I am planning to create an open source project for a web application whose entire premise is to provide an otherwise paid service for free, so I am not planning to commercialize the project. This project is also a passion project. I seek to improve my skills by working on the application and I am not looking forward to expand it as an organization nor invest more time or resources into it than necessary.

However I want to know if I could ask for voluntary donations which support me on a personal level and not for the project itself. I want to consider it as a passive income and I don’t care how much I receive in donations as long as I am doing it ethically and someone is willing to donate for this purpose knowingly.

If it is possible for me to ask for donations this way, how would it impact the domain of my website? Could I use .org for it being non-profit overall or would I need to use .com for asking for donations to be used for personal expenses in any manner? Or would I need to use a specific domain for this situation?

  •  luciole   ( @luciole@beehaw.org ) 
    4•27 days ago

    Just please don’t be smart ass and choose a non relevant top-level domain because it looks cute. .io is for the British Indian Ocean Territory. .af is for Afghanistan. queer.af actually got taken down by the talibans.

    .com and .org are both open TLDs and totally fine. If you’re afraid to be understood as organization, you can go for .com. It’s the default of the web by now.

    If your service can be understood as some kind of web application, you could look into .app as well.

    •  Melmi   ( @melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
      6•27 days ago

      I don’t think the relevance of the TLD matters. It’s worth being aware of whether you’re using a ccTLD, especially in the case of countries like Afghanistan, but you also used .io as an example which is overwhelmingly used by non-British Indian Ocean Territory sites and is proven reliable. It’s even managed by an American company.

      Then .app isn’t a part of the original TLDs, but actually a part of the new wave of modern gTLDs. And if you’re considering .app, there’s no reason not to consider the thousands of other generic TLDs out there.

      Like with the ccTLDs, the only thing you have to consider is the trustworthiness of the managing org.

    •  Meldrik   ( @meldrik@lemmy.wtf ) 
      4•27 days ago

      Doesn’t .com mean “commercial” and that doesn’t fit his project at all.

      Go to Namecheap.com and play around with their domain generator. There’s plenty of none-ccTLD’s to choose from.

      Depending on the project, you could find a gTLD that fits your project.

      .tech .dev .app …etc