Re: Regarding the AbiFund

In the interim, I've removed the Donate buttons and my Paypal account
information from our website.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Dominic Lachowicz
<domlachowicz@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Many of you know that I've been having trouble with managing the
> AbiFund for a little while now. During the past few months, we've
> apparently been receiving payments from stolen credit cards, usually
> in the amount of $5. In many cases, the card holder (or their credit
> card's issuing company) has initiated chargebacks against us, meaning
> that they want a refund of their money. This is fine by me - I don't
> want to be in possession of stolen money.
>
> The chargeback procedure is nearly completely opaque to me - I don't
> get to see why the money is being refunded or what the specific
> complaint is. So the causes for the chargebacks are (I suppose) just
> speculation. As you can imagine, this is extremely frustrating and
> time-consuming. Worse still, the latest chargeback came with a $10
> fee. So we're not even at a break-even point with these fraudulent
> donations (valuing my time at $0), but it's costing us money to accept
> them.
>
> I have no idea if this affects my credit score or my eBay/Paypal
> seller rating. I have no idea what sort of sick fsck steals credit
> cards and makes small donations to volunteer-run F/OSS projects, in
> order to have them be charged a $10 processing fee. You're not Robin
> Hood. Whoever you are, I sincerely hope that you choke on a bucket
> full of cocks.
>
> I was ok with Paypal charging us a little fee for using their service.
> We even earned a few dollars in interest from their Money Market fund,
> which almost covered the cost of their service fees. However, I am not
> ok with Paypal charging me a $10 fee plus my time to deal with stolen
> credit cards. But even though the resolution process is perhaps
> unnecessarily cumbersome, it's ultimately not Paypal who is reaming
> us, and so I feel a little sorry for them too, as well as those folks
> whose card numbers were stolen. So I can't be too mad at them.
>
> In light of all this, I feel that I have no decision other than to
> stop accepting donations on behalf of AbiWord and intend to close my
> account as soon as practicable. Today, the fund's balance stands at
> roughly $2300USD. We need to figure out what we should do with this
> money. Some open questions include:
>
> * Does anyone want to manage the fund, in light of all this? Maybe
> using a different service than PayPal?
> * Should we "donate" this money to Marc and Martin's company, AbiSource, BV?
> * Should we give this money to some of the core developers?
> * Should we use it to purchase hardware? (do we need any?)
> * Should we sponsor some projects that don't get accepted to GSoC?
> * Should we donate it to some worthy non-profit? Feed the
> children/breast cancer/whatever
> * Etc.
>
> I would like to hear from at least the core developers ASAP (Tomas,
> Marc, Martin, Robsta, Hub, Sum1). And if anyone else has a suggestion
> for how to proceed, I appreciate your feedback.
>
> Best regards,
> Dom
> --
> Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly
> recognizes genius.
>

-- 
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly
recognizes genius.