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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#431

Post by _bxg1 »

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?…

> If maintainers can see who donated, do they prioritize issues / pull requests? (I think that could be a good thing actually).

This actually seems like it would be terrible. Contributions should be evaluated on merit, not on bribes.

The overall concept seemed good at first but you raised some real concerns.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#432

Post by chc »

cutenewt wrote: post #404
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…

Micro-patronage seems to be a hard way to get by. It'd be more lucrative for a patronage website to allow someone to go after big whales. Just imagine if someone got a 1 million dollar grant. Even if it took a long time to secure it, it'd be a lot better than convincing 200,000 ppl for $5.

The benefit of a website like Patreon is reducing friction for small transactions like this. If you're going to put in lots of time and effort to convince one person to give you a million dollars, you can probably get them to write you a check more easily than you could get them to pay through Patreon But For Whales.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#433

Post by anticensor »

0xffff2 wrote: post #382
dangjc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they meant credit card interchange fees of 1-3%?

Maybe so, but when did we suddenly start giving companies like Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this?

They do not need donation cut because they already sell Windows etc.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#434

Post by ehsankia »

_bxg1 wrote: post #431
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?…

> If maintainers can see who donated, do they prioritize issues / pull requests? (I think that could be a good thing actually). This actually seems like it would be terrible. Contributions should be evaluated on merit, not on bribes. The overall concept seemed good at first but you raised some real concerns.

How so? If anything, it would be cool to have issue bounties to put your money to get the stuff you want solved.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#435

Post by Androider »

This is a nice start for allowing sending "coffee money" between persons. If however you want to drive Serious Money into actually funding OSS projects please remember this: While virtually no company has a donations budget, almost every company has a $$$ marketing budget.

Please let me give you some of that money that would otherwise be spent on blue pens with logos and endless display ads to GitHub projects. I'd be happy to drive $xxK/mo to open source projects my company depends on or that are simply being used by an audience that aligns with our own. To sell that internally, I need (as in, I would be laughed out of the room to propose it without):

- My sponsoring company logo on the GitHub project page

- UTM links and all that jazz to attribute traffic and campaigns to the specific projects that we sponsor

See https://webpack.js.org/ for a good example of a successful sponsorship program. Literally the biggest hurdle remaining for BigCorp to sponsor something like Webpack today is selling your boss on "Patreon" and "OpenCollective". But if you just increase our GitHub budget by a few K/month, AND the marketers get attributable traffic to boot that we can point to, well that's an easy sell!

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#436

Post by wpietri »

benatkin wrote: post #299
wpietri wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Either way, it's $20 on some vague software expense. Nobody will care. Worst case, the boss somehow says, "What's this $20 charge" and I explain why I though there was a good business reason for us to support that project.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#438

Post by bcyn »

lsmith77 wrote: post #375
sercand wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd wager this is more of a "cover your ass" kind of situation for GitHub.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#439

Post by Kutta »

_bxg1 wrote: post #430
bluefox wrote: post #429

Prior to sponsors, you developed that project for the fun of it. It was useful to some, so you gave this sponsorship thing a try. It was a success, maybe not a great success, but still. Now that you have sponsors, you feel somewhat obligated, but still not on the level of that "professional software industry" that destroyed so much about programming for you. Time passes, and at some point it becomes clear that sponso…

This... seems pessimistic and overly dramatized.

Agreed. Conjunction fallacy galore in parent post.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#440

Post by anticensor »

diggan wrote: post #61
paulddraper wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, with Microsoft owning it, they have given up on that idea since Microsoft mainly get their profits elsewhere. Is that really an issue? How much did has Google's non-monetization of Chrome hurt the product vs helped it?

Yes, it is an issue. Why would Microsoft prioritize development and improvements of GitHub when they don't earn a profit from it? When (in the future) Microsoft needs to earn more profits, they have to make a choice. Either they improve GitHub and get more developers on board with X. Or, they improve their Cloud Hosting service, which actually improve profits. Since GitHub is basically just a cost (with the hopeful p…

> Why would Microsoft prioritize development and improvements of GitHub when they don't earn a profit from it?

Because they also use it for their own works.

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