well, I take the idea of gurdas to be closer to a bounty system or a crowdfunding system--as you know, one of the ways things happen in Zotero is grant funding. The idea would be to add a kickstarter type way to fund specific new features.

Not sure if I have any use of the additional storage since I use only 'link to file' as attachment in my Zotero client. I guess that means the online library has only the top level items, and not the PDF files they link to, right?

that's right. This might still come in handy for groups, though, where you can't use linked files.

well, the question here is the administrative/cost benefit of this. Setting up and maintaining something like this _well_ takes time by itself. So unless this would bring in very significant money, it might actually have a negative effect. (Dan has been very skeptical about non-donation based uservoice type voting in the past for a number of reasons that you can probably dig up with some forum searches).

The other issue is that resources for development are complicated. If Dan is fully booked (which he currently is), then a new feature requires a new developer. Which means finding, hiring, and training someone. Which is, again, costly both in terms of time and money.
So the only way this could work is for relatively isolated features that a contractor or outside developer could develop mainly by herself--like an Android app, e.g. or potentially a google docs plugin. (Docear just did a kickstarter for a word processor plugin, e.g.).

Maybe Dan will have more to say on this and I find the general idea still quite appealing, but given what I know about the Zotero development process, I'm currently doubtful about its practicability.

There are programs that allow this kind of bounty system. For example https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/348214-zotero
Bounties have been discussed a few times on this forum. Many are skeptical that there'd be critical mass to steer the core developers; some are optimistic that it might encourage outside code contributions.

noksagt, that Bounty page looks useful. I noticed al items have a $0 bounty on them. And the minimum Bounty I can set (and have to pay for?) is $15. I am not sure if I want to pay $15 for any one feature, since there is none that prevents me from using Zotero. Does that site allow a group of strangers to create a bounty; for example 5 people pay $5 each to create a $25 bounty?

So the core Zotero staff is funded through CHNM/GMU, grants, and storage subscriptions, and I don't think we would participate in any sort of bounty program ourselves. Our goal is to make the best tools and services possible, and the decisions we make to do that shouldn't be based around what features happen to have bounties. So even if a bounty system existed, if I implemented a feature that had a bounty on it, I wouldn't claim it.

A bounty system for community developers might make sense. To some extent you have the same problem — Zotero benefits greatly from outside contributors, and that includes for things like fixing bugs and working on less-glamorous issues that would never have bounties but that are critical for Zotero's ongoing development. But I'd love for outside developers to have more opportunities to get paid for some of the time they otherwise generously donate to Zotero. Of course, core developer time could still be a bottleneck — even with an externally maintained bounty system it takes a lot of time to discuss, review, and integrate patches — but we of course do all those things already, so the presence of bounties shouldn't really change the situation (at least unless they resulted in vastly more outside development, but that would be a good problem to have).

I do think it'd be critical that a bounty system pulled from GitHub, as Bountysource does, because then, due to the way we use GitHub issues, it'd be limited to changes that were already agreed upon (at least in the abstract, if not for a specific implementation). Otherwise there'd be a situation where people were pledging money for things that might have no chance of making it into official Zotero (which would be fine, of course, but they shouldn't expect to see those things in an official release).

Unfortunately Bountysource appears to have some highly questionable policies: charging at the time of pledging (instead of charging upon completion, Kickstarter-style) and, worse, charging their 10% fee on unfunded bounties (despite presumably also earning interest on the pledged money, potentially for years, because of the first policy). Assuming both of those are true, I would stay far away from them. I don't know if there's a bounty system that integrates with GitHub and doesn't take money until a bounty is paid out, but I think that'd be the only safe model.

(Oh, and I should say, while I don't think we would take part in bounties ourselves, I wouldn't rule out crowdsourced fundraising by Zotero proper. I think that'd be an interesting approach for us for some very demanding feature we wanted to add but likely couldn't get traditional grant funding for (say, client-side encryption).)

In any case, I certainly appreciate the offers of support. On this, though:

what ever it takes for [Dan] to be more efficient

Once I figure that out myself I will definitely let you know.

Yes, "why refusing funds that can help Zotero development, when that is what all of us want?"

I have seen the option of buying storage but this isn't a great way to donate:
- is the cheapest storage you have, and that could be too much for some people willing to support you but by giving you or tips.
- you surely have some fees on the storage so giving you as a (free) donation help you more than paying for the storage (even if it's not used)
- by associating a bank card with a zotero account, it breaks the anonymity (for those interested in remaining anonymous)

I have seen the other discussion, where one of you said that you turned down the donation button because nobody was giving, but it does not cost anything to leave it (and considering the people on the forum asking for it, it should actually by beneficial: zotero may have become more popular since a couple of years, a valid argument a couple of years ago may not be a valid argument today)

Otherwise just a bitcoin address, it easy and free to set up.