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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#391

Post by benatkin »

jerf wrote: post #385
nathanvanfleet wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're kind of agreeing with them though aren't you? It might seem like a really useful feature but, like Patreon, it might not be worth the time and effort for anyone. You're just a lot more focussed on making us all believe it's the persons fault somehow.

"You're just a lot more focussed on making us all believe it's the persons fault somehow." Fault is awfully subjective so I'll leave that be. It is definitely their responsibility , though. I've got a family friend currently making some dangerously stupid business decisions, where the best-case upside is that they'll make minimum wage or so, and the realistic worse case is bankruptcy and losing everything they've mad…

> There's no Silicon Valley whipping horses in this story

When Patreon says this to the press: "Finally, ‘starving’ and ‘artist’ no longer need to be joined at the hip"

...they're inviting scrutiny.

There's nothing wrong about setting that target, it just is really outlandish. If that motivates them, good for them. But there are millions of starving artists, and a company that makes a serious dent in that problem would have to be enormous.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#392

Post by TBF-RnD »

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…

Yes, nice to have the key people working on open source in Bill Gates pocket. Isn't this what the open source communtiy have been dreaming about all along..

Cynisism aside I get where you are comming from. As somone doing OS fulltime I applaud the effort. I guess it is to much to ask to have a source of income completely without bias.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#393

Post by johnnyfaehell »

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…

This is a sad commentary on software development as a profession, as well as society as well. A watershed moment is when private individuals might be able to get paid for the extremely valuable work that they do that allows thousands of companies to make a profit with some companies becoming worth billions. The fact that the ability to socially beg for money for valuable software makes the idea of writing valuable software more viable is a sad state of affairs.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#394

Post by snowwrestler »

RandallBrown wrote: post #302
Kirth wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've also worked at multiple companies where they were afraid of open source because the project might be abandoned. They would happily pay thousands for a closed source dependency because they could guarantee it would be supported. This could offer a nice medium where a company can be pretty sure that it will stick around (based on funding) and contribute to make sure that it does.

I like open source software projects and use them extensively on behalf of my employer. I care that they are healthy.

That said, there is a huge difference between getting authorization to spend company money on a subscription or support contract (easy), vs. getting authorization to donate company money to a person, informal group or nonprofit (extremely difficult).

A license or support contract is easy for the lawyers to understand, easy for procurement to understand, easy for finance to understand. That's how work gets done at a corporation, and they do those types of deals all day. Depending on the amount, I can sometimes turn around approval in hours.

A donation is not "how work gets done". It has no strings attached, which looks scary to lawyers and finance and PR folks. In my company at least, donations have a separate approval path that loops in the PR and corporate citizenship folks... and they want to see that money go to something fuzzy and feel good, like a charity. "Donations" is a line in the budget; it's not a big one and it's not mine.

So, I still think that the way forward for open source projects who want financial support from companies is to organize somehow (incorporate, nonprofit, etc) and sell support subscriptions. This aligns very well with how the corporation manages other dependencies, like office space, phone service, etc.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#395

Post by TBF-RnD »

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?

Then again I didn't know about liberapay or OpenCollective up until now and I do open source for a living.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#396

Post by Kalium »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #372
Kalium wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That's actually exactly my point. Dependabot did Github security alerts so much better than Github did, that Github gave up on trying to compete entirely.

Which is to say that it's incontrovertibly possible to beat Github at their own game and on their own platform. To the point where even Github agrees they've been beat.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#397

Post by zachguo »

kradroy wrote: post #389

I think this is a bad development. The allure of getting paid for something you do for free can be too great. This may lead to OSS devs, especially those who do the work for free now, expecting extrinsic reward for their work. Extrinsic reward for work that once provided intrinsic reward can lead to cessation of that work, if the external reward lessens or goes away. A new type of dev may emerge from this who won't h…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#398

Post by sequoia »

koolba wrote: post #178

> To supercharge community funding, GitHub created the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund, which matches up to $5000 per sponsored developer in their first year of sponsorship. In the first year, GitHub will not charge any fees, so 100% of sponsorships will go to the sponsored developer. In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee. What's to stop me^Wsomeone else and their friend from sponsoring each other for $…

"me", I mean "another github user", I mean "anyone on the internet who wants to create a github account & start cashing in."

This feature really makes no sense, either they figure the fraud will be low enough to not matter, or there's some oversight mechanism to prevent it. I am certain they don't want to try to sue ten thousand random people to attempt to claw back $5k each. I imagine there's some flag/approval process.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#400

Post by sequoia »

Geez... it must be hard for other payment processors to compete with Github/MSFT's "give away free money" offering. :/ I guess all is fair in love & war (and Uber does the same, losing money to kill competition) but this sort of behaviour sure seems innovation-killing and massively entrenched-big-corp-player-favouring.

This seems to go beyond killing competitors by offering their product for free, because in this case they're actually paying users cash to use their platform.

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