this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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I'm guessing that's what you are referring to, this is not relevant to normal donations, but only a use of "donations" to circumvent regulation.
Show me any FOSS project that has donations exceeding costs of development, it's basically non existent, only the Linux kernel project itself, which is fair enough to be covered, since the Linux kernel is driven by commercial interests today, and "donations" are payment for membership and influence.
The claim originally in this line of debate was that small projects could risk this, and no they can't, only projects that are in reality commercial are affected. Those are very few, like Red Hat and the Linux kernel itself.
The legislators in EU are not morons, and they actually listen to the FOSS community.
I will stop discussing since suddenly this is about "normal" and I guess "abnormal" donations, and I don't think we're having a clear-headed debate here.
There really are differences, Linux kernel membership could be called based on donations, but they are clearly more than that.
Also you haven't mentioned a single 1 man FOSS project that could be affected, which was the original claim could be even from just being a maintainer, which is bullshit.
We hear these EU warnings over and over again, and they are always wrong.
I continue to believe the risk is real and supported by my links and quotes. You might notice some people in the linked discussions who seem to be thinking it's not entirely baseless. You're free to disagree. I'm not a lawyer anyway.