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 .org or .com would 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 .net would 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 .dev or .me TLD?
I think .dev is usually used for “in development” projects, but I can also see it as “about a developer” (and that’s why I bought mine)
