Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Sponsors

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 516 posts

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#321

Post by eclipseo76 »

sktrdie wrote: post #109

Sorry to bring my ethical and philosophical view on the subject but I don't agree with forcing a capitalist system to something that is essentially volunteer work. Open source has worked fine being just volunteer for the past several decades. In fact I'd argue it's one of the only ecosystem that keeps on being awesome. I don't think adding money to the equation will change any of this. In fact it might risk making it…

Who's forcing anything? It's op-in. I welcome our capitalist overlord with open-arms if they want to sponsor my volunteer work. It's a win-win scenario.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#322

Post by rswail »

As I've read the comments here, I've realized that I really don't like the idea.

This puts: a) A lot of power into the control of Github b) changes the entire incentive model for FOSS development c) devalues the aspects of a "sharing economy" and "co-opetition" that FOSS has grown.

My question: Will a sponsored person be able to see who has donated to them? That should be kept anonymous. Otherwise people will be able to "buy" the feature they want over others. Community interests will be lost.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#323

Post by briandear »

Kirth wrote: post #264
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?…

> Do companies use GitHub sponsorships to judge the health of dependencies? Will they create budgets to support their dependencies systematically? In my past I've worked with multiple places that absolutely loved open-source. Because to them it was "free". Something they could use in their products and then charge customers for. Often these opportunistic parasites would never contribute anything back; going out of th…

> Often these opportunistic parasites would never contribute anything back

So a user of open source to make money is a parasite? Are people that use LibreOffice to type legal documents they charge money for considered parasites if they don’t contribute to source code or financially to LibreOffice? If that’s the case, there is an incentive to use closed source software and just pay for it so as to avoid having to be called parasites and incur the pontifications. How many people here use Postgres but never contribute to it? I might guess it’s 99.99%. If I am running a business and there is an expectation that I pay for open source either in time or money, then that makes it no different from a cost perspective than paying for closed source — which lowers the incentive to use open source in the first place. “It’s free software, but if you use it for free, you’ll be called a parasite.” Sure. That’s a great way to promote open source. If open source people want to get paid for open source, then charge money for it, don’t simply use a passive-aggressive guilt trip, just be upfront.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#324

Post by Heliosmaster »

rswail wrote: post #322

As I've read the comments here, I've realized that I really don't like the idea. This puts: a) A lot of power into the control of Github b) changes the entire incentive model for FOSS development c) devalues the aspects of a "sharing economy" and "co-opetition" that FOSS has grown. My question: Will a sponsored person be able to see who has donated to them? That should be kept anonymous. Otherwise people will be able…

There are quite a few OS projects saying that they will prioritize bugs that affect sponsor. And even here on HN it's not a rare comment 'If a company cares about it, they could pay somebody to fix the bug`.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#325

Post by techntoke »

have_faith wrote: post #106
Padrio wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to say that Microsoft is currently infiltrating the OSS world and pursuing their strategy, which they have successfully implemented dozens of times. Does anyone remember EEE[0]? If this is the case here, it would be the greatest successful coup in the history of the Internet. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_Extend_and_Extinguish

Embrace and extend makes sense. But wrt the open source world, how does extinguish fit in?

Get developers locked in to a centralized ecosystem like GitHub, spread the marketing far and wide you use tools based on centralized platforms, encourage developers to utilize frameworks and programming languages that have poor support for open source platforms, etc.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#326

Post by briandear »

rswail wrote: post #322

As I've read the comments here, I've realized that I really don't like the idea. This puts: a) A lot of power into the control of Github b) changes the entire incentive model for FOSS development c) devalues the aspects of a "sharing economy" and "co-opetition" that FOSS has grown. My question: Will a sponsored person be able to see who has donated to them? That should be kept anonymous. Otherwise people will be able…

So don’t use sponsorship. Nobody is requiring it. That’s a decision that the project can make. The more dogmatic open source projects wouldn’t use Github anyway.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#327

Post by benatkin »

ac29 wrote: post #305
benatkin wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unsustainable for handling small payments. Things like fraud detection, customer support, legal and financial services, and credit card chargebacks add up to more than 5%, if it's truly crowdfunding (lots of small contributions). There's a lot of failed startups in the crowdfunding space.

5% is their cut after payment processing, which is another 3% or 5% extra (depending on the size of payment, with smaller payments being more expensive to process). For a $1 payment, they actually take 20% (10c + 5% + 5%).

I'm aware of that, which is why I didn't mention it in my list. It's about what Stripe charges. The micropayment rate of 5% is effectively lower because its per-transaction fee is $0.10 rather than $0.30. A $3.00 donation would have a $0.25 fee and a $3.01 donation would have a $0.39 fee.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#328

Post by techntoke »

diggan wrote: post #126
sneak wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. GitHub's code has always been closed source. It's a service, not software. It's been like that since day one.

Exactly. Always been like that and probably will always be like that. But still, we as open source developers, use and basically at this point, need to have GitHub still up and running. But they are at the whims of profit. GitHub is today a critical piece of open source infrastructure most of us rely on. Microsoft say they care about open source developers and now they are running the biggest platform for open source…

Because Microsoft is a profit-hungry monster and their "adoption" of open source was the only way they could stay alive longer. It never had to do with doing what is good for humanity.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#329

Post by ddevault »

Really neat! As someone who works on open-source full time and is largely sponsored by my users, here's my take:

The good:

- gets money into open source with an intuitive and accessible interface that will get it to the forefront of people's minds

- they're the only platform that isn't taking a slice off the top (yet)

- (temporary) donation matching and eating payment processing fees

The bad:

- a few projects on github are disproportionately large and influential and will probably receive a majority of the funds from this

- this risks creating a stronger form of platform lock-in than ever: who's going to switch to sourcehut when their github repo makes them real world money?

I find this interesting because it runs into a place where my interests are seriously split. I depend on funding for my open source projects and this seems like a really necessary and powerful move that fills a gaping hole in the ecosystem, and might do it really well. At the same time, I'm working on a competing platform to GitHub and I'm worried about getting people locked into a proprietary platform. I have always recommended that people who accept donations for their open-source work avoid putting all of their eggs into one basket, like Patreon, in case that platform changes in a way they dislike. I encourage that for anyone interested in this GitHub offering as well, and I signed up for the waitlist to see how it goes. I still keep a number of projects there and will for the foreseeable future, so it might be a nice revenue source.

I have put a lot of thought into open source funding in general, I'd love to sit down with the team and chat if they have the time. Shoot me an email: sir@cmpwn.com.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#330

Post by whatever_dude »

NickBusey wrote: post #298
whatever_dude wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I jumped right into that, didn't it? Goes to show my ignorance about the world of basket-weaving and its aficionados, and what I consider to be "niche". I'll need to adjust my examples in the future...

Thanks for pointing that out!

Post reply on HN