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?
Those top level domains aren’t set in stone. The majority of TLDs can be used by anyone. It’s more what kind of image you want for your company/project. Lots of open-source projects have .org domains or .io
But you can choose whatever you like. Even a country domain is okay. But I personally wouldn’t choose .com for something open source. Look at the prices and go for .org unless that’s substantially more expensive with your registrar. (My opinion.)
Be careful, if you get a
.pizza, you are only legally allowed to spend the donations on pizza.I know that it doesn’t matter that much at the end of the day but why not spend a minute and get something you’re happy with.
IMHO an
.orgor.comwould send the wrong message. It sort of makes people expect an established non-profit entity or a company, respectively.From the established TLDs I think
.netwould work well in this case.How much do you care about the privacy of your personal data in the TLD’s registry? What about the cost of the domain, going forward? And what about long term stability of the TLD registry?
You could be a douche and get a .io domain.
I’d just peruse your preferred domain registrar’s cheap domains and find one that tickles your fancy. Odds are the domain will cost more than what you’d get in donations unless people REALLY like your service and it gets popular.
Since it’ll be for you and not the project, why not go for a
.devor.meTLD?
I think.devis usually used for “in development” projects, but I can also see it as “about a developer” (and that’s why I bought mine)I never thought of it as “[tool] in development” but as “[tool] for developers”…! I suppose it can be interpreted with any preposition anyway…
Just please don’t be smart ass and choose a non relevant top-level domain because it looks cute.
.iois for the British Indian Ocean Territory..afis for Afghanistan.queer.afactually got taken down by the talibans..comand.orgare 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
.appas well.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
.ioas 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
.appisn’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.
The
.ioTLD has been the subject of controversy for a number of years despite (or because it is?) being hijacked by tech.EDIT: More about it
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
No,
.comis not meant as commercial anymore and it was always open to everybody. No matter how easy the domain resellers are making it, picking TLDs has some implications: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
Normally this sort of organisation is called a “not for profit”. It acts like a company in every respect but doesn’t do more than pay for its own use. Examples are semi-public services such as “Transport for London” etc. in terms of org or dot com, I think you can use either.
I dunno if TFL is a good example to use. It’s just straight up a government-owned corporation and it uses a .gov.uk eTLD.
Have you seen any prices? That was decisive to me. I bought mine through porkbun
Many offers are super cheap for the first N years. I prefer flat and transparent rates, specially for a domain name I will keep (e.g. tied to me, and not the success or failure of some X project of mine)
