Have both donations and subscriptions?

Have both donations and subscriptions?

I've been reading LWN for about 7 years, but probably wouldn't subscribe at $60/year rate even if you took away the free version, just because although it is interesting it is not worth that much to me in terms of practical value, and there are enough other Internet sites for me to spend time reading. I could be interested in donating a smaller amount; maybe even a larger amount if I didn't think of it as a subscription that had a definite period of time attached to it.

Also, it should be easier to donate. At the time you were deciding whether to do subscriptions you could only donate by credit card, so I didn't, and then you went to subscriptions which I didn't want to do. Is it still that way? I should be able to either pay online by check or just mail a check.

I like the idea of being able to donate to specific "funds". This could include the fund to get a certain article written as suggested earlier. There could be a "yacht fund" for people who think the editors deserve more money without expecting it to be spent on improving the site. How about this: Have a "free-as-in-beer" fund which determines how long the free version is delayed. Evaluate it every three months, and if there was less than, say, $500 donated that quarter, there is no free version at all; if less than $1000, it's a two-week delay (for everyone); $2000 buys a ten-day delay, and so on. I think that would appeal to anarchist types like me who would like to get some benefit to the common good out of a donation rather than helping only the subscribers and the private-property paradigm. It would be interesting way to test the effectiveness of the subscription-based system and a donation-based system at the same time.