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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#291

Post by adamnemecek »

xwdv wrote: post #280

I don’t like this. There has always been a purity around writing open source software simply for the benefit of mankind. Let’s not kid ourselves, probably no one is going to make a living from github sponsors, and projects that bring in any significant money are probably written by developers who already make good money do something else anyway. This would basically be beer money to them. You would be amazed at how p…

Very shortsighted view. The purity view is the thing that prevented open source from taking over for the longest time.

No, there will definitely be people making money from this. Say Evan You, creator of vue is making 18k a month in patreon https://www.patreon.com/evanyo. Why wouldn't people use github now instead?

> I will not be using github sponsors for my open source projects...

Why not? There's no shame in asking people to support your work if they are benefiting. In fact, some of the people using your projects might be making money from your work. To you it's about purity, to me it's about you letting yourself be exploited.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#292

Post by stephenr »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #255
pingucrimson wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that is good. How is that good?

Maybe the quality would improve? There's a condition I call "open-source-itis" that a lot of projects suffer from, where tons of new features (usually of dubious merit) get added but nobody ever bothers to fix bugs or make sure the foundation is actually solid. It makes sense, because that's unsexy work that people generally don't want to do and they're all working for free, but it makes a lot of open source software…

You can describe any software that way.

Big new headline features are a marketers wet dream.

"We fixed that annoying bug that affected 4 people last year" not so much.

Also, "driving for uber" is hardly a great thing to aspire to.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#293

Post by dbancajas »

chrshawkes wrote: post #263
derefr wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you already have a million YouTube subscribers (LGR apparently has 1.3MM), you can certainly translate that fanbase into patronage, vis. “wealth by a thousand cuts.” There’s existing, pent-up demand (guilt?) to give you money for all the stuff you’ve already provided for free. But if you’re that much of an “influencer” already, with that large an audience, then you’re likely already making money off of ads run on…

I'm a YouTuber in the IT field. Nearly 20 million views in all, 40,000 students on Udemy and 122,000 subscribers. Anecdotal, but I don't mess with Patreon, it doesn't work for me. You are right about the sponsorships, ad's, affiliates and merch deals being where the money is for YouTubers.

Curious what is your yearly income?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#294

Post by polskibus »

Is this the embrace, extend, extinguish method at work? Introducing a feature that would likely not translate to significant income boost, only to widen the appeal of the free tier? There are plenty of similar sites like others have already mentioned, surely GitHub could've just helped them integrate better instead?

Insteaf of developing this feature, maybe GitHub could've spent more time enhancing their issue tracker to be able to fit more complex workflows if necessary? There's always opportunity cost that should be considered when working on new features for such a large userbase.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#295

Post by techntoke »

pingucrimson wrote: post #228
zapita wrote: 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…

Yeah, it's a shame the GitHub is starting to actually take advantage of their hosting monopoly, to the detriment of solutions like OpenCollective and Liberapay. On the other hand, Git is distributed. Can't you just use GitHub as a mirror, and direct users elsewhere for actual development through the README?

Or just include external donation links in the readme?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#296

Post by stephenr »

kodablah wrote: post #192

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…

> but the adoption rate (like for GH itself) will be clearly different.

How many individuals have a paid GH account vs a free one?

Now how many of those are willing to donate to a project/person but hasn't already done so?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#298

Post by NickBusey »

whatever_dude wrote: post #268
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 think that whole article is a pretty shallow take, accusing Patreon of things that are not Patreon's fault (and I say this as someone who thinks Patreon is shady). Yes, people who make some stuff that takes a lot of time and effort might not get a lot of money on Patreon. But you know what? They're doing what everybody else is doing. I feel that nowadays everything want to think of themselves as "creators". They'll…

I agree with your entire post, with one exception. I think you would be shocked at the world-wide potential audience for live streamed basket weaving. See: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-chinese-f...

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#299

Post by benatkin »

wpietri wrote: post #285
cwyers wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they won't. I, and a lot of other people, cannot get accounting at where I work to cut a check for that kind of sponsorship. I can get accounting to cut checks for things that matter. Typically if someone asks what's the difference between paid and free, and you answer, it supports Active Directory, you're most of the way there if you can show a business need for the product. But just a straight-up donation? It's…

It's only a hard sell if you have to run it by accounting. But this is the kind of thing that I would have happily just expensed. It's a known vendor, and if I'm dropping $20/month on some vague software expense, nobody will care. Note also that the product lets people "choose from multiple sponsorship tiers, with monthly payment amounts and benefits that are set by the sponsored developer." That opens up much bigger…

> It's a known vendor, and if I'm dropping $20/month on some vague software expense, nobody will care.

If you said the money is going to GitHub, and it's actually going through GitHub, that's lying.

I think it will probably show up differently on credit card statements anyway, so people won't be tempted to do this behind the backs of the accounting department.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#300

Post by chrshawkes »

dbancajas wrote: post #293
chrshawkes wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a YouTuber in the IT field. Nearly 20 million views in all, 40,000 students on Udemy and 122,000 subscribers. Anecdotal, but I don't mess with Patreon, it doesn't work for me. You are right about the sponsorships, ad's, affiliates and merch deals being where the money is for YouTubers.

Curious what is your yearly income?

I honestly can't release that. I have a full time software engineering job. I do pretty well for a 37 year old college dropout.
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