GitHub Sponsors • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#421

Post by mietek » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

mgalgs wrote: post #388

whatever_dude wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They could factor in the repo's "pulse". More active projects get a bigger slice.

No, they shouldn’t, because doing that would incentivise improper activity.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#422

Post by dang » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

plAH2 wrote: post #37

diggan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like it's needed and (dareisay) overdue? Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay). In fact, it seems less than the existing options. The existing options are open platforms with open source code. What GitHub is introducing, seems to be a loss-leader (they give free cash away) for the sole purpose of getting…

Sad that the truth is always downvoted. HN has a lot of Microsoft shills. People will wake up when Nadella has moved all jobs to India.

Please don't break the site guidelines by making insinuations about astroturfing or shillage. It's a toxic trope that people bring up as cheap ammunition in arguments, and unless you have something approaching real evidence, it's off topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#423

Post by wonjohnchoi » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

> To boost community funding, we'll match contributions up to $5,000 during a developer’s first year in GitHub Sponsors with the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund.

How will GitHub deal with bad actors who might create a project and donate $5,000 to himself to get free money?

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#424

Post by patcon » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #366

patcon wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wrapp…

> Decision-makers at GitHub aren't stupid, and so the future their money creates should be assumed to be the one they intended. This is always true, for any person or organization at any level of scale. They spend money to bend the world in the direction they want. This is not a instrinsically bad thing. It's only a priori bad if you assume the world is zero sum and any change to benefit party A is necessarily a harm…

Thanks for the generous thoughts :) I know it's not intrinsically bad. But I suppose I am saying that this specific event is bad, in non-shallow analysis.

Yes, all things are aspiring to "bend the world" (i like that term) -- a kid putting up a poster for selling cookies from their pantry for 10c is trying to affect people.

But then there's greater bending, of almost all possible paths of significance. GitHub/GitLab are THE places in our digital lives as coders. The scale at which this intervention/distortion is happening is important.

The unfair squelching of funding experiments in open source land WILL affect paths outside software. OpenCollective was using their learnings and profits in serving FOSS, to affect non-digital projects in the social fabric of physical cities: https://opencollective.com/brussels

This unfair buying of the opportunity space -- afforded only by deep pockets of Microsoft -- will affects paths that were leading to much more collateral benefit for all of us. Most maintainers would need to be irrational to use anything BUT their system while the distortions are in place. Those supporting this launch bear some real responsibility for what becomes LESS possible in the world when this feature "takes the ball and goes home". (at least in terms of open source funding)

I truly don't feel I'm doing a shallow analysis here.

Anyhow, I really appreciate the attention you may have given this.

Disclaimer: I work adjacent to civic technology, government procurement and the distributed web. There are many exciting paths dancing around these things, and the execution of this launch (separate from the feature itself) is certainly not one of them imho

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#425

Post by return1 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #278

Awesome! Some Feature Requests: 1) Let me sponsor a project, not a person 2) Let a project have a private, or a public, allocation of how funding goes. At first, simple percents would be awesome. 3) Let a project assign funding to another project. Probably one it depends on. 4) For a given project, let me see which other projects are funding it. 5) Allow the set up of Unions. These five projects all have one pool whe…

They can have all these if they allow "pay with Ethereum".

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#426

Post by return1 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

pingucrimson wrote: post #222

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.

> Maybe that is good. How is that good?

a lot of abandoned project will get revived

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#427

Post by rtempaccount1 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #353

rtempaccount1 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wrapp…

Ah I see, so if I understand correctly, it's more that you feel there is ill-intent behind Gihtub's move and their plan is to undercut existing players, and then to increase prices?

That feels to me, like one interpretation for sure, but there are others.

MS (like some other large tech. companies) make their money these days more from subscription services to cloud hosted systems.

Github feels, to me, like a play to provide a compelling ecosystem for developers, in the hopes that it translates to revenue from cloud.

Doing as you describe (upping charges on a service after getting rid of the competition) seems like it would backfire horribly on them from a PR perspective and the amount of money involved (a small percentage of the donations provided) would be a rounding error on Microsoft's income.

I think there's an ulterior motive, for sure, but the one I see as more likely is providing more stickiness to the MS developer ecosystem in efforts to translate to more ammunition in the cloud war with Google and Amazon...

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#428

Post by AYBABTME » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #71

michaelt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Patreon product is 10% payment processing and 90% the marketing/branding/placement/ease-of-use/trust/normalisation, or whatever it is that makes people open their wallets. If GitHub Sponsors is stronger at whatever-it-is-that-makes-people-donate, that would be their advantage.

That's the scary part! OpenCollective for example, being developed via their own platform, need to make sure the platform is sustainable, and can't just throw cash wherever they want to gain marketshare. The result is a sustainable funding platform that will survive for as long as people fund it. GitHub on the other hand, can develop the wrong features, spend too much, give cash away and a whole bunch of other things…

But GH in this space will mean OSS developers will start to get paid for real, the phenomenon will grow and become standard and expected, and if GH stops doing it, the need for it will be so clear and people's expectation of having such a product so strong, that any drop in replacement service will instantly convert most users to their platform.

GH right now is growing the market by bringing millions of eyes onto this problem. The same as Patreon did. And if Patreon dies today, do you think no one will bring up an alternative? And that supporters won't transition with creators to that platform?

It's the same idea as Paypal creating and growing the e-payment system. Down the line, the market of e-payment has grown enough and is legitimized enough that if Paypal was to stop service, there'd be plenty of alternatives, and people are already using plenty of alternatives.

OpenCollective and the likes haven't been growing this market the way GH will be doing, and the result is only a net positive for OSS and developers.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#429

Post by bluefox » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

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 sponsors don't have infinite resources, and at some point some of them take their money and leave. It lingers in the back of your head, but you continue development. You notice however, that your motivation lessens, especially for that particular project people care about. You decide that you want to move on.

Many of the remaining sponsors don't take it well and back away. Now you feel that there's no point to even work on something else. Your soft income is nil. You remember the days you worked that software job. Back then, you managed to write a bit of code, push to a GitHub public repository, and be content that programming was not just a profession to you. Now, you don't even have that.

You look around. There are sponsored celebrities, political cases where sponsors withdrew en-masse because of some controversy, and the usual monetary disputes. Having GitHub sponsors has become yet another status signal for potential employers or clients, and it's another a standard goodie to have them, by contract, transfer a small sum that way every month. Sickened, you turn back to your own issues.

You decide not to let Microsoft poke bytes in your Incentive Unit that way. An optimist, you assure yourself that in a few months you'll repair yourself and be able to write some code again, this time Free Software, since you well know what Open Source means, what it always meant. The GitHub demon is no longer an option. No big deal, since it's also become more like a "social network for developers" with status lines and people using their legal names and professionalism all over it. GitLab still requires JavaScript to view source code, so that's DOA, what with you having your default browser running with JavaScript disabled (the Internet went to shit a long time ago).

So you consider setting up some private GitHub-like that's actually accessible on your own server, or maybe use that FSF hosting site. You learned your lesson, but the software world took yet another step towards the void.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#430

Post by _bxg1 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

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.