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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#351

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

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…

If you felt like being cynical, you could say that this (along with the package repository stuff) is the beginning of the "extend" phase of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" of Microsoft of old.

On its face it's nothing but positive. But at the same time, many of us are recognizing that there's just something that feels a little bit off about this.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#352

Post by huac »

hanniabu wrote: post #242
dangjc wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will this support micro payments like $1 or even $0.10 a month? Or would credit card fees eat all that up?

Would be great if they could get Stripe on board with this and support 0 fees due to the application.

interchange fees are attributable mostly to card networks (e.g. visa) and not stripe

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#353

Post by patcon »

rtempaccount1 wrote: post #343
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…

Can I ask where you're getting that info. on the fee structure, I can't see that on their pages easily. From reading the FAQ it sounds like there are no fees in the first year at all and afterwards it's a payment processing fee? Also I got the impression that matching was Github adding additional funds to the payment, sounds like not a bad thing really?

First off, thanks so so much for engaging. Truly grateful From the FAQ[1]:

> 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

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

And yes, money feels nice. But there are politics here that are real. The meaning of a sum of money is also wrapped up in the future that it creates. Decision-makers at GitHub aren't stupid, and so the future their money creates should be assumed to be the one they intended.

If someone comes into a town with boatloads of outsider money, and set up shop next door to a critical local business, but selling at loss leader rates that burn money, with plans to bump up prices once the locals flail and weaken -- that's understood as anti-social and kinda asshole behaviour.

It feels no different here. We shouldn't be applauding, despite the good deal.

Money ain't free. We're being paid off to accept a future of collapsed possibilities.

imho of course :)

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#354

Post by mpoteat »

Paul-ish wrote: post #333
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.

Many developers, IMO, actively ignore their community (close issues, ignore pull requests) and take their project the direction they want to without external interference. (and this is their divine right)

However I think this implicit obligation you refer to would keep projects open.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#355

Post by sercand »

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

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#356

Post by jakelazaroff »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #217

I have been curious for a while what Microsoft plans for LinkedIn and GitHub. It seems like one possible future here is that open source becomes less like passion projects that scratch an itch and more like driving for Uber. Maybe that is good. Maybe GitHub just took a step toward becoming Fiverr. I really don't know.

> It seems like one possible future here is that open source becomes less like passion projects that scratch an itch and more like driving for Uber.

Is that a future we want? I would much rather work towards a future where everyone makes enough at their day job and can work on passion projects on the side.

Why are we okay with the idea that in order to get by, we should have to do work in our supposed off time as well? Uber/etc love to bring up the fact that it's often their drivers' second job, as a defense of their independent contractor status and pay. Which is, to me, a pretty damning indictment of how we've structured our society.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#357

Post by pdimitar »

steveklabnik wrote: post #284
nine_k wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This logic is strange. If this repo receives $20 a month, if I donate $5 I'll increase their budget by 1/4, a huge impact. If this repo receives $500 a month, my $5 will increase their budget by 1%, barely visible.

Many people who get paid this way prefer the 1% case to the 25% case. It's much more stable. This means if you decide to stop , they only lose 1%, not 25%. I mean, people are still going to enjoy getting more money, don't get me wrong. But they'd rather have 1000 people giving a dollar than two people giving 500.

Exactly your last. We could all take a page out of the Twitch streamers' books -- they do exactly like this: (a) set donation or subscription goals and (b) make it really cheap and (c) aim for volume.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#358

Post by C4stor »

TimothyBJacobs wrote: post #315
C4stor wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your hypothesis is that they'd rather assume this potential cost for the sake of publicity ? Also, in the "paid to sponsor" scenario they'd be hoodwinke into giving money both to someone worthwhile and someone totally unknown to them. I'd be really curious to know the technical or legal possibles responses.

The whole concept of giving away matching funds is for publicity.

That's a good point actually, I suppose it doesn't indeed really matters to them where it goes as long as they can say "we gave X to open source projects", X probably being already defined.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#359

Post by patcon »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #351
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…

If you felt like being cynical, you could say that this (along with the package repository stuff) is the beginning of the "extend" phase of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" of Microsoft of old. On its face it's nothing but positive. But at the same time, many of us are recognizing that there's just something that feels a little bit off about this.

Thanks for validating the concern. Truly appreciate that.

I don't like to be cynical! I promise it's not my default mode!

There are a hundred more funding experiments to run in open source. And open source is the playground for the wider world to improve funding! (Non-profit land is effed, and they need help from our learning :) We need to try/fail/win at designing these imaginaries together! That's perhaps what offends me most about the funding distortions they're applying.

It's disingenuous for GitHub to suggest they be trusted to lead the funding ecosystem when they kick it off with these shenanigans and huge distortions :)

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#360

Post by chaostheory »

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…

Most developers for popular open source projects are already engaged with their audience. I don't feel that their level of engagement with their community is going to change based on my 1st hand experience with something like OpenCollective. Both of the projects that I've tipped haven't changed the way they communicate. It's the same whether or not you donated.

https://opencollective.com/nest

https://opencollective.com/date-fns

What you're describing isn't a problem at least for open source developers. There's no significant extra work for them if they want donations aside from posting a line of text and a link. Now with Github, it's even easier since it's baked in.

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