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Soliciting Donations in The Mac App Store

You can't solicit them here on Macrumors, if that's what you meant. It's in the rules, number 3 under "Instantly bannable offences":

Advertising/soliciting. Using the forums for advertising, site or product promotion, or for business deals and offers. This includes using your posts to promote your own site or blog or business even if it's a wonderful site or blog or business. See the MacRumors About page if you want to buy advertising at the site. You may not make posts to promote commercial, personal, or not-for-profit websites, products, or services. Threads will be deleted if their purpose is to advertise, announce, or promote products, services, or organizations, build traffic at other websites, solicit donations, votes, or participants for surveys, contests, or product testing, carry out business activities including employment requests/offers, or other similar purposes that do not benefit our forum community. Memberships created solely for such purposes will be banned. Exception: Developers of App Store apps and Mac software are afforded special privileges, including certain posting of product promotions. See Guidelines for Software Developers for details.
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But maybe you meant something else?
 
Sounds like the OP means putting a Paypal donation button (or similar) within an app?
 
I think he means creating an App that is free, but within the App it asks the user to consider donationing instead of charging for the App

Sort of like some shareware does, if you use it and like it, donate
 
I think he referred to something like a popup or menu item or something like that, in an app submitted to the Mac App Store.

EDIT: Looks like I was beaten to the punch on this. LOL
 
mstrze said:
Sounds like the OP means putting a Paypal donation button (or similar) within an app?
Click to expand...

MacDawg said:
I think he means creating an App that is free, but within the App it asks the user to consider donationing instead of charging for the App

Sort of like some shareware does, if you use it and like it, donate
Click to expand...

Dalton63841 said:
I think he referred to something like a popup or menu item or something like that, in an app submitted to the Mac App Store.

EDIT: Looks like I was beaten to the punch on this. LOL
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Heh, in that case you can ignore my post. :p
 
MacDawg said:
I think he means creating an App that is free, but within the App it asks the user to consider donationing instead of charging for the App

Sort of like some shareware does, if you use it and like it, donate
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Yeah, that's what I meant. Does anyone know if it's allowed, or will my app be rejected. The application in question is MenuWeather if anyone's wondering.
 
This says donations to recognised charities are OK (but not in-app). To me that implies that other donations (say to the developer to side-step the Apple 30% cut) are not.
 
robbieduncan said:
This says donations to recognised charities are OK (but not in-app). To me that implies that other donations (say to the developer to side-step the Apple 30% cut) are not.
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I'm not trying to get around the 30% cut. I legally can't charge for the app because then I would have to pay Yahoo.com a huge sum of money to use their weather data.
 
fiftyfour123 said:
I'm not trying to get around the 30% cut. I legally can't charge for the app because then I would have to pay Yahoo.com a huge sum of money to use their weather data.
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Unfortunately the rules Apple put in place have to work for everyone and many others would simply be doing it for that reason. The best thing to do would be to submit it with the donation link and see what happens...
 
fiftyfour123 said:
No. My app is free because I want it to be free. But I also need to support myself, so I accept donations. Nobody has to donate if they don't want to.
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Isn't it kind of the same if it's a "donation" or a paid app? You get money for it anyway. Shouldn't Yahoo get it's cut for the services they provide to make your app run?
 
gorjan said:
Isn't it kind of the same if it's a "donation" or a paid app? You get money for it anyway. Shouldn't Yahoo get it's cut for the services they provide to make your app run?
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Like I said, nobody has to donate. It's an option. With a paid app, there is no option.
 
fiftyfour123 said:
Like I said, nobody has to donate. It's an option. With a paid app, there is no option.
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That doesn't matter. If you are making a profit off of the data, Yahoo should be paid.

What would be your defense if Yahoo sued? That you didn't change them, yet people just gave you money for no reason?

I completely understand that programmers need monetary support, but unless you can find this data truly for free (like maybe from the NWS?) you should not be charging...even through an optional donation.
 
I'm not the only developer that does this. WeatherDock, which is another popular weather app for mac, also accepts donations. WeatherDock uses weather.com which also costs money for commercial uses.

The NWS is not an option as half of my users are not in the U.S.
 
fiftyfour123 said:
I'm not the only developer that does this. WeatherDock, which is another popular weather app for mac, also accepts donations. WeatherDock uses weather.com which also costs money for commercial uses.

The NWS is not an option as half of my users are not in the U.S.
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Have you actually checked with yahoo? If they're entitled to money if the money comes from donations?
 
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fiftyfour123 said:
They say it's free for non-commercial uses.
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Are you a commercial business? Meaning, is your 'job' making software and getting paid for it? I think it is in your best interest to stay away from asking for donations for apps that use 'free' data like this. Use it as a goodwill guesture to show how well you create apps and treat it as an 'ad' in a way, for something more profitable in your collection..."if you like 'freeweather', you will love the $9.99 app 'awesomeweather' "... that way freeweather remains free and absolutely not coupled with money-making in any way shape or form, so there is no question about legality.

You are travelling a slippery slope here. Apple may shoot you down in-app anyway, but assuming it passes through, you run the risk of having to defend against Yahoo and prove that you are not profiting from using their data. Of course, Yahoo probably has bigger fish to fry, but maybe this thread will bring this to their attention so..who knows...

Here's a link showing a discussion about this very question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3349497/what-constitutes-non-commercial
 
No, this is not my job. I'm only 19 and still in college. I don't have a job, so I use this as a way to make some money. It's only really a hobby. Pending my talk with my lawyer, what I'll probably do is have the free version of the app with limited features and it won't ask for donations and it will use Yahoo's weather to include my international users. Then, have a paid version that uses the NWS, and has more features, obviously for U.S users only (unless I can find a free weather source that covers the whole planet).

I agree accepting donations within the app is risky. Do you think it would still be ok to accept donations only on my website, and not within the application?
 
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