I’ve been analysing my server access logs for the past year or so recently, and I’m pleased to note that a lot of you have been downloading my Cocoa source code.
It’s brilliant to see the code being used in so many nifty applications (and I have quite a backlog of apps to add to that list too; apologies for the delay). So, good job everyone.
Now to a delicate point. There are, naturally, some costs (financial and otherwise) with making all the code available, responding to emails, making updates and so forth, but I’m determined to keep the code online, available and completely free of charge in perpetuity. It’s not going away, and it’s not being held hostage – I want to be clear about that. You are more than welcome to grab all the code and use it in as many apps as you like, at zero cost to you, for all time. That’s always been how I’ve done this.
Having said that, I did set up a donations link on the source code page a while back to hopefully help offset some of my costs in providing this resource. A very kind few (nine of you, to date) have made a contribution, and I’m extremely grateful for that.
With the recent popularity of pieces of code like MGTwitterEngine, MGScopeBar, MGTemplateEngine and so forth, the bandwidth usage (and email/support burden) has increased considerably over the past year, so this post is a gentle request, if you’re using some of the code, to consider making a small donation to support my work here. No minimum, and I really don’t want you to feel pressured to donate, but… well, you know. Financial realities do sometimes intrude on the wonderful world of sharing open source code. That’s why my license encourages you to use the code in commercial apps as well as free/open-source ones too.
The (Paypal) donation link is below, and you’ll also find it on the Cocoa source code page itself. If you prefer to do it directly, my Paypal email is just my gmail.com address (my username is matt.gemmell – note the two Ts, two Ms and two Ls).
I’ve also been advised to include a link to my Amazon wishlist too, so there you go.
I won’t labour the point; this’ll be the only post on this topic, so don’t feel you’ll be spammed. Just consider it a quick commercial break. Now, get back to Xcode and make some more awesome things.
I’ve transfered funds from my bank account to PayPal and am waiting on that. I’ll gladly make a donation once that’s done, your code and blog are among the best and most helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share it!
Happy to contribute to great code but I do have a question. If the cost of hosting the code is going up why not simply open source it at a host like github that will make it simple for folks to follow the versions of the code base and doesn’t cost you a dime? Either way, just curious and thanks!
I think it is only just that people who use your source code in their products donate a little something (every little bit helps) to help you keep providing the source as a free service to the community. Keep up the great work Matt.
Consider linking to your Amazon wishlist. At my previous company, company policy did not allow me to make a voluntary contribution for open-source code, but it did allow me to buy the coder’s entire wishlist on our Amazon account…
Why don’t you move the code to gitHub or google code to help remove the bandwidth costs?
GitHub also includes Pledgie integration, so you can accept donations through Paypal simply for any of your repositories.