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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#231

Post by patcon »

Kalium wrote: post #103
diggan wrote: post #31

Earlier 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…

> Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay). It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a raft of compliance all handled already. It might just be me, but if I were to speculate I would guess that OpenCollective and…

> It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a raft of compliance all handled already.

Yes, and they are absolutely _robbing_ the opportunity from others to build in this space, when there are already some really capable players who would have gotten somewhere great. This is a total asshole, closed source company approach. The "loss leader" thing feels totally malicious, and designed to starve the open competition. This is classic Microsoft and rolls back all the positive feelings that had been growing about their growing in the right direction. Amazon does the same shit, to starve competition: "Yeah, you've a spot on our system, but we're going to steal every feature and embed our deeper and drive you out."

For a real example of how OPEN companies work together: Balanced Payments was a daring effort to run an open source payment processor. When they wanted a way to fund and support Gratipay, they went in and submitted a pull request to incorporate their own open source payment processor into the Gratipay platform. If GitHub were in the true spirit of open source, it would have engaged OpenCollective in such a capacity.

I am really disappointed about the hooray optimism and lack of criticism in this thread. I feel like we're all failing to engage in critical engagement with this idea and premise.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#232

Post by derefr »

diggan wrote: post #107
Kalium wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay). It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a raft of compliance all handled already. It might just be me, but if I were to speculate I would guess that OpenCollective and…

I guess our perspectives are different. You seem to see this from GitHubs point of view, I'm seeing it from the view of open source developers. Both perspectives are equally valuable.

I think the key perspective here is that of “the average GitHub user who mostly ends up there in the process of attempting to fetch a library” (a.k.a. to use GitHub as the ecosystem-library package manager of last resort, for libraries nobody bothered to put into an actual package; or for special feature-branches or tracking bleeding-edge development.)

If such users will be more attracted to donating to developers via GitHub itself, than via other systems linked to through the GitHub README they land on, then donations will spike.

And if, at some point, this program becomes opt-out instead of opt-in, then these users might decide to donate to all sorts of people who never considered themselves “open-source developers” but who just happen to slap code up on the internet for free, mostly as a way of proving the provenance of the binary releases they make. For example, developers in the game-console homebrew community, or the Hackintosh driver community, might suddenly see financial support.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#233

Post by nautilus12 »

Could this end up in commodotizing software engineering so much that it will drive the prices of software engineering down even further? How long till we are like panhandlers on the street throwing code at people in exchange for lunch money?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#234

Post by patcon »

smudgymcscmudge wrote: post #173
Kalium wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay). It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a raft of compliance all handled already. It might just be me, but if I were to speculate I would guess that OpenCollective and…

You make a good point. I sponsor a couple of projects on opencollective, but it took an hour or so of reading before I trusted it enough to use. I think if it had been built into GitHub, I would have been much quicker to sponsor. I agree with diggan’s point too, but the reality is this is likely to get more people paying more open source maintainers. I just wish it could be on an open platform.

> I just wish it could be on an open platform.

It could be. Letting GitHub get away with this without criticism feels like a failure of imagination. They could have done integration of an open platform (heck, even one they created) if they gave a fuck :(

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#235

Post by sah2ed »

nine_k wrote: post #140
pdimitar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> visible "this repo receives $500 per month" it would encourage code contribution whilst providing visibility over the health of a project. I fear this might snowball. Many people don't donate if they see a project with very small donations. It goes like this: "well, my contribution would not make any difference anyway"... The reverse is also true: "this guy is OBVIOUSLY doing something right if he gets $500 a month…

This logic is strange. If this repo receives $20 a month, if I donate $5 I'll increase their budget by 1/4, a huge impact. If this repo receives $500 a month, my $5 will increase their budget by 1%, barely visible.

In practice, it is not strange at all.

The person you replied to tried to highlight why that particular framing a bad metric to highlight in an OSS project.

People respond better to something like:

this repo needs $500/mo to achieve X;

$1000/mo to achieve Y and;

$2000/mo to achieve Z. We have received $200 in funding for this month."

rather than the example given above:

"this repo receives $500 per month"

The first framing emphasizes your needs, the second framing emphasizes your current situation. The first is better because it gives any potential donor actionable information to decide whether you need a donation or not, and more importantly, how much impact their donation will make if they choose to donate.

A donor can make an out-sized impact on a project with a stretch goal of "$2000/mo to achieve Z" that has only received $200 in donor funds by providing the $1800 balance for instance.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#236

Post by C4stor »

devonzuegel wrote: post #158

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.

How many sponsoring circles have you detected already ?

I can't believe people able to be sponsored aren't doing background stuff to make sure they get free $5K a month from github, since it's a simple as doing a reciprocal sponsoring.

Heck, anyone with a bit too much cash can just offer to be payed to sponsor, let's say you give me 1 unit, I sponsor 0,9 upon payment, you get 1,8 from github.

TL;DR : really surprised you went with matching sponsoring, aren't you worried about this, is this just cost of doing business, or are you actively detecting it ? (and how if discloseable ?)

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#237

Post by netok »

benatkin wrote: post #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…

Patreon only takes a 5% cut.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#238

Post by captn3m0 »

diggan wrote: post #212
dangjc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they meant credit card interchange fees of 1-3%?

If there is money being moved around on GitHub's platform, you can be sure that they are interested in grabbing a piece of it. Otherwise, why not integrate with existing open platforms?

Because they can control it and use it as a moat.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#239

Post by osd »

gilbetron wrote: post #216
benatkin wrote: post #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…

I am wary of the excitement as well, but there's a bit difference: corporations. Spending $20/month on a patreon is entirely different than spending the same on a library I make heavy use of at my job. I can easily convince my boss to do that; that type of money isn't even "noise" for most companies!

$20 is less than a drop in the bucket, but $20 dollars for essentially a donation is another matter. For the companies that already contribute monetarily to open source, I don't think much changes. The unfortunate reality is that for companies who don't, not much changes.
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