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GitHub Sponsors

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Re: GitHub Sponsors

#451

Post by phil21 »

oakesm9 wrote: post #450
ladon86 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good idea, but also the behavior will probably be emergent with the introduction of this feature - I can definitely see OSS maintainers offering logos/links in the README in exchange for monthly sponsorship. I bet we'll see the emergence of "Gold/Silver/Bronze" tiers too, just like at conferences.

Take a look at the Webpack page that GP mentioned. This is already happening

This has been happening since at least the late 90's when I started to get involved in open source.

Heck, I've sponsored a number of projects back then as a teenager with a fledgling Internet business - with the express purpose of advertising to highly technical users I wanted to potentially sell to.

I'm not sure if it was terribly effective at sales marketing, but it was highly effective at marketing towards the types of employees I wanted to work with. I see sponsoring open source projects as more of a recruitment thing than sales thing these days.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#453

Post by rockarage »

Androider wrote: post #435

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…

Or this: It should come out your R&D budget because it is critical tech, and some marketing funds should be diverted to R&D.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#454

Post by Androider »

ladon86 wrote: post #444
Androider wrote: post #435

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…

This is a good idea, but also the behavior will probably be emergent with the introduction of this feature - I can definitely see OSS maintainers offering logos/links in the README in exchange for monthly sponsorship. I bet we'll see the emergence of "Gold/Silver/Bronze" tiers too, just like at conferences.

I think there would be significant benefits to all parties if GitHub just put the proper automated scaffolding for large scale sponsoring in place instead of relying on such ad-hoc conventions:

1) Individual developers and the companies that want to sponsor projects will otherwise just continue to talk past each other. The developers ask "Why aren't companies donating?" while the very use of the word donation is already a complete showstopper for a company that otherwise doesn't flinch at dropping $50K on a one-day booth at a developer conference that draws maybe 15K visitors at best (a website like Material UI or Webpack probably does 10x that in a month, a perfect fit!). If GitHub doesn't set the system in place, large players like Webpack will continue to "get it" (they offer invoices for sponsors!) while Bob with his 5K stars project will be left out.

2) If the attribution is on a case-per-case basis, companies will continue to select just a few big showcase projects. If the handling is uniform it would be much easier for companies to do things like spreading their spend out all over some segments like "top-100 Go projects" or "libraries built on top of D3" or whatever audience they'd like to target.

3) If there is actually significant uptake in a project, meaning more than a handful of sponsors, it quickly becomes a serious timesink for developers just to track who is active which month at which tier, which sponsors churned etc. and then to actually attribute everything correctly. How about, sponsor picks the project, developer does nothing except gets paid, and all campaign links, logos etc. automatically taken care of. Hmm, I guess what I'm describing is sort of like an AdWords for GitHub now that I think of it :)

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#455

Post by Androider »

rockarage wrote: post #453
Androider wrote: post #435

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…

Or this: It should come out your R&D budget because it is critical tech, and some marketing funds should be diverted to R&D.

Marketing and Sales budgets are bigger than R&D at most tech companies. So, you can work with the people who's job is literally to spend that allocated pot of money every single month. Or you can try to change how businesses operate.

If your ultimate goal is to work on OSS and to get companies to chip in, I'm quite convinced the former will yield better results and be less frustrating for everyone involved.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#457

Post by nicpottier »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #441

Dan Ariely's 2008 book "Predictably Irrational" [1], which presents experiments in behavioral economics, has one chapter [2] that discusses the introduction of money ("market norms") in an otherwise money-free social context, typically of favors being exchanged ("social norms") To summarize, the introduction of hard currency completely disrupts the social dynamics and the resulting work quality, usually for the worst…

I mean yes, this is obviously a thing, no argument. But I'm not sure that means that Open Source maintainers are feeding themselves off the goodwill and feelgoodness they are getting from maintaining these projects.

I would gander to guess that most maintainers are supported by a small minority of enterprisy agreements they have, either through large sponsorship or by working for a company that is supporting their Open Source work.

And I think that's a bad thing. I would much rather see them supported by 10,000 $1 monthly donations than 5, $2,000 donations. That is more likely to lead to features and attention focused on the needs of the masses than the enterprise.

I say this as someone who maintains an Open Source platform primarily funded by a single enterprise. I would love to flip that on its head.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#458

Post by cheerlessbog »

_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.

Sometimes fine PR'S just sit without review or merging because the maintainer is busy with their life. If some money rewards them to look, great.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#459

Post by alias_neo »

briandear wrote: post #340
alias_neo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is all a ploy to encourage us to get our credit cards on file with Github? They don't have my card details, and I don't intend to change that. I'll look for other means to donate to the open source projects I want to support, but it does not involve giving Microsoft Github my bank account details.

Does Github and Microsoft have a habit of stealing money from people? I’d be more worried about giving my info to some random open source “collective” group that has considerably less experience with compliance and security.

The down votes you have should indicate the general opinion here, but;

Microsoft's takeover of GitHub is generally considered in the open source community as a negative.

After all, Microsoft's behaviour indicates a generally opposing ideology.

With regards privacy, Microsoft is up there with the worst of them (a la Facebook) with their telemetry, at the very least.

Beyond that, Microsoft has a ( perhaps rightly so) capitalist agenda which doesn't fit with open source.

In case you missed the mass exodus from GitHub on the announcement of their takeover, those that value the freedoms of Libre generally are not in favour of a Microsoft GitHub.

Giving GitHub your bank details can be reasonably synonymised with giving Microsoft your bank details and giving them a cut of the money you intended to give to a developer.

At this point, all the additions to GitHub that Microsoft are making, demonstrate how disconnected they are from that community.

Alternatives such as open collective are quite well regarded in this community and their ideology aligns like Microsoft's never will.

Worse comes to worse, you can ask a developer for a PayPal, Bitcoin or plain old bank details and just send money straight you them.

I'm not saying there are not those for whom this will be of value, but GitHub as-was is no more and ideally if some neutral party willing to host an open source, libre alternative were to show themselves, or would be more desirable than a Microsoft GitHub, for this community.

To present my anecdotal example; I don't run Windows, I don't have an Xbox, I don't have my bank details in GitHub; Microsoft is up in the top-list of companies that don't (willingly) get my bank details.

Re: GitHub Sponsors

#460

Post by wtf42 »

Androider wrote: post #435

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…

This is actually great in so many aspects for companies. GitHub could even change the way companies handle open-source development (in the same way Uber changed taxi market).

Instead of hiring (and keeping) full-time developer (and paying insurance, taxes, etc.) company can abuse this system and 'convince' employee that they can continue working for their project as a contract-free open-source developer and get same 'salary' (or more when this project become successful).

In such case they will be able to fire him (or replace with 'cheaper' one) and no one will be able to complain. I'm sure it can happen in some countries with weak labour rights.

So they can chase two rabbits ($$$ for marketing and $ for developemnt).

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