OBS Studio gains another big sponsor with Facebook

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: 14It's sounding to me like you wish you could control Facebook's money yourself. Or, maybe your solution would be that nobody is allowed to earn lots of money or not allowed to donate. What is your ideal here?

I don't know honestly, but for sure it's far from 1 % of the people controlling half of the wealth and controlling welfare by giving or not giving their donations. What's yours? You're cool with the actual situation?

I am not cool with the wealth(power) disparity situation. I am cool with donations to open-source projects and I'm also cool with tax reductions based on donations to non-profits (not applicable to the OP).

It seemed hyper-sensitive and maybe missing the point to be triggered on the 1% issue based on this donation news. That is really what I'm trying to understand -- whether I'm missing a simple and obvious connection, or if some of us are conceited.

It's really easy to point at problems and demand someone to fix them, and to rally with other people that feel the same way. It is, however, much better to try to come up with solutions. In the scope of topics we've been going over, there isn't a simple one; it is in contrast NOT really easy.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: 14

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: 14The fact that Facebook gave money to OBS does not take away any of your money to donate somewhere of your choosing.

Yeah, after the wealthiest people and companies spent their billions, I'm still free to decide where to put my ten bucks. Cool.

Reminds me of the quote: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

I do not understand the point you're making. I mean, I get the point, but it's not applicable. A rich entity donated money somewhere, and that somehow makes it pointless for anyone that's not rich to donate anywhere...? You might as well just stop going to work if you can't earn the same amount of money as the richest corporations in the world with that logic.

So, the OP was Facebook donating money, and that makes you angry. It's sounding to me like you wish you could control Facebook's money yourself. Or, maybe your solution would be that nobody is allowed to earn lots of money or not allowed to donate. What is your ideal here?

3. Even if that doesn't result in those big actors contributing most of the money, it does tend to result in their taking over the charities involved. Small donations don't come with opinions about policy attached; large numbers of small donations are basically "background". But big donations very often come with quid pro quo attached; the big donors want the organization to prioritize particular things. So for instance, if you look at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, they give major donations to health initiatives in the Third World. They also have very big investments in pharmaceutical companies. So when they donate to an organization, they want the org to prioritize initiatives that will buy expensive pharmaceuticals over initiatives that will buy mosquito netting. Even if the mosquito netting would be far, far cheaper and more effective. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is also invested in various companies involved in private provision of education. Not surprisingly, it donates to and is involved in organizations that push for "charter" schools and, in general, privatization of education. So it's ratfucking the public education system in the name of charity. More generally, if you look at universities who get donations from alumni, the wealthy alumni with major donations tend to steer the priorities of the universities--they donate to business schools and chairs in economics, not to chairs in ecology or the humanities, let alone labour studies.
So if you hollow out public systems and "replace" them with charitable donations, what you get is wealthy people setting the policy approaches of the charities, and the policy approaches will favour generation of profits for the wealthy donors over actual efficient aid to needy recipients.

OK, keep in mind that just me quoting an excerpt and replying does not always mean I am countering your points.

I want to add that, on the topic of charitable donations, I don't think the government is a better (as in: good-er) distributor of funds than corporations. The government has a primary interest of self-preservation (not a bad thing in itself). Corporations do as well. The government is not a superhero. Don't let us forget how much influence corporations have on the government: I don't see them as that much different from each other.

(By government, I solely have the U.S. in mind.)

Quoting: 14It seemed hyper-sensitive and maybe missing the point to be triggered on the 1% issue based on this donation news. That is really what I'm trying to understand -- whether I'm missing a simple and obvious connection, or if some of us are conceited.

I was triggered by the following:

QuoteThe fact that Facebook gave money to OBS does not take away any of your money to donate somewhere of your choosing.

Of course it doesn't, but when looking at the whole... donation industry, people giving literally billions of bucks does take lots of meaning from what you and me have to give. And donating is executing power.

That said, yes, the connection isn't obvious and I'm fine with being called triggered. :)

Hi, Ben Torell (@dodgepong) here. I want to say a few things in response to the discussion here.

First off, as my Twitter bio says, my full time job is as a full stack web developer for a language services provider. We don't use OBS at my job at all, as it is not connected to video production in any way. All the livestreaming and video production I've done in the past has been as a hobby in my free time, and in net, I have lost a lot more money on it than I have gained. If OBS were to cease existing, my full-time job would not be affected whatsoever.

Second, OBS is not currently a non-profit, but we are in the process of putting one together. One of the primary reasons we want to have a non-profit is to protect the program and its goals from outside corporate interest. Being a non-profit would protect OBS itself from being bought, and would legally obligate the developers to act in accordance with its charitable mission.

Thanks for mentioning LibrePay, I wasn't aware that existed. That said, the main advantage Open Collective provides (for which we are paying a 10% fee) is that of fiscal sponsorship, and thus their ability to handle corporate payments better than your average consumer level payment processor. Larger contributions end up using ACH, for example, and they handle a lot of the legwork that makes that seamless on our side. Personally I think the 10% is just the cost of doing business, and I think it's been worth it because it has enabled us to receive contributions beyond what we would have been able to do otherwise. Once we get the non-profit set up, we may end up moving away from Open Collective, but I think it has served a useful purpose for the time being.