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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#331

Post by rossdavidh »

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 have seen shifts from Youtube to Patreon as the primary means of support (Adpocalypse), so I'm surprised you list Youtube as a successor to Patreon instead of the other way around.

Patreon by no means should be expected to guarantee you find backers. They (and services like them) make it easy to concentrate on your content/creation, and less on the nitty-gritty details of how to collect your patrons' money. That doesn't mean it's easy to get patrons (or even should be), because, you know, you have to produce something that they want to pay to support. It just means that the logistical details of how to collect money from people who want to give it to you, should not take up much of your time.

If you have realistic expectations about what Patreon (or any other crowdfunding tool) should be expected to do, I think it's working out just fine.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#332

Post by csomar »

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…

> 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.

I don't think Github is here for the money but for fortifying their position as the place where software is.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#333

Post by Paul-ish »

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've noticed that when a side project becomes a Patreon project, suddenly more time is spent with community involvement; blog posts, live streams, etc. Even $100 a month creates this implicit reporting obligation to keep the community in the loop, which might end up eating time that might be spent doing something else. It might also burn out a more introverted developer.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#334

Post by [deleted] »

diggan wrote: post #59

Ugh, not again! 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. Great. Now they are doing the same thing with donations. Instead of collaborating with already open platforms (like OpenCollective or LiberaPay), they decide to build their own closed-source platform. I love that more people are figuring out ways to pay open…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#335

Post by Nullabillity »

osd wrote: post #247
patcon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 compan…

Your comment reads that you're angry at Github for not taking a more open source approach. That's a fine opinion to have, but it doesn't make sense to demonize them for being a for-profit company. They are not robbing anyone of anything. Starving the competition with loss-leader tactics is not an unbeatable strategy. If, however, you don't have anything to offer other than a run of the mill payment processing platfor…

> That's a fine opinion to have, but it doesn't make sense to demonize them for being a for-profit company.

Because some people are just born as for-profit companies?

Labels are useful to classify behaviour, but that doesn't automatically excuse that behaviour.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#336

Post by state_less »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #316
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…

Don't really know how a single anecdotal experience can be used to extrapolate the value of the concept. This is about pay per value. If enough people value something and have enough ethical principle, they'll contribute. You can make a lot money if you add value to people. I pay $5 a month to a Fitness coach who posts amazing videos on youtube for free. It's valuable to me, so I return the favor. If someone falls on…

I'd be up for automated payment suggestions in the corner of the page based on how much I've viewed or used the content, since I've so far sporadically chipped in a few bucks to youtubers. I'd like to be more even handed with my support.

There were these sort of reminders in the shareware, which was when I was young and didn't have much coin to chip in but it did present a good reminder every time I started the application. They'd even delay you 30 seconds before loading some of the apps if you were freeloading too often. Gosh, shareware, those were the days...

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#337

Post by Fice »

diggan wrote: post #59

Ugh, not again! 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. Great. Now they are doing the same thing with donations. Instead of collaborating with already open platforms (like OpenCollective or LiberaPay), they decide to build their own closed-source platform. I love that more people are figuring out ways to pay open…

The problem here is not so much about open vs closed-source. GitHub is a large centralized social network controlled by corporation, and we should never expect a corporation to behave ethically because ethics too often contradict with commercial interests. There is so much possibility for abuse, they do censorship and there are ways in which they can discriminate against certain projects and licenses and promote others. Even if Microsoft or previous owners have not done anything bad with GitHub yet, it does not mean it is acceptable to give so much control and influence over the open-source community to a single commercial company.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#338

Post by patcon »

This is NOT about helping us out, fellow maintainer-kids, it's about owning the playground and burning the forest.

This fee structure is predatory af & straight outta amazon's playbook. (2x matching funds and all fees waived for first year?[1])

There has been an ecosystem. If this was about anything except market capture through burning VC/reserve funding, GitHub would have engaged in existing nacent and experimental spaces. They haven't: http://opencollective.com/github

If a company is truly trying to be embody open culture, they support and and-yes existing projects as step 1. Case in point: https://words.steveklabnik.com/why-im-partnering-with-balanc...

If we have a problem or idea for OpenCollective/Liberapay/etc, the staff live on open chat rooms -- the github issue queues are public -- the code is interrogable by the curious and adventurous. With GitHub, we get bupkis. Or wait, we get coaxed into a one-on-one email support channel where we can't see one another, speak together, nor find fellow travellers. Or we get the unofficial wailing wall that is https://github.com/isaacs/github

Really disappointed in the lack of critical reflection from technologists. This is not good for us as executed.

[1]: https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors#ab...

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#339

Post by liveoneggs »

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.

Can an organization get sponsored instead of an individual?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#340

Post by briandear »

alias_neo wrote: post #93
mythz wrote: post #77

Earlier 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…

Perhaps this is all a ploy to encourage us to get our credit cards on file with Github? They don't have my card details, and I don't intend to change that. I'll look for other means to donate to the open source projects I want to support, but it does not involve giving Microsoft Github my bank account details.

Does Github and Microsoft have a habit of stealing money from people? I’d be more worried about giving my info to some random open source “collective” group that has considerably less experience with compliance and security.
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