psi29a wrote:No one here is personally nor directly benefited by scrawl in sending him gifts/donations. He works on what wants to work on when he wants to, with no expectations. It is plain old "good will".
I'm not gifting money and I'm still getting to use the same software everyone else gets to use. Therefore it is not an exchange of money for software. What would be illegal is if Scrawl received untaxed donations in exchange for giving OpenMW updates to donatees only.
Of course, with the right angle you can pidgeon-hole everything to be taxable, even gifting money to homeless people so that they can buy food. After all, you are explicitly expecting them to buy food with that money so that you can in exchange feel like you've done something to help them. That's taxable right there.
By the way in reality the homeless guy doesn't have to buy food with that money. It is more likely that he will buy some alcohol and booze off. In our case, Scrawl doesn't even have to use that money to work on OpenMW. If he wants, he can just buy pizza and watch anime. No obligation.