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What domain name to choose for an open source website where I could ask for personal donations? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Just please don’t be smart ass and choose a non relevant top-level domain because it looks cute. .io is for the British Indian Ocean Territory. .af is for Afghanistan. queer.af actually got taken down by the talibans.

.com and .org are both open TLDs and totally fine. If you’re afraid to be understood as organization, you can go for .com. It’s the default of the web by now.

If your service can be understood as some kind of web application, you could look into .app as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Doesn’t .com mean “commercial” and that doesn’t fit his project at all.

Go to Namecheap.com and play around with their domain generator. There’s plenty of none-ccTLD’s to choose from.

Depending on the project, you could find a gTLD that fits your project.

.tech .dev .app …etc

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

No, .com is not meant as commercial anymore and it was always open to everybody. No matter how easy the domain resellers are making it, picking TLDs has some implications: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think the relevance of the TLD matters. It's worth being aware of whether you're using a ccTLD, especially in the case of countries like Afghanistan, but you also used .io as an example which is overwhelmingly used by non-British Indian Ocean Territory sites and is proven reliable. It's even managed by an American company.

Then .app isn't a part of the original TLDs, but actually a part of the new wave of modern gTLDs. And if you're considering .app, there's no reason not to consider the thousands of other generic TLDs out there.

Like with the ccTLDs, the only thing you have to consider is the trustworthiness of the managing org.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The .io TLD has been the subject of controversy for a number of years despite (or because it is?) being hijacked by tech.

EDIT: More about it