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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#201

Hi, I’m Devon the product manager behind GitHub Sponsors. We’re excited to launch the beta program today and learn how we can best serve the community. It’s great to already see the conversation on this thread! We’re eager to hear all of your feedback, and feel free to email me at devonzuegel@github.com as well.

Really excited for this new feature!

Would the sponsorship be a subscription model or can you also do a one time payment donation?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#202

Hi, I’m Devon the product manager behind GitHub Sponsors. We’re excited to launch the beta program today and learn how we can best serve the community. It’s great to already see the conversation on this thread! We’re eager to hear all of your feedback, and feel free to email me at devonzuegel@github.com as well.

Will this support micro payments like $1 or even $0.10 a month? Or would credit card fees eat all that up?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#203
post #195
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be fraud? We both contribute to open source projects and appreciate the effort that the other contributes.

I don't know whether you're trolling or simply naive but that's clearly fraud and the scenario you describe explicitly aims to commit fraud. At the very least it's violating the terms of service. But very clearly the two of you would have conspired to defraud GitHub and in this case there would even be evidence in the form of an HN comment where you literally ask if this would work. You may think you're clever but tr…

How do you distinguish

(A) two random developers that met each other at several conferences over the years, have contributed to a few same projects and really like the efforts the other one is putting into their OSS project

(B) two random developers that met each other at several conferences over the years, have contributed to a few same projects and want to fraud GitHub for the donation match

I think this could be a real practical problem for GitHub. And lawyering up against developers supporting the campaign potentially counteracts the marketing benefit of it.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services, or at least that is what it says for now.

>Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services... How are those different exactly?

payment processing fee = pay the payment provider (Stripe, PayPal, etc.)

a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services = additional fee on top on payment processing fee to cover operational expenses, employee salaries etc.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#205

This is such a watershed moment in the history of software development that I don't think most of us can grasp its significance yet. Sure we're familiar with other services that do the same, but the adoption rate (like for GH itself) will be clearly different. One could argue that this is more societally important than YouTube, Twitch, etc funded content for _consuming_ because this funds content for _leveraging_ to…

While I understand why others are wary, I am also excited about the good that this could do for OSS projects.

I know I've struggled in the past to give money to projects that make me a profit. The third party tools are hardly brilliant, and maintainers have to set them up, and look after them.

This has the potential to be a really good thing.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#206
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether you're trolling or simply naive but that's clearly fraud and the scenario you describe explicitly aims to commit fraud. At the very least it's violating the terms of service. But very clearly the two of you would have conspired to defraud GitHub and in this case there would even be evidence in the form of an HN comment where you literally ask if this would work. You may think you're clever but tr…

How do you distinguish (A) two random developers that met each other at several conferences over the years, have contributed to a few same projects and really like the efforts the other one is putting into their OSS project (B) two random developers that met each other at several conferences over the years, have contributed to a few same projects and want to fraud GitHub for the donation match I think this could be a…

Option (A) is the exact situation I'm envisioning.

Rather than waiting for some third party fans to give money, we'd be immediately rewarding the work that the other has done over the years with a one-off $5K (to maximize the match) contribution.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services, or at least that is what it says for now.

>Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services... How are those different exactly?

The first scenario is a loss leader -- it doesn't contribute any revenue for the business to stay afloat.

The second may or may not be a loss leader, but it will contribute something in revenue for the business to stay afloat.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#209
Not so fast. People have said this about gittip (now Gratipay), Patreon, Twitch, and now YouTube and Facebook. All of these have been mixed blessings. Here's an article about how Patreon doesn't work out even when everything goes smoothly: https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on-pa...

"After launching my Patreon, I struggled for months to find work. Patreon filled my downtime, and became a full time job itself. I’d spend hours combing through photos, looking back on notes I’d taken on the road, researching where I’d been. I’d post on Twitter and Instagram with teasers, free stories, anything to attract my followers to my Patreon page. I made friends on the site, I shared their projects on my own social media, and kept up with all my subscribers’ projects. It was a lot of work for little pay, but I was determined. A year later my monthly earnings on Patreon have grown from $120 to $163."

$163 a month in extra income? Cool, right? Not when you spend 5+ hours a week thinking about it.

If GitHub gets a lot of participation it will be unsustainable to only take a little on top of a credit card processing fee, and the fee it will be increased to be more like Facebook's 30% cut. There are plenty of articles on here about the costs and difficulties of running a payment platform.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#210
post #80

I’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…

I also think that is is effectively a pretty underhanded move to cement Github and monopolize open source development. It may not be intended to work this way, but if this campaign is successful, it will have this chilling effect. Once development funds go mostly through Github, the platform's influence over a project is greatly increased. Projects would have little choice but to comply with whatever ToS change Github would want to impose.

MS playing nice with open source starts to smell a bit like an attempt to ensnare and trap developers in an MS ecosystem. But this time around it is not about Windows as a target platform, but about dependencies on tools (VSCode), libraries (.NET Standard) and services (Github, Azure) provided by them.

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