Same, I'd love to buy them a beer (or coffee)!

Well, at least we have our undying gratitude to give. ;)

If someone finds a way, I'm in.

What's the rationale for not accepting donations?

Resisting for temptation? Showing for everyone, that decisions are not influenced by money?

Suddenly Google throws a promise of one million donation in hopes of enabling ads in Youtube.

Obviously a project like this has already been offered multi-figure money deals already: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-issues/issues/44

And he declined all.

As someone who is neither a lawyer nor an expert, I always wondering if refusing donations gave them less surface area for civil suits from advertising companies for stolen revenue.

How could they complain about stolen revenue? Even if he took donations that doesn't make any sense. He didn't sign an agreement with the advertisers, the page displaying the ads did or the person viewing the page clicked through a "thou shalt not block ads" but that is extremely unlikely to stand up in court plus horrible PR. I know I would personally end any relationship with and boycott any company that pulled that on a regular Joe.

I've copy pasted some of his rationale for not accepting donations (with links to the originals), in my comment on this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230210

I am left feeling awful about Money, Advertisement, False promises after modestly exploring this.

I also wanted to support financially - and after seeking to support, and encountering the misleading "ublock dot org" (called-out as unrelated on github.com/gorhill/ublock - where it claims Chris Aljoudi of CO seeks $$$ for gorhill's project) I feel terrible.

I'll let my feelings drive my action here, and not continue seeking to support.

ublock github is the best desktop ad blocker.

You can also pick your favorite list(s) and send a few bucks their way for their efforts, which are also critical.

Don't forget blocklist maintainers. Their work is just as valuable as the actual adblocker — without them, it would be mostly useless. I checked mine and none of them seem to be accepting donations, but yours might.

Volunteer your time reporting blocking issues. Also sign up for the annoyances filters and report for those as well, because there's opportunities everywhere

He's written in detail (with many revisions) about why he doesn't accept donations...since 2014, actually (and versioned those on GitHub too).

The latest version from April 2022 [1] says:

> I do not want the administrative workload that comes with donations. I do not want the project to become in need of funding in any way: no dedicated home page + no forum = no cost = no need for financial support. I want to be free to move on to something else if ever I get tired of working on these projects (no donations = no expectations).

> Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. I can not emphasize this enough.

The oldest version from July 2014 [2] says:

> A couple of reasons, each on its own is enough for me to not want donations.

> First reason is a mix of practicality and because of who I am.

> If I were to accept donations, because of who I am, I would be unable to not disclose exactly what is going on with these donations: revenues, withdrawals (for what purpose), etc. Because these would be funds donated with the expectations to help, I would want to disclose everything related to these donations, so people who have given know how their donations are used for this project. That's just who I am, I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. Thing is, I don't want to deal with all this administrative work I would bring to myself if I were to accept donations. I just want to code.

> Second reason, to ensure the main purpose of these projects is protected.

> If I were to accept donations, then in my opinion, the projects (µBlock, HTTP Switchboard) would start a slow descent toward becoming dependent on outside funding, a slow descent toward a mean to earn funds, and this drift eventually leads to the projects' main purpose becoming vulnerable to other agendas. In my opinion. There are excellent open source projects out there which accept donations and are not compromised. Some others are in my opinion. So, as it is, I don't want these projects to have a dedicated home page (requires funding), a forum (requires funding), or whatever requires funding. No financial footprint means no way the main purpose can be preempted (µBlock, HTTP Switchboard are GPLv3). It bothers me Firefox decided to go along with HTML5 DRM.

[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...

[2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...

Honestly this just makes me wanna tip them even more. Even if it's a Hallmark card with a handwritten "thanks, no strings attached" with beer money. But I respect that ability to walk away guilt-free. It's a magical thing.

Totally agree. The value that ad blockers (especially uBlock Origin) have given in terms of user experience is immeasurable. It's a stark difference evoking anger as well as sympathy when looking at someone else's default (Chrome, usually) browser not having an ad blocker.