Unable to donate...

[kataja]

Paypal.png (45.58 KiB) Viewed 2961 times

I would have give a sum for developing (thought of giving the sum the commercial versions would cost with Nano discount, but didn't get it to work.

I do not have (and actually rather not will!) have a Paypal account.

But the system wanted me to make one, not accepting my credit card directly.

"Some information is missing". To say nothing about the messy address fields not corresponding to the structure of a Finnish street address. That seemed not to be the problem, though. When I noticed the procedure nagged me for "birth date" while there were no fields for a birth date, I gave up...

Please introduce a normal credit card payment procedure .

Edit: trying to ad a screen capture of this stupidity:

[LAP]

Hi kataja,

Thank you for posting about this and your desire to support Linux development for Scrivener - it is much appreciated.

I introduced the PayPal mechanism to gauge how much interest there would be to actively support the Linux platform in a commercial sense. Unfortunately, we have had less than half a dozen donations in the past couple of years. Given that we are not actively seeking donations from Linux users and there has been little interest in donating, I will be removing this functionality in a future update.

I realize PayPal support is limited based on your feedback. However, it does not make sense to invest effort to provision a more sophisticated payment mechanism to essentially a free platform that has little historical interest in donating.

I hope this makes sense. I do appreciate your interest and efforts to support Scrivener for Linux. Thank you.

Lee

[Graybyrd]

I've been generally supportive of the Scrivener for Linux beta project, and aside from my Version 2.5 "Legacy" install on my Methuselah Mac (G4, OS-X 'Tiger') I've viewed the Linux effort as a hopeful future for Scrivener.

I'm a bit disturbed by the disappointed response that more Linux users didn't drop cash into the collection plate. First, it remains a 'beta' effort, unsupported, with little commentary about progress or milestones. Second, any wish for $$ support was low key to the point of 'obscure' to 'none.' Third, if $$ support was a factor for hastening development, I'm sure there'd be a flood of $upport. That reflects my general opinion that other than waves of migration to Android/iOS, I sense that Linux will be the ultimate desktop production platform for creative types (who increasingly avoid MS & Apple for various reasons).

Finally, if it would hasten things along, I'd seriously suggest a 'kickstarter' project to fund Scrivener for Linux development. Might that be a good thing?

[ubersoft]

A number of us just went out and bought licenses for the Windows version. At one point in time it was better to run the Windows version via WINE anyway, especially if you were on a 64 bit system.

Lately though I've been getting the feeling that interest in supporting Linux, unofficial or not, has flagged. The current version of Scrivener works fine for the moment but I guess ultimately I'll either have to go back to running Scrivener through WINE or find something to replace it. Which will be a challenge. Scrivener is tough to replace.

[mehor]

@Lee, don't make a mistake to think that the lack of donations means that there is no interest in Linux version of Scrivener. Donations of this kind almost never work, at least not at user-level (corporate donations are different story). As Graybyrd and ubersoft mentioned, people don't have incentive to donate to a project which is unofficial, probably on hold, with uncertain future. They will rather go and buy a licence for Windows version of the app, as a sign that they appreciate your work. Also, if you ever do release official Linux version which is on par with the other two, I'm sure many of us will go and buy another, Linux licence, even if we already have a licensed Windows version of the app.

[Lars_G]

Ok, I had to finally create an account to comment on this as well as this thread worried me.

I'm a linux user. I use it 99.9% of the time. I'm also someone who wants to write. I have no prospects or intentions on trying to make a living of writing. Not at this moment yet anyhow. And I have some special situations that make it very hard to use foreign currency (USD for example). So ideally I would just use a simple editor or office suite to write. But I use scrivener now tentatively (the betas) even with some errors and lacks in linux yet because it's a wonderful program, also I'm choosing scriv mainly both because it's good and I have a friend (who got me into scrivener) who also tries to write, and with whom I can more easily exchange scrivener documents.

I considered scrivener for linux to be an attempt to port the program to the platform. An attempt that has been hindered mainly by limited staff that has been thoroughly concentrated in releasing a big update for the windows and OS X systems. This exchange makes me feel it's not so, that the linux port was a compile with winelib just for fun to see if it worked, and since there werent a lot of donations it's deemed linux users just don't want to pay for stuff and it's not worth it.....

I've not donated, because every cent of mine counts right now (sorry its my reality), and I was expecting, someday, a purchaseable program. I haven't bought a windows license and used it on wine because I've experienced first hand how these things go a few times. I get the license, the thing works on wine, then the new version includes some odd thing (it's always odd believe me. Normally it's drm) and the program breaks under wine. I try to contact the makers, and then get a response along the lines of "Tough luck, we don't support linux, bye". And then I'm left to lookf for help and hacks and solutions on my own, wich depending on the developer can be differently hard as some actively legally chase and close places where the program is discussed unofitially or worse.

So, what's the bottomline? I expected to pay for scrivener for linux someday if it comes. I also understand it's a program for a niche market, and of the niche many writers will not use linux, and those who do might prefer to write in vim or emacs on the command line (I know a couple people who do) or use an open source program, more limited though, than buy scrivener. So if you require a full team of developers to maintain the linu version to par, yes it will probably not be profitable for you to do so. Yet if you achieve an easy to build port that requires not many patches, it might be worth to do it.

What I am not so sure is that it's a good idea to measure this by the amount of donations.

If you want, see how many demo copies of windows are downloaded against how many copies are bought. Then check how many times the linux versions have been downloaded, if you think linux users don't like to pay for stuff, lower the purchase percentaje you got from windows some, then apply that to your linxu downloads and project your sales.

[Monolecte]

Ok, I create an account for the same reason than Lars_G.

I'm using Linux for my pro activity for 10 years. It's a choice. For an open system and open communities.
When I can, I contribute with money, debug, translation... what I can do.

I pay great software like Antidote (a fury grammatical corrector from Canadians) and I find Scrivener enough good to pay for Linux version.
I'm using Sublime Text to, I can don't pay, but it's really powerfull and usefull and I want participate.

So, what can we do? Launch crowfunding operation to finance Linux dev'?

[underpope]

Hi Lee,

I paid for a WINE version of Scrivener, but didn't care for it in the end. I am VERY happy with the Linux version of Scrivener, but not likely to donate or continue to use it, seeing as how it will expire on January 1. Let us know if there will be more updates after that expiration date, and we will be more likely to donate.

Richard