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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#51

Post by kristianc »

diggan wrote: post #47
kristianc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the open alternatives don’t seem to have amounted to anyone making a living from open source. Centralizing it offers a nicer UX - it’s not just about feature parity.

So, for me that indicates that the problem is not that there is any service for making payments, but rather that open source developers who lives on donations, needs to be paid more by more people. It would be cool if GitHub integrated with existing platforms and helped that to happen. Instead, they signal nothing about this problem and shipped yet-another platform. They could have easily have contributed to solving…

From GH’s perspective, why would they create a dependency on an open service (that could disappear at any moment) when they could roll their own? Especially with all the trust issues that come around payments.

Are there any guarantees that Liberapay could even handle an integration at GH scale without it falling over? They opened 900 accounts last month.

GitHub’s promise is something akin to ‘it just works’ - which means that they take care of this stuff rather than give you yet another tool to integrate with.

GH can’t win in this scenario with some people. GH invest in Liberapay, give it a coat of paint, these same people will then complain that Liberapay has ‘sold out’ / gone ‘too enterprise’ (see Chef, Docker) (or the Microsoft variant - Oh noes, MSFT is working with open source tech it must be EEE) and demand that GH integrate with the next half-baked service with a Bootstrap website.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#53

Post by kabacha »

AYBABTME wrote: post #42
caniszczyk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Take Patreon as an example, a popular funding platform for all sorts of things including open source projects that has been around since 2013 and has paid out $1 billion to creators since then. While that’s an astonishing figure, Patreon isn’t a sustainable business with its current private company model and level of VC funding of $105M: “Under the company’s current business model, 90 percent of funds are paid direc…

It's a bit mind blowing to think that Patreon is 300 employees. What are they all doing?

I wonder that too. Liberapay is just as capable open platform being run by like 10 people, right?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#54

Post by os7borne »

Wow! Long overdue. I'm not capable enough to contribute technically to the open source projects which I use. This will be a great way for me to make my contribution.

Also, I do believe this is a plus for open source projects that often find it tough to stay afloat because of financial constraints.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#55

Post by bennofs »

mythz wrote: post #49
diggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Before the acquisition, the work on GitHub was to make GitHub sustainable in it's own right. Now, with Microsoft owning it, they have given up on that idea since Microsoft mainly get their profits elsewhere. Instead, GitHub have now become a loss-leader for Microsoft, where every feature is meant to either lock in open developers in a closed source platform, or attract more open source developers to use t…

So your argument is that because GitHub no longer has a profit motive and they're now releasing features at a much faster pace, that the acquisition has somehow gone bad?

The Argument is that it's bad for the market, as it makes it hard for competitors which aren't part of such a large company and hence need to make profit.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#56

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

bennofs wrote: post #55
mythz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that because GitHub no longer has a profit motive and they're now releasing features at a much faster pace, that the acquisition has somehow gone bad?

The Argument is that it's bad for the market, as it makes it hard for competitors which aren't part of such a large company and hence need to make profit.

Isn't this also an argument against every VC-funded startup in existence?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#57

Post by buremba »

This might be a deal-breaker not only from the developers' side but also from the business side. If the companies see that a project is well-funded, they can invest their time (maybe their money also?) more confidently. It might become a real marketplace at some point and let (some of the) open-source businesses to focus on their project rather than starting a company and dealing with boring business work.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#58

Post by diggan »

kristianc wrote: post #51
diggan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for me that indicates that the problem is not that there is any service for making payments, but rather that open source developers who lives on donations, needs to be paid more by more people. It would be cool if GitHub integrated with existing platforms and helped that to happen. Instead, they signal nothing about this problem and shipped yet-another platform. They could have easily have contributed to solving…

From GH’s perspective, why would they create a dependency on an open service (that could disappear at any moment) when they could roll their own? Especially with all the trust issues that come around payments. Are there any guarantees that Liberapay could even handle an integration at GH scale without it falling over? They opened 900 accounts last month. GitHub’s promise is something akin to ‘it just works’ - which m…

> why would they create a dependency on an open service (that could disappear at any moment) when they could roll their own?

Because by creating the dependency on an open service and collaborating with them, they help them survive long term and to not disappear at any moment.

Yes, it's nice that "it just works" but sometimes the easiest way of doing something doesn't mean it's the right way. Especially when it comes to hard things like "How do we ensure open source developers can get paid?"

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#59

Post by diggan »

Ugh, not again! First they introduce a Package Registry that not only splits the ecosystem in two parts but also has no open governance or even open source code. Great. Now they are doing the same thing with donations. Instead of collaborating with already open platforms (like OpenCollective or LiberaPay), they decide to build their own closed-source platform.

I love that more people are figuring out ways to pay open source developers, but doing it via a closed-source platform they developed on their own, they are effectively saying they don't care about "open development", they just want to be the one-stop for everything open source as to not lose mind-share of developers.

I'd be wary of joining this program and I urge people to get involved with something like OpenCollective instead, which is a open project you can actually contribute to. It also helps that OpenCollective's success is based on it's members success. "GitHub Sponsors" isn't as well aligned with you as a developer, as OpenCollective et al.

Obviously, I'm a bit biased, as I run a project for creating transparent open source infrastructure. But I do think this is a important issue, and I'm getting more and more scared GitHub is out to make open source development more ivory tower-like.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#60

Post by michaelt »

diggan wrote: post #31
mushufasa wrote: post #5

This seems like it's needed and (dareisay) overdue? Integrating sponsorship subscriptions into the core experience is sure to increase payments, a la twitch subscriptions/payments (which Youtube is just now copying). I imagine this will change the fundamental dynamics around OSS projects, but not sure how, nor whether it is all positive. - If maintainers can see who donated, do they prioritize issues / pull requests?…

> This seems like it's needed and (dareisay) overdue? Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay). In fact, it seems less than the existing options. The existing options are open platforms with open source code. What GitHub is introducing, seems to be a loss-leader (they give free cash away) for the sole purpose of getting…

The Patreon product is 10% payment processing and 90% the marketing/branding/placement/ease-of-use/trust/normalisation, or whatever it is that makes people open their wallets.

If GitHub Sponsors is stronger at whatever-it-is-that-makes-people-donate, that would be their advantage.

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