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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#371

Post by xwdv »

adamnemecek wrote: post #291
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 aski…

I’d be thrilled if people were making money from my work, that’s the point.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#372

Post by jakelazaroff »

Kalium wrote: post #249
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…

What kind of critical engagement do you think we are failing to offer? What kind of response would leave you thinking "This person engaged critically with the issue at hand, but still came away with a strongly positive position"? For my own part, I don't think anybody is owed a position in a space. I also don't think the existence of small players that get displaced by a big player means that the small players were d…

> It could still be an open platform, of course. Someone just needs to be able to do it better than Github. As Dependabot shows, that's absolutely possible.

Awkward, this literally happened today: https://dependabot.com/blog/hello-github/

(I agree with the thrust of your comment; I just think the timing here is funny.)

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#373

Post by rossdavidh »

bearcobra wrote: post #346
rossdavidh wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

I've observed a bit of a shift from YouTube Ads => Patreon => YouTube Sponsorship/Membership as the main way some of the creators I follow support themselves, so that might be why it was listed as the successor.

Aha that makes sense.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#374

Post by munificent »

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…

I generally share your concerns. Much of the current rewards in open source are intrinsic: the satisfaction of making something good, helping other people, the joy of working with others.

I think those incentives, to a pretty good degree, align with goals I have for software: for it to be high quality, holistically designed, and making the lives of the developers working on it more gratifying.

> There has always been a purity around writing open source software simply for the benefit of mankind.

At the same time, there is a downside to this purity. The freedom to spend time on open source "simply for the benefit of mankind" is a luxury only available to those who are already able to put food on the table.

I think this is a major reason why the open source demographics are aligned so strongly with traditionally privileged groups, and I think that's bad for humankind.

Pumping money into the system might help underrepresented groups participate in open source, which in turn means we'll get software that is better tuned to the needs of everyone and not just the privileged.

I probably wouldn't use GitHub sponsors either. I want to retain my sense of freedom over the direction I take my projects and I worry that cash payments would undermine that freedom and also undercut the intrinsic rewards I get for creating.

At the same time, I realize my choice to not take sponsorship is a luxury I have because I've got a fantastic day job and come from a position of privilege.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#375

Post by lsmith77 »

sercand wrote: post #355
patcon wrote: post #338

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…

You can add sponsor button next to Watch/Star button [1] which supports opencollective. For example, ReactiveUI [2] repo has one. [1] https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-but... [2] https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI

Also what is up with “These external links will take you off GitHub to pages we haven't verified, so beware.” ?

You can put links to stuff in all other places without warnings. Now ok I guess they can argue that most other places do not entail with people sending money. But why not at least keep a list of “trusted” places?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#376

Post by JohnFen »

behringer wrote: post #311
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 don't know how everyone else uses patreon, but I don't even look at the garbage people post on their patreon. I'm subscribed literally only to support the work they are actually doing. Not their progress updates.

I only support two people through Patreon, but this is how I use it, too. I never actually go to their Patreon pages, or bother with any of the special "Patreon benefits" they may offer.

I just want to give them some money, nothing more.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#377

Post by JohnFen »

reggieband wrote: post #303
gilbetron wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

In my experience at a reasonably large corp ... getting the bureaucracy to spend $20/month is somehow more of a pain than getting it to spend $50,000/month. For the kind of dollar values most github supporters are working in (probably in the range of less than $1000/year) - a single yearly lump sum would be easier to expense directly on a corporate card rather than getting accounting involved monthly.

> In my experience at a reasonably large corp ... getting the bureaucracy to spend $20/month is somehow more of a pain than getting it to spend $50,000/month.

This has been my experience, too. I suspect it has to do with how budgets are allocated.

A large expenditure request follows a different path and will probably get seriously examined and specially budgeted for.

A small one only needs the approval of the department manager, and it will come directly out of the budget that's already been allocated. This means that it is an expense that manager will actually feel, and is more likely to simply be denied.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#378

Post by [deleted] »

neurotrace wrote: post #301
mherrmann wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Devon, I posted this comment elsewhere in this thread [1], but now feel that here is a better place to write it: It would be very cool if there was an easy way to sponsor all the projects I've starred. Then I could just pay (say) $10 per month to "support open source", without having to worry about any of the details such as picking projects. If you as GitHub then also reach out to the project maintainers and say…

Am I using stars wrong? I have starred 771 projects on GitHub. To me, a star means anything from "I use this" to "I think this is a cool project". Giving $10 a month to 771 projects would result in about a penny for each project. I'd rather separate starred from sponsored. If I could select a subset of that 771 and say "split $10 among these projects" then I'd be happy.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#379

Post by winsome »

whatever_dude wrote: post #342
mherrmann wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Devon, I posted this comment elsewhere in this thread [1], but now feel that here is a better place to write it: It would be very cool if there was an easy way to sponsor all the projects I've starred. Then I could just pay (say) $10 per month to "support open source", without having to worry about any of the details such as picking projects. If you as GitHub then also reach out to the project maintainers and say…

This is interesting, but it raises questions, mainly: if a project is abandoned and you've still given it a star, does it continue to send money to it? Will it cause people to un-star projects? I could see having some kind of "tip amount" per project that gets taken from a pool would make a lot of sense, but not as stars.

Doesn't that problem still exist though? Say you sponsor a project individually and it eventually goes unsupported. Would your sponsorship live on if you never manually cancelled it?

Using stars as a proxy for sponsorship, I think, is the wrong idea anyhow. Sponsorship should imply star, but not the inverse. I think what would be best is an easy way to sift through your starred projects and "upgrade" them to a sponsorship. Then once you've done that once, you can manage stars and sponsorships independently going forward.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#380

Post by mceachen »

neurotrace wrote: post #301
mherrmann wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Devon, I posted this comment elsewhere in this thread [1], but now feel that here is a better place to write it: It would be very cool if there was an easy way to sponsor all the projects I've starred. Then I could just pay (say) $10 per month to "support open source", without having to worry about any of the details such as picking projects. If you as GitHub then also reach out to the project maintainers and say…

Am I using stars wrong? I have starred 771 projects on GitHub. To me, a star means anything from "I use this" to "I think this is a cool project". Giving $10 a month to 771 projects would result in about a penny for each project. I'd rather separate starred from sponsored. If I could select a subset of that 771 and say "split $10 among these projects" then I'd be happy.

I'm in your shoes too. I've got 457 stars (and I don't think I've ever un-starred a project).

I think it'd be a reasonable default for most people to start with though.

Perhaps offering the projects that you `watch` a higher priority than those you've starred would be a fairer default?

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