Support and donations

How Life Framework takes money to pay its running costs, and how to switch it on. Status on 2026-11-08: off. No account or wallet exists yet. The site's /support page lists the costs and says donations are not open.

The rules come from docs/decisions.md: the framework is never sold, a donation buys nothing in any game, and the flagship server may later take cosmetic-only donations under Bohemia's server policy. Facts below were read from the linked pages on 2026-11-08. Anything marked UNVERIFIED could not be read from a primary source (the page blocked automated reads or said nothing); check it before relying on it.

The choice: card routes, ranked by what becomes public

Every card payment goes through a processor that must verify someone's identity (KYC). There is no card route without that. The question is whose identity, who holds it, and what is shown in public. Ranked from least to most public exposure of the maintainer:

What this means:

• Least exposure, no card: the self-custody USDT address. No account, no KYC to receive. It stays pseudonymous until you cash it out through an exchange, which will ask for KYC.
• Least public exposure with cards: Open Source Collective. The host holds the money and you claim costs with receipts, but the ledger is public by design and costs 10%. Your payee profile appears on each expense; use a profile name you are comfortable showing (whether a pseudonymous profile is accepted for payouts is UNVERIFIED).
• Cheapest with cards: GitHub Sponsors. No fee for personal-account sponsors and your identity stays with Stripe and GitHub. The cost is that every donor needs a GitHub account, which shuts out most players.
• Easiest for players with cards: Ko-fi. No donor account, cards and PayPal. Use Stripe, not PayPal, and set a Stripe business name (for example "Life Framework") so donors' statements do not show your legal name.
• Not worth it now: card on-ramps into the wallet (partner onboarding and a backend for a few donations), Patreon (10% and reward-shaped), Buy Me a Coffee (Ko-fi does the same for less).

Recommendation

1. Primary: a self-custody USDT address on TRON (TRC-20). It is what the maintainer asked for: no account, no KYC to receive, near-zero upkeep, and every payment is publicly checkable on Tronscan, which is the transparency page for free.
2. Secondary, for cards: the maintainer picks one from the table. Our lean is Ko-fi via Stripe with a business name set if reaching players matters most, or Open Source Collective if keeping the money out of your own name and showing a public ledger matters more than its 10%. GitHub Sponsors is the cheapest but needs donors to have GitHub accounts.
3. No Patreon, no Buy Me a Coffee, no card on-ramp for now.

Bohemia's rules

Two pages govern money around Arma Reforger. Neither mentions donations to a mod project.

• Server monetisation policy (2 June 2025), https://reforger.armaplatform.com/news/server-monetization. It applies to a server, so to the flagship later, not to the project:
  • "Accepting donations is allowed, but not providing donations must not prevent anyone from accessing any content."
  • Charging for access is allowed "if the fees and associated perks do not affect gameplay in any way". Selling gameplay items (its example: "a ghillie suit, weapons, attachments") is forbidden.
  • A monetised server must apply, be approved, and appear on Bohemia's approved list; it stops monetising if removed. The application lives at https://www.bohemia.net/monetization (content UNVERIFIED; the page blocked automated reads).
• Workshop Terms of Use, section 3, https://reforger.armaplatform.com/workshop-terms. A custom licence "shall explicitly prohibit any direct or indirect monetization of the Content".

So we keep two things apart:

• Donations to the project pay the project's costs (AI tooling, website, domain). They are not tied to the mod: the mod, its Workshop page, and its UI carry no donation link, and donating unlocks nothing. This is our reading of the rules above, not a Bohemia statement; ask Bohemia in writing before linking donations from anywhere near the Workshop.
• Flagship server perks (M4 at the earliest) need Bohemia's approval first, stay cosmetic, and never gate content.

Where the money goes

website/content/costs.json is the public cost list on /support. The maintainer edits it; the page shows null as "Not filled in yet". Known today:

Never type an estimate into amount. Change updated when you edit the file.

What is wired, and how to switch it on

The page draws each address's QR code at build time (website/scripts/support.mjs, qrcode-generator); no QR web service sees it. The build refuses to publish:

• a TRON address whose checksum fails, or an Ethereum address of the wrong shape;
• a card link that is not https, or a card link without a name;
• "enabled": true with nothing filled in;
• "enabled": true without .github/FUNDING.yml, or the file without "enabled": true.

The switch (one PR)

1. In website/content/support.json, paste the address into the TRC-20 entry, and/or fill card.name and card.url. Delete the ERC-20 entry unless you made one. Set "enabled": true. That line is the switch.

2. Add .github/FUNDING.yml:

   # Only the lines for accounts that exist.
   # github: [Life-Framework]      # if GitHub Sponsors is the card route
   # ko_fi: <ko-fi username>       # if Ko-fi is the card route
   # open_collective: <slug>       # if Open Source Collective is the card route
   # liberapay: <username>         # if Liberapay is the card route
   custom: ["https://life-framework-arn.pages.dev/support"]
   

   Change the custom URL to https://life-framework.org/support at the DNS cutover (website/README.md).

3. In README.md, replace "We do not take donations yet. When we do, the site's support page lists the ways to give and every cost." with "The ways to give and every cost are on the support page."

4. cd website; npm run build; npm run check. Open /support and compare the address on the page and in the QR code with the one in your wallet.

To switch off: "enabled": false and delete .github/FUNDING.yml.

Maintainer setup

You do these; no agent can, and no agent should ever see a secret. What we need back is public: an address or a URL.

A. Self-custody USDT wallet (TRON, TRC-20)

About 15 to 30 minutes.

1. Pick a wallet that keeps the keys on your device. For more than pocket money, a hardware wallet that supports TRON (Trezor and Ledger both do). For a start, a non-custodial app such as TronLink. Do not use an exchange account: it is custodial and requires KYC.
2. Create the wallet and write the recovery phrase on paper. Keep it offline. Never type it into a website, a chat, a password manager you share, a GitHub issue, Discord, or any AI agent, including ours. Nobody from the project will ever ask for it. Anyone with the phrase owns the money.
3. Open the TRON account and copy its receive address. It starts with T and is 34 characters. Choose TRC-20 because fees are low. An Ethereum (ERC-20) address is optional and costs donors more to use; skip it unless someone asks.
4. Keep a little TRX in the wallet. Receiving USDT is free, but sending it on later burns TRX (or uses staked energy) as the fee.
5. Test it. Send a small amount of USDT on TRC-20 to the address from anywhere, and see it arrive on https://tronscan.org.
6. Send us the address only. Post it in the PR or tell the lead. We put it in website/content/support.json; you check the merged page against your wallet before anyone is told.

Things to know:

• Every payment to the address is public and permanent on the chain. Donors and amounts are visible to anyone with the address. That is the transparency, and also the privacy limit: once you pay someone from it, they can follow the trail.
• Turning USDT into euros or dollars on an exchange almost always needs KYC there.
• Tax may still apply where you live (income, or wealth held in crypto). We did not check the rules for your country; ask your tax office or an accountant.
• A lost recovery phrase means lost money. A crypto payment cannot be refunded or reversed.

B. One card route (only the one you pick)

Ko-fi (under an hour)

1. Sign up at https://ko-fi.com with a project name ("Life Framework"), not your own.
2. Connect Stripe for cards (Stripe asks for ID, address, and bank account; it is private to Stripe). Skip PayPal: it shows your PayPal name to donors.
3. In the Stripe dashboard, set the public business name and statement descriptor to "LIFE FRAMEWORK" so card statements do not show your legal name.
4. Turn off shop, commissions, and memberships. Donations only.
5. Send us https://ko-fi.com/<name>.

Open Source Collective (form in under an hour, acceptance takes longer)

1. Go to https://opencollective.com/create, sign in with GitHub, and pick Open Source Collective as the host. It checks an open-source licence, an organisation repo, and recent activity (https://docs.oscollective.org/getting-started/acceptance-criteria); we meet all three. Two admins are preferred: add the lead.
2. Use "Life Framework" as the collective name and the GitHub repo URL.
3. After acceptance, set the contribution options to one-off and monthly with free amounts.
4. To spend: submit an expense with the receipt (Claude invoice, domain renewal). It is paid to the payout method on your profile.
5. Send us https://opencollective.com/<slug>.

GitHub Sponsors (about an hour, then a few days of review)

1. An owner of the Life-Framework org turns on two-factor authentication and opens https://github.com/sponsors/accounts, then "Get sponsored" next to Life-Framework.
2. Choose bank account (Stripe Connect; ID, address, bank, private to Stripe) or a fiscal host. Switching later goes through GitHub Support.
3. Fill in the US tax form GitHub asks for (W-8BEN as an individual outside the US; W-8BEN-E as a company).
4. Profile: paste the short text below. Tiers: one-time with a custom amount, and monthly at $5, $10, and $25, each rewarded with thanks only.
5. Submit for review (https://docs.github.com/en/sponsors/receiving-sponsorships-through-github-sponsors/setting-up-github-sponsors-for-your-organization).
6. Send us https://github.com/sponsors/Life-Framework.

Profile text for any platform:

Life Framework is an open-source life and roleplay framework for Arma Reforger, and the 1989 Everon server that proves it. Money given here pays the project's running costs: the Claude subscription the AI-first development runs on, the website and domain, and later a game server. The costs are listed at https://life-framework-arn.pages.dev/support. A donation buys nothing in any game. Thank you.

Discord (apply only after the switch)

The maintainer wants Discord quiet, so no announcement and no new channel. Once /support shows a way to give, the bot account edits its existing #welcome message to add this as the last paragraph. An edit sends no notification.

Support. Life Framework is free. If you want to help pay for its running costs (AI tooling, the website, later a server), the ways to give and every cost are at https://life-framework.org/support. A donation buys nothing in the game.

Use the pages.dev address until the DNS cutover. After applying it, add a line to the #welcome row in docs/community/discord.md.

Sources

• GitHub Sponsors fees: https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/sponsors/sponsoring-open-source-contributors/about-sponsorships-fees-and-taxes
• GitHub Sponsors regions and org setup: https://docs.github.com/en/sponsors/getting-started-with-github-sponsors/about-github-sponsors
• Open Source Collective fees: https://docs.oscollective.org/how-it-works/fees
• Open Collective platform moved to the Open Finance Consortium, 1 October 2024: https://opencollective.com/ofico/updates/a-new-home-for-the-open-collective-platform-same-mission
• Open Collective incognito covers contributors, not admins: https://opencollective.com/opencollective/updates/removing-identifying-information-from-incognito-contributions
• Liberapay fees and processors: https://liberapay.com/about/faq, https://liberapay.com/about/payment-processors
• Ko-fi Gold: https://ko-fi.com/gold
• Buy Me a Coffee fees: https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/8105744-how-to-calculate-charges-on-your-payment
• Patreon 10% plan: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/36426991446797
• Stripe statement descriptor: https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-is-a-statement-descriptor-and-how-to-update-it
• On-ramp partner keys: https://dev.moonpay.com/widget/on-ramp/customization/url-signing.md, https://docs.transak.com/customization/query-parameters.md, https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/onramp-&-offramp/secure-init-migration
• TRC-20 fees on send: https://trezor.io/guides/sending-receiving-staking-funds/sending-receiving/send-and-receive-tron-and-trc-20-tokens-in-trezor-suite