The minority most vocal against donations have never donated even $1. Premium Membership comes with most donations and gives additional site benefits.
I have donated several hundreds of dollars towards several amiga related charities and bounties during the past decade, without expecting much (if anything at all) in return, but indeed never to the maintenance of amiga.org. I'm not against donating per se, but in this case I'm just not sure who gets the money and for what exactly. I can see how Wayne Hunt, as an individual doing this on his spare time with his own money, would appreciate a cash contribution to cover the costs (and maybe even a little something on top of that as appreciation for his work and time spent). But in this case my understanding is that it's a commercial corporation(?) having no problems spending $10,000 to take over the site. As far as I can see, there are 69 domains hosted on IP address 174.132.193.125 over at
HostGator.com. Shared hosting has never been as cheap as it is today, I have a few shared sites myself, paid out of my pocket, it's actually not that much of a big deal. I like the Amiga.org site, it's an important institution in the amiga community, and I appreciate the efforts being put into it by the owner, webmaster, admins and moderators. I am glad someone (who?) bought it to keep it alive. But as I said in my previous post, I don't quite understand your selling point here. Charity towards commercial corporations doesn't compute; I have reacted in the past when people suggested *donating* money to Hyperion/OS4, I have also reacted when people suggested *donating* money to the MorphOS team. Commercial entities don't ask for charity, they sell products. Non-commercial entities like AROS (or individual developers releasing their software for free) is another thing. At least this is how I see things, but I am perfectly aware that not everyone agrees with my views. And no, I'm not "trying to talk anyone out of donating" like amigadave wrote, I just don't get why I should give you my money. But now you speak of "additional site benefits", and this could be interesting. This sounds like something that could be considered a product even? If you only would tell us a little more of what to expect as a premium "Lifetime Membership" supporter, I may even consider giving $30 to whoever gets it.
