A story about donations to open source project AsmJit and Petr Kobalicek
Let me tell you a story of a developer who wants donations for his open-source projects but doesn’t like to keep the information about the donors.
It’s not about the money, I support plenty of programming projects with smaller and bigger amounts of money but I find it very dishonest to ask for donations, keep the donations section and then remove information about the donors (even after a few years).
AsmJit beginnings
I have supported the open-source AsmJit project since its beginning. I found out about it in 2010. A long, long time ago, right?
I check this project from time to time to see what’s new. Back in 2019 I have noticed removed information about my donations, I made a comment on its GitHub repository. Petr didn’t respond to the comment, didn’t send me an email, but got angry when I wrote about it there.
You would like to keep it quiet don’t you Petr?
To be clear, I made a few donations to Petr over the years. He told me the donations were a deal between the two of us to put my link for the donated money…
I didn’t think much about it because I made the donations in 2010 (!), but I have searched my emails and let us see that again:
20 April 2010
Hi Bartek,
I’d like to thank you for your generous donation.
If you want I can add a link to your name and your site under the Donation in AsmJit main page (I looked at your site and you are interested in assembler so this is also related page). You are first who donated to the AsmJit project and you have my respect.
Thank you!
— Best regards
Petr Kobalicek http://kobalicek.com
So you wanted to put the link yourself! Damn dude, you don’t even know what you have said. Back then this project wasn’t popular at all and it was really helpful to me.
I made those donations without expecting anything in return.
Petr wants to disclose the donations amounts (what a nice fellow), so here you go:
- 2010.04.19 (can you believe it?) — 25 EUR
- 2012.12.14–25 EUR
- 2015.01.11–50 EUR
- 2016.03.26–25 EUR
Silly amounts, but it’s not the point of this story. Now let me quote what Petr Kobalicek said back in 2010:
“You are first who donated to the AsmJit project and you have my respect.”
What a nice guy this Petr Kobalicek is (was?) and I thought I was the crazy one before I have checked my past emails…
Now back in 2019 my donations were called paid advertisements and Petr decided to return my donations from 10 years ago:
Hi Bartosz,
It’s sad that you have chosen a public channel to resolve a personal matter between us. I really appreciate all donations, including yours, however, I think that we should differentiate between a donation and a paid advertisement. You “donated” to advertise your own product and I kept that advertisement for a very long time, however, I don’t consider your donation as a lifetime obligation to provide you advertisement of your commercial product.
Initially I wanted to fix this by keeping you on the list by changing the text it to the current donors format, but since you escalated it rather quickly (without even trying to contact me directly) I suggest to return you back all your donations so we can just move on without wasting more time on this. Just send me your IBAN so I can make the payment. I verified the total sum I received from you was ~120.55 EUR (4 payments total, last payment from March 2016), the PayPal archive doesn’t display fees so I will send you the exact amount that I have received. Let me know if it’s not the correct amount, it’s just what I have found in history.
And a last thing. Would you mind me sharing the total amount I received from you and the last transaction date on that issue page? Since you created it and made this thing public with the intention to hurt the project I think it would be fair to add some economic details there so a possible reader can make his own picture about the matter.
Best, Petr
Petr decided to return my money back. But again, this is not about money…
Now, after almost 10 years he doesn’t need my donations. Now when his project has become highly popular. Now when it has some corporate sponsors and doesn’t need to remember about his humble beginnings.
Screw you Petr and your lack of respect to the first supporter of your project.