Does this service work also per project or per user only?
GitHub Sponsors
81–90 of 516 posts
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#82I’m glad open-source maintainers will get one more way to get paid... But it feels wrong to lock this into a git hosting platform. Maintainer payment is important enough to be a first-class product, open and accessible to all... instead it’s being used as a bargaining chip to keep developers on a hosting platform. The subtext is pretty clear: “if you want to get paid, you better not leave Github!”. Meanwhile nonprofi…
Replying to myself with a different perspective...
On the other hand, from Github’s point of view it just makes sense to do this. And in a way, it raises the bar for dedicated providers of open-source sponsorships. If they can’t provide something clearly better than Github’s built-in feature, then maybe their service just isn’t good enough.
Of course maybe they can’t compete properly unless Github plays fair and opens the required APIs to the competition.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Sad that the truth is always downvoted. HN has a lot of Microsoft shills. People will wake up when Nadella has moved all jobs to India.
Don’t think that will happen anytime soon (India).
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#84I support one project on Open Collective [1] on a monthly basis. They do take a cut from the money I donate to cover the credit card fees and their operational costs. GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow! While this news sounds amazing on the surface, I am also concerned it might have negative effects on the OSS ecosystem overall. Let's see how this pans out! [1] https://opencollect…
> GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow!
Maybe I didn't fully understand what "cut" means, but ....
> In the first year, GitHub will not charge any fees, so 100% of sponsorships will go to the sponsored developer. In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
An integrated payment solution is going to attract a far greater numbers of sponsors than telling everyone to go to sign up for a subscription on external sites. Integrated authentication, existing credit cards on file, unified billing, giving more visibility to sponsors, allow projects to effectively monetize high traffic project pages with ad-space for sponsors and potential benefits like priority support is going…
> An integrated payment solution is going to attract a far greater numbers of sponsors than telling everyone to go to sign up for a subscription on external sites. I agree, and I'm not saying GitHub should have just added a redirect to OpenCollective and called it a day. But they did have the choice to integrate OpenCollective. Basically, the same UI they have now, they could have built on top of OpenCollective, with…
Why would they limit themselves to the features of integrating multiple external sites when they can build the features, integration, velocity and product direction they want without being beholden to external stake holders with different values and motivations.
GitHub's effectively the home of OSS development, with great UX and design aesthetics, they definitely don't need to delegate for help in building out their own product.
The only stake holders who would benefit by redirecting to external sites, are the external providers themselves as it would end up with a worse UX and fragmented and limited experience, which is exactly what you don't when wanting to attract sponsorship, it should be as easy, seamless and integrated as possible.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#86Re: GitHub Sponsors
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now, with Microsoft owning it, they have given up on that idea since Microsoft mainly get their profits elsewhere. Is that really an issue? How much did has Google's non-monetization of Chrome hurt the product vs helped it?
Yes, it is an issue. Why would Microsoft prioritize development and improvements of GitHub when they don't earn a profit from it? When (in the future) Microsoft needs to earn more profits, they have to make a choice. Either they improve GitHub and get more developers on board with X. Or, they improve their Cloud Hosting service, which actually improve profits. Since GitHub is basically just a cost (with the hopeful p…
It's a bit more nuanced IMO.
I would bet on there being a intense internal competition between Github and the Azure dev tool stack right now.
All the new products Github is introducing are exactly designed to increase the value proposition for paying customers and bind/lure them to the platform instead of them going with AWS/Azure/Google dev tools.
This will increase revenue for Github, and is probably in part driven by internal pressure to make Github profitable.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An integrated payment solution is going to attract a far greater numbers of sponsors than telling everyone to go to sign up for a subscription on external sites. I agree, and I'm not saying GitHub should have just added a redirect to OpenCollective and called it a day. But they did have the choice to integrate OpenCollective. Basically, the same UI they have now, they could have built on top of OpenCollective, with…
Why would they limit themselves to the features of integrating multiple external sites when they can build the features, integration, velocity and product direction they want without being beholden to external stake holders with different values and motivations. GitHub's effectively the home of OSS development, with great UX and design aesthetics, they definitely don't need to delegate for help in building out their…
Microsoft have two choices with the direction of GitHub:
Use it as a loss-leader to get developer mindshare and get more people to use what they actually get a profit from, Azure and others.
Or, they can use GitHub to build a open platform for the entire ecosystem.
What of these two options are the best for users of the platform? I'm sure one option is better for the shareholders of Microsoft/GitHub, but I'm more interested in the value for the users, many who are open source developers.
Of course, they don't have to collaborate with the rest of the ecosystem. But if they were truly interested in making the open source ecosystem better, without any compromises, they would have built something different than what was launched today.
> The only stake holders who would benefit by redirecting to external sites, are the external providers themselves
Sure, if you think of it as OpenCollective vs GitHub. But in the end, open source developers are the ones who should be benefiting from whatever choice they make (that's my naive hope at least). And the choice they made was to improve short-term mindshare, in front of long-term open source sustainability.
For me, GitHub have become an essential open source infrastructure project. But, the platform itself is nowhere near open, and every new feature they seem to be launching, is closed-source and _aims_ to fracture the existing ecosystems the feature touches.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#89This is also about making developers behave.
If you want to get paid on GitHub you shouldn't commit anything controversial and you have to behave on the site. If they go full Twitch then they could take into consideration your actions outside the site. including posts on social media or at conferences.
So we would first see those wikileak dumps, code leaks and vulnerability repos being got rid of first, then we might see right wing bloggers who code being denied monetisation. Who wants to see Nazis get funded? Or even perhaps if your code still uses slave and master and you won't change then maybe repos can't be sponsored.
With monetization comes control. Opaque rules and decisions and no consistency. It won't come in the first year but it will come soon enough after developers are fully invested into using it for their livelihoods.
Re: GitHub Sponsors
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
VC funding has nothing to do with it. It’s an argument against the business practice of leveraging monopoly in one market to subsidize selling at a loss in other markets to kill off competition before it can even emerge. That is what Microsoft appears to be doing with Github, and it is overall a bad thing for everyone except Microsoft. We will get less choice in the markets poisoned by Microsoft, and in the long run we will get less value for a higher cost.
By the way, this is not just about Microsoft. Google, Amazon, and to a lesser degree Apple and Facebook are equally guilty of this.