Slashdot is reporting that the AbiWord’s paypal fund was robbed of $600.00. It doesn’t mention how it was done but, it seems to be that someone used their paypal account to pay for a digital camera. They’ve not been able to get any help or satisfaction from Paypal. It seems that they are not the only ones that are not completely satisfied customers of Paypal: paypalsucks.com and paypalwarning.com.
I guess that prompts me to ask a logical question: Why didn’t you set up your own merchant account to begin with? I realize that to open a business bank account costs money but, those can be had for about $10.00 per month. A merchants account can be applied for and had from between $15.00 and $30.00 a month. For a large-scale, high visibility project such as this, I would see no other way. Paypal is convenient and all but, personally… I’d rather manage my own transactions as well as having more flexibility to accept donations. For non-profit software organizations such as this, I can see why they wouldn’t want to go to the trouble. But, if a 200 person church can see the benefit of a merchants account. I would imagine that a group with 20-50,000 users (all potential customers), should see the same benefit?
Abiword is an elegant and capable, open-sourced competitor to Microsoft Office. We’ve talked frequently about Abiword here and we’ve recommended it more than once.