone asked.

Which PayPal button are you talking about?

Nothing wrong sending a donation if it’s specified in the user’s signature.

Thanks

[bonelifer]

We don't accept donations. However we are hosted(site) by the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, so any donation to them would be nice. It's our usual suggestion for where to donate to help us.

Link to their donation page:
http://osuosl.org/donate/

[WWu777]

PhpBB.com does not accept donations, of what I understood last time someone asked.

Which PayPal button are you talking about?

Nothing wrong sending a donation if it’s specified in the user’s signature.

Thanks

I thought I saw a donation page before. Maybe it's that page that asks if you want to buy a stuffed teddy bear called Bertie? I thought that teddy bear was sent out in exchange for a donation. Some of the support staff do have donation buttons in their signatures though.

So if this site is hosted and run by Oregon State University, does that mean that the support staff here are students at the university and doing all this thing to get credit toward a degree in computer science or something?

[warmweer]

...
So if this site is hosted and run by Oregon State University, does that mean that the support staff here are students at the university and doing all this thing to get credit toward a degree in computer science or something?

Check the signatures of the "Staff", perhaps google a bit here and there, look at nationalities/locations, think about time-zones and credit yourself with finding the answer to your question

[bonelifer]

PhpBB.com does not accept donations, of what I understood last time someone asked.

Which PayPal button are you talking about?

Nothing wrong sending a donation if it’s specified in the user’s signature.

Thanks

I thought I saw a donation page before. Maybe it's that page that asks if you want to buy a stuffed teddy bear called Bertie? I thought that teddy bear was sent out in exchange for a donation. Some of the support staff do have donation buttons in their signatures though.

So if this site is hosted and run by Oregon State University, does that mean that the support staff here are students at the university and doing all this thing to get credit toward a degree in computer science or something?

No OSUOL is a non-profit ran by OSU. It's purpose is to foster Open Source Software(see their about page, link below). One way to do that is by hosting various projects. None of our team members are students at OSU. We have team members from all over the world (See team map link below). They work in all sorts of jobs, some related to programming and some not at all. Things like lawyers, sound engineer(think movies, etc), students(various countries/ majors), some in IT, some programmers for companies, and some free lance programmers. Team members work on the project, whether that's the programming side or the support or board management side, because we like doing so. As much as most boards out in the world are hobbiest boards run by hobbiest, so is the case for the phpBB teams. Not all people who supply support on this board are team members. You can tell official team members by their ICONNED ranks, ie like my Community Team rank. Only ranks with ICONS are actual project teams members. We do have some recognition based text only ranks.


http://osuosl.org/about/

http://www.phpbb.com/about/map/

[Sistineko]

If you know PHP, contributing to the software is probably considered as donating in a way. ^_^

[WWu777]

But what about the old adage: "There's no free lunch"? We were always told that there is no getting something for nothing. The law of karma says so too. The universe has a balancing mechanism.

That adage doesn't apply here? So phpbb is an exception to that adage?

So the support team and developer team here derive pleasure from creating this forum platform, like a painter gets pleasure from painting? Wow. So this is a form of creative art then?

[canonknipser]

I think there are plenty of motivations for the people giving support here:
Some are running a phpBB-board for years and want to give back some of the help they got when they started their board
Some using their qualified help to attract customers for paid work, eg. creating special styles or extensions or help in running boards
Some like to (virtually) meet people from all over the world sharing same interests

[HiFiKabin]

Why do people volunteer for anything? Coaching youth sports teams? Hospital Visiting? Charity Collections?

1) Because they WANT TO

2) Because they want to contribute to the wider community

3) Because it gives them pleasure.

There is more to life than money

[Mick]

So the support team and developer team here derive pleasure from creating this forum platform, like a painter gets pleasure from painting? Wow. So this is a form of creative art then?

You're damn right!!

But what about the old adage: "There's no free lunch"?

Maybe it's a hobby, people walk homeless dogs for free because they like exercise.

[JoshyPHP]

Money is a universal motivator. There are hundreds of open issues in the tracker and if users were able (and encouraged) to spend money to get them fixed, that number would go down much faster than just waiting for someone with the expertise, time and motivation to do so.

There's a website called BountySource that purportedly does that for open source projects. I only know it by name so I don't know how well it works. Regardless, it's sad to see someone care enough about something to want to spend money on it (and get nothing in return) and not be able to.