# Digital Freedom meets Digital Payments NGI Forum 2025 21 Jun 2025 Tags: GNU Taler Summary: How GNU Taler will increase funding of FLOSS Özgür Kesim Developer, GNU Taler oec-taler@kesim.org https://taler.net/ ## Thesis Anonymous { - micropayments - donations - subscriptions } via GNU Taler will help fund Digital Freedom (FLOSS, services, etc.) significantly. ## Thesis Anonymous { - micropayments - donations - subscriptions } via GNU Taler will help fund Digital Freedom **by an additional 1.2 Billion € by 2030**. ## Why should that happen? ## Gedankenexperiment A Let's say a new digital payment service enters the market. Same type of account based technology (credit card, wire transfer, "paypal",...) Has some sort of advantage and reaches critical mass. **How much more funding will it make possible?** Probably not much more. ## Gedankenexperiment B Let's say a new digital payment service enters the market. It offers - full anonymity for buyers - micropayments and reaches critical mass. **How much more funding will it make possible?** Probably (much?) more. ## Gedankenexperiment C Let's say a new digital payment service enters the market. It offers - full anonymity for buyers - micropayments - **microeffort** and reaches critical mass. **How much more funding will it make possible?** Probably much more. ##

Anonymous micro-{payment & effort}
⇒ macro effect!

## Macro effect Optimistic, yet reasonable estimate: After growth of x years of GNU Taler in the EU, N Mio users will on average pay y€/month on Digital Freedom (FLOSS software, services) via Taler. **⇒ `N*y*12` Million € per year.** ## About GNU Taler... ## Demo low friction payment via Taler... ## Demo low friction integration of Taler... ## What is still needed? ## EU-wide availability ## Existing Forms of Funding ## Existing forms of funding 1. Large companies - via resources (engineering, sponsoring events) 2. Goverment grants, like NGI (EU) 3. Independent foundations (Linux Foundation,...) 4. User donations - mostly "paypal", "patreon", "github", "gofundme",... 5. Ad revenue 6. PlayStore, AppStore // 5. Volunteers, Students ## Goverment grants Great form of funding, especially initial stages. Included: Selection Process, Coaching, Networking. Follow-up often possible ‥‥ But not a continuous income stream. depends on political will and fiscal situation ## NGI Dedication to FLOSS Aims at increasing digital sovereignty ‥‥ But also not reliable income stream. ## Large Companies FB, G, A's, etc. provide significant resources. Funding via hired engineers, sponsoring events, compute resources. Focus on very few selected projects, core technologies - linux kernel, compilers, kubernetes,... Often have strong control over governance of the FLOSS projects. Mixed bag: economical incentives of companies do not necessarily align with other users' or developers needs. (Licensing models...) ## "patreon" et al. Closed systems: Users and Devs need to enroll. Works well (enough?), but... - no privacy - enrollment required - engagement overhead for contributors - incentives unclear Costs? (TODO) ## Wake up calls ## License matters - failed adoption due to license (f.e. plan9) ## Funding and security - understuffed maintainance (OpenSSL, Log4j,...) - knowledge flee (GNUPG) - Part of the xz, npm,... - TODO OTHER? ## Anti-patterns - gated ecosystems (play-store) - big sponsors (dependency, control, incentives) ## Why Anonymous? Users want it. Well, _some_ users want it. In fact, given the choice, users would choose it. The option does not exists besides cash or bitcoins etc. ## FLOSS Very diverse set of people, software, incentives, etc. ## Funding Software vs. Funding Service ## Micro-{payment, cost, effort} => Macro effect ## Ideas for models - anonymous donations - anonymous subscriptions - anonymous feature voting ## Github sponsors > GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization. GitHub Sponsors charges a fee of up to 6% for sponsorships from organization accounts. The 6% fee is split between the following: > - 3% credit card processing fee > - 3% GitHub service processing fee > Organizations can save the 3% credit card processing fee by switching to invoiced billing for sponsorships. For more information, see Paying for GitHub Sponsors by invoice. Minimum: 25$ one-time or monthly