[HN Gopher] Build a salary with GitHub Sponsors
___________________________________________________________________
Build a salary with GitHub Sponsors
Author : rk06
Score : 199 points
Date : 2021-01-23 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onlysponsors.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (onlysponsors.dev)
| dessant wrote:
| OnlyFans has been floated here and in past HN threads, and it
| perfectly encapsulates the current state of open source software
| funding: a site used predominantly to distribute porn is a better
| channel for funding open source developers than most dedicated
| alternatives.
|
| OnlyFans takes a 20% cut, is Only Sponsors a free or paid
| service?
| wut42 wrote:
| OnlySponsors seems to be built entierly on Github API & GitHub
| Sponsors, and does not take any cut besides what's GH Sponsors
| itself is doing, which is none, IIRC.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The current GitHub Sponsors costs do still appear to be free
| for individuals. It looks like they are going to take 10%
| from sponsorships from organizations, which is also currently
| waived due to beta status.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I know that Patreon had these "members only" posts, and it's
| pretty meh. Maybe it's due to the projects I'm sponsoring, but I
| always had a feeling of "if you're writing these posts just for
| us, please don't bother and just enjoy writing code". And just to
| make sure this is not interpreted incorrectly, I mean this in a
| positive way, I don't _want_ to be catered to, I want to ensure
| the survival of the project in the long term.
| toxik wrote:
| Wasn't Patreon involved in some scandal regarding censorship of
| uncomfortable people or something?
|
| Edit: It was.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patreon#Bans_of_specific_users
| Haunted_Cabbage wrote:
| I think the term uncomfortable people is a flippant and
| trivial term when it comes to the details listed in that
| link.
| toxik wrote:
| You do not have to agree with a person's opinions to see
| the value in defending their right to express them. I would
| pre-empt a discussion on whether or not Patreon has
| exhibited political bias in its bans. Instead, consider
| that Sam Harris also believes this. Is Sam Harris somehow
| also an alt-right taboo character? Surely not.
| geofft wrote:
| To be clear - are you talking about this section or also
| including the following one (the crackdown on sex
| workers)? As far as I know, Sam Harris has defended the
| right of Lauren Southern to express herself on Patreon by
| raising funds to attack ships in the Mediterranean, but
| has _not_ defended the rights of sex workers to express
| themselves on Patreon by posting "NSFW" (a misnomer,
| because Patreon is not usually a workplace tool) content.
|
| So I'm not sure if Sam Harris is an alt-right taboo
| character, but I would claim that _he_ is politically
| biased in what sort of speech rights he defends.
| toxik wrote:
| I sense you're making a false equivalence between
| explicit photographic material and political opinions. I
| think it is all right to remove sexual content, if that
| is your desire as a platform. It's a very different can
| of worms from political censorship.
|
| As for Sam Harris, I have not heard him speak one way or
| the other on the topic. I think your argument sounds like
| attacking somebody critical to China because they were
| not critical over your favorite issue.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| "Naked human bodies unacceptable making sure human bodies
| drown to death acceptable" seems like a rather odd line.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Nope, not that at all. That would be putting words into
| someone's mouth. Harris has made no comment on Sex
| Work/ers, nakedness, or the like.
|
| Running a quick ddg search returns:
|
| No results found for site:samharris.com sex
| dtech wrote:
| NSFW means not safe for work: material that you couldn't
| bring to the workplace. A porno magazine is NSFW even
| outside the workplace.
| shuntress wrote:
| Patron is not obligated to serve anyone (besides
| protected classes).
|
| You are perhaps trying to imply that patron is such a
| large monopoly that there is no viable alternative to
| which I would respond that patrons monopoly should be
| addressed directly (treat the cause not the symptom.)
| paulgb wrote:
| It seems you're referring to Lauren Southern (as that was
| apparently who Harris defended), who Patreon removed for
| using the funds she was raising there to block NGO ships.
|
| Is your position that (contrary to Patreon's judgement)
| this was not an act that put lives at risk, or that she
| is entitled to use their platform to put lives at risk as
| a matter of her free speech?
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Lauren Southern is a nazi.
| emteycz wrote:
| Wasn't that because of their payment processors? What are you
| supposed to do when your supplier doesn't allow that type of
| content?
| toxik wrote:
| I think if you read the Wikipedia link you will find that
| it was not because of their payment processor, as far as I
| can tell.
| u678u wrote:
| I have that problem with a lot of charities, they send junk
| mail and sometimes personalized emails. Stop wasting your time.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Maybe it's due to the projects I'm sponsoring, but I always
| had a feeling of "if you're writing these posts just for us,
| please don't bother and just enjoy writing code".
|
| Note that Patreon isn't just for code. These posts make way
| more sense where your funding a blogger, podcaster or similar.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Agreed, but a middle balance could be met, such as the ability
| to vote on feature and bug fix priorities. You get the benefit
| of having a say in something that was already going to be
| worked on and the developer doesn't need to waste time on stuff
| that doesn't matter. All it would do is shuffle the order.
| austincheney wrote:
| The distinction is audience context. Patreon is a sponsor
| focused audience. Everything else is just informational and of
| declining value to the code authors. Github is the opposite.
|
| That distinction is so important to the people writing the
| code. People make all kinds of requests like the sky is falling
| in. Sometimes there is chest thumping or big tears about how
| their concern is more important than everything else even if it
| is a major distraction and irrelevant to the road map.
| Unfortunately, that sort of stupidity amplifies as projects
| become more popular. I guess I am fortunate in that case since
| I am a nobody.
|
| If people want to cut to the front of the line and dictate the
| importance of their concerns they can do so in a sponsor-only
| channel prioritized by money pledged. I am a huge fan of that.
| hashkb wrote:
| It'd be nice to find ways to fund open source without closing off
| aspects of it. Also, capitalizing on FOSS with a walled garden
| product like this, with a middleman cashing out, doesn't feel
| right. I'd like to keep my choice to support a developer based on
| the quality of their work.
| jp_sc wrote:
| There is a middleman, two, actually, this site and GitHub, but
| no one is "cashing out", for now at least.
| hashkb wrote:
| I'm sorry; I should have said "taking a cut" - it's not about
| how much; the point is I'm not in favor of that method of
| capturing value.
|
| GitHub earns its cut with massive network effect, which it
| built for years, funded with a quality product that users
| paid for directly, before rolling out marketplaces.
| ignitionmonkey wrote:
| GitHub Pages could add a feature like this using access controls.
| Right now it's just "Private" and "Public" but I can see a
| possible demand for "Sponsors". Though, things like sponsor-only
| RSS feeds and mailing list integrations might be beyond the scope
| of Pages.
|
| https://github.blog/changelog/2021-01-21-access-control-for-...
| superbaconman wrote:
| I was just thinking about this and I agree. It would be nice if
| these settings could apply to the other sections of a repo:
| Wiki, discussions, issues. Let the software be free but give
| the devs a way to make cash off people using their software
| professionally.
| erezsh wrote:
| I like the design.
|
| Do you plan to add comments? Chat?
| michael_j_ward wrote:
| Linking to patio11's now 5 year old post [0]
|
| Has anyone solved this yet? Why is it not stupid simple to get a
| "support invoice" from an open source project to make it expense-
| able?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863939
| benatkin wrote:
| > both countries are very lenient with regards to necessary
| business expenses (Bi Xu Jing Fei over here).
|
| This seems to be the issue. If you're really paying for the
| software and not the support, it isn't a neccessary business
| expense because you can have it for free. Same for the support.
| If others can get support for free -- and it's easy to observe
| it happening -- chances are you can get it for free. Someone
| down the line might notice it's a donation and not a _necessary
| business expense_.
|
| And if you really need _extra_ support, we 're back to the old
| paradigm where open source can help you land a project but you
| still need to do the work and it's in addition to the work you
| do on the project, and it's not easy work. For example, a week-
| long training course, or custom code.
| jedberg wrote:
| There are a ton of examples of programs that are free or
| reduced cost for individuals and more money for corporations.
| Like all the Jetbrains products.
|
| The IRS doesn't get on people for paying for a corporate
| license for Jetbrains because it would be against the
| license.
|
| Open source support could be the same way. Free for
| individuals, but costs money for corporate/commercial uses. I
| don't think the IRS would even blink twice at that.
| cstejerean wrote:
| But the open source community would because such a license
| would not qualify as open source. See the recent debacle
| sign the Elastic licensing change.
| jedberg wrote:
| That sounds like an issue that the open source community
| 1) needs to get over and 2) probably doesn't have a
| consistent view on.
|
| Also, RedHat built a billion dollar business on this
| idea, so it's not like it's new.
|
| And if I recall, most people were on Elastic's side with
| the license change.
| michael_j_ward wrote:
| How about I pay for the right to add a `high-priority-MYNAME`
| tag to an issue, and the maintainers promise to take that
| into consideration but with no guarantee to make it a
| priority.
| justincormack wrote:
| I think you can now pay for github sponsors via your normal
| subscription, which gives you an invoice.
| gravyboat wrote:
| While this may work for individual contributors I don't see how
| it benefits open source work and the community in general. It
| suggest writing articles and creating videos but there is then a
| drive to release less information publicly to try and get people
| to pay because your code is confusing or your docs are lacking.
| That seems like a big negative.
|
| It also doesn't work for team based projects. I'm one of the
| maintainers of Streamlink [1] which has members from around the
| world and we've been running various methods of donation since
| 2017 or so. In that time our Open Collective [2] has made about
| $1600 USD. We have over 50,000 users across all platforms (based
| on download stats as we don't collect any metrics in our apps so
| it's potentially higher) yet the entire amount we've collected is
| thanks to less than 100 people. We note the Open Collective on
| every release as well.
|
| My own personal donation methods total $15 from one person in the
| past 5 years since we forked the project and started maintaining
| it. We have more users than many start ups do and I know that
| there are several companies using our software, but I haven't
| figured out how to make donations really work yet. How do we
| determine who should make what from a shared pool of money? How
| do you value a contribution, PR, etc., and most importantly how
| do you get users to actually pay without negatively impacting the
| project?
|
| [1]: https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink [2]:
| https://opencollective.com/streamlink
| toxik wrote:
| Typo in the title
| rk06 wrote:
| sorry for that. I am not seeing an option to edit it
| patja wrote:
| I'm also not seeing anything here that meets the definition of
| the word "salary". These details matter if you are trying to be
| taken seriously.
| rk06 wrote:
| the idea here is sponsorship is backed by github sponsors,
| while onlysponsors makes it easier for devs to create content
| and restrict it to sponsors.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I don't like the idea of getting people to sponsor your open
| source work, only to 'close source' the incentives to get them to
| sponsor.
|
| In effect, this is just a paywall/license for good documentation
| for popular software/libraries.
|
| To be clear, making money as a pure open source developer is
| impossibly hard, and creativity is required. Very few enterprises
| making millions off OSS send monetary support, so you have to
| cast a wide net for $2-5 sponsors who are willing to throw the
| equivalent of a coffee a month to you.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| onlyfans jokes aside, there's a reason why Patreon, GitHub
| Sponsors, et al. don't release comprehensive numbers about their
| platform: no one makes money off of them.
|
| The distribution curve makes no sense for the average person, but
| it makes a lot of sense for the platform owners.
| nandi95 wrote:
| What about tidal subscriptions? Are they any good?
| slow_donkey wrote:
| It's hard for me to see the value in monetizing posts from OSS
| projects. If I wanted to pay for someone's thoughts I'd be using
| substack or paying for pictures from OF - in both cases the value
| I receive is directly tied to the subscription.
|
| Possibly a more interesting approach could be gated support
| similar to an exclusive discord for patreon subs to ask
| questions.
| devin wrote:
| The title of this article has a typo in it. It is Only Sponsors
| not "Sponsers".
| squidfunk wrote:
| I also started with GitHub sponsors after reading about Caleb's
| post about sponsorware in May 2020 and have managed to grow my
| sponsorships since then to more than $1k a month.
|
| To those who are interested how I did it: I'm the author of
| Material for MkDocs [1], a popular solution for technical
| documentation. I created a private fork called "Material for
| MkDocs Insiders [2]" where all new features landed since then and
| tied those features to funding goals at $ 500, $ 1,000 etc. The
| promise is that the moment a funding goal is hit, the features
| are merged back into the original repo and released for general
| availability. It works reasonably well so far, better that I
| would have thought.
|
| My Twitter following is rather small (700), but I'm posting a lot
| about Material for MkDocs and new features and try to engage the
| community. I guess if you have a large following like Caleb, you
| could up the amount in a few months, given that you have
| something on your hands that users want and solves a problem.
|
| [1]: https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ [2]:
| https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/insiders/
| 0x008 wrote:
| Replied to wrong comment
| akkartik wrote:
| I really like this model and want it to take over the world. It
| would solve two problems: compensating people for building
| open-source software, and replacing the notion of IP for
| software with something more sustainable. More people should
| stand up and say, "I made this, I want to make the world
| better, and I will add this to the commons that everyone can
| benefit from after I extract $X of value from it."
|
| A social norm of requiring people to "call their shot" in
| advance feels like a powerful counter-force to greed.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Okay, I have to ask:
|
| How is the current "notion of IP for software" not
| sustainable?
|
| And how is this model, which seems like it's just asking to
| fall into a tragedy of the commons, more sustainable?
|
| And finally, how is making something and holding it back
| until getting paid a certain amount a "counter-force to
| greed"? (to be clear, I don't have a problem with this -- if
| someone makes something, they're free to do what they want
| with it -- but I don't see how it's any more or less greedy
| than other options)
| jdsalaro wrote:
| > How is the current "notion of IP for software" not
| sustainable?
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/stupid-patent-month-
| st...
| squidfunk wrote:
| Is it greedy if, after investing months or years of work,
| answering issues, implementing feature requests, you feel
| like you deserve to be somehow compensated for your work,
| especially with successful companies using your software,
| benefiting from it?
|
| The model may be far from being perfect, I'm still learning
| and adjusting what works and what doesn't, but it feels
| much better investing my time into this project since I get
| something back.
| alexvoda wrote:
| It sure feels greedy if your inheritors expect to retain
| a monopoly over all rights over your work after your
| death for at least 70 years.
| akkartik wrote:
| > How is the current "notion of IP for software" not
| sustainable?
|
| The only reason the "notion of IP for software" is a thing
| is that our intuitive notions of ownership don't quite
| work. We can't sell software without sources because nobody
| wants to allow a stranger to run arbitrary code on their
| computers. We can't sell software with sources because it's
| too easy to copy. We can't give away software with sources
| for free because people gotta eat.
|
| So IP is a hack that slips into a gap just because there's
| nothing better. But it's not a great hack.
| https://250bpm.com/blog:82 makes a compelling argument that
| licenses exist only to help CYA companies consume software
| without risk. All of the software on my computer is owned
| by others, and yet nobody bears any liability for security
| holes. It's hard to discuss licenses, because "IANAL". But
| any time spent looking into licenses quickly uncovers stuff
| that's only there because nobody has tried to fight it in
| court yet. Licenses apply to a single snapshot of code, but
| software has a life cycle and needs a supply chain and
| governance structure
| (https://monetize.substack.com/p/a-holistic-vision-of-open-
| so...)
|
| > how is setting up a situation that seems to be asking for
| a tragedy of the commons more sustainable?
|
| I think a lot about the tragedy of the commons
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359257#4361596), but
| it's not clear to me how people putting things made of bits
| in a digital commons that anybody can use creates any sort
| of tragedy here. If you have a specific scenario or
| externality in mind, we can certainly discuss it.
|
| > how is making something and holding it back until getting
| paid a certain amount a "counter-force to greed"?
|
| It's a counter-force because of the bounding effect. You
| can choose to extract as much value as you want -- but you
| gotta say up front what you want.
|
| Users are not passive entities here. If you choose to set
| the number too high, discerning consumers may choose to not
| feed your network effects. If you set the number to
| something people feel is reasonable, your adoption may
| speed up, because people feel like they're contributing to
| something good entering the commons.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Fundamentally, the power a author has ,that is greater than
| the power granted by IP, is the power to decide whether to
| release something or not. This is a nontransferable power.
|
| Historically, copyright was the granting of limited time
| monopoly powers over the distribution and derivatives of
| something in exchange for the promise of the author to not
| make use of the power to choose to not publish. In other
| words, copyright was meant to encourage publishing. The
| reason was that publishing that was controlled and approved
| by the state was vastly more preferable to uncontrolled
| organic spreading of knowledge. It was meant to be a win-
| win-win for everybody. The author gained revenue, the state
| gained control and the public gained culture.
|
| The same was true about patents. The state granted the
| inventor a limited time monopoly over the use of a solution
| in exchange for the inventor not keeping it a secret. This
| granted the the inventor a way to extract revenue directly
| out of an idea instead of out of a finished sealed product.
| It granted the state control. And it granted the public
| access to the inner workings of the innovation.
|
| This however does not mean that the power to keep something
| secret is gone. When it is more profitable to do so, the
| choice will always be to do so. That is why trade secrets
| exist. That is why there is a black market for information.
| Secrets are still highly valuable.
|
| Currently the term of copyright extends far beyond the end
| of the life of the author. Noone will publish anything
| after they are dead. Also, all IP rights are now
| transferrable and inheritable. Oftentimes IP transfers are
| imposed on employees as part of their contract with the
| employer. The main beneficiary of IP today are large
| corporations. Also, the public is no longer just a consumer
| but a transformer. And due to technology, the state has
| clearly lost control. All of this makes the system of IP,
| not sustainable. The incentives are no longer aligned.
|
| This model relies on that fundamental power to keep
| something secret and to trade that secret. It is an attempt
| to realign the incentives of each party based on simpler
| assumptions.
|
| Now please explain why you believe "it's just asking to
| fall into a tragedy of the commons".
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. For clarification, does any subset
| of your community have access to the private version, like
| perhaps people paying a subscription fee or something?
|
| Or is that version completely hidden from everyone, and just
| used to develop and test new features until a funding threshold
| is met to release them into the public version?
| squidfunk wrote:
| Sponsors have access to the private repository (I'm using
| GitHub's collaborator feature). I have several sponsor tiers
| and $10 a month or more will get you access to my
| sponsorware, which means you will be added to the private
| repository and can use the features immediately. What you're
| effectively getting is early access, so you can use the
| features before other users.
|
| The official documentation of my project lists exactly which
| features are "Insiders only", and which aren't. When the
| features tied to the funding goal that was hit are merged,
| everybody can use them. I try to always have sponsors-only
| features on higher tiers to keep sponsoring attractive.
|
| As I understand, Caleb does it with content and entire
| projects - I'm doing it with new features for an existing
| project. Also, I'm doing it fully transparent, disclosing how
| much I earn with this, which I think is crucial to build the
| necessary trust relationship.
| DelightOne wrote:
| How do you avoid malicious users publishing your content
| public? Or is it just not an issue yet?
| cercatrova wrote:
| I suppose it's licensed under a non open source license
| until it's released to the public. If so, you can
| prosecute such individuals who break the license.
| jraph wrote:
| Remaining open source but banning the user who leaks the
| source code from the repository could work too, no? (the
| RedHat way).
|
| So as a user, you can start some work based on the
| insider version and be confident that you will be able to
| release your work even if the insider version never goes
| public for some reason, instead of relying on a promise
| that the code will be released in an open source license.
| squidfunk wrote:
| It's MIT-licensed, as the original project. I have no
| interest in legal prosecution. Also, different licensing
| would make it more complicated for companies.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > different licensing would make it more complicated for
| companies
|
| True, although just removing a couple of words from the
| MIT license would still be a very attractive and easy to
| use license. Examples of words you might remove: "sell"
| and "sublicense".
| squidfunk wrote:
| This is indeed a problem. However, given that you need to
| pay for a subscription to get access, I consider the risk
| rather low. The Insiders code is released under the same
| license (MIT), as I didn't want to make things
| complicated, so I couldn't even enforce someone
| publishing it. I have a fair-use policy [1] that (up to
| now) all users respect.
|
| Yes, the model is far from being perfect, but it allows
| me to pay at least some of my bills. I'm always curious
| to learn how to improve it!
|
| [1]: https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-
| material/insiders/#terms
| konschubert wrote:
| Hi, I am not sure if I fully understood your model:
|
| You said you will release the 1.5 K, 2K, ... features once you
| reach a monthly recurring sponsorship revenue of that amount of
| Dollars.
|
| What do you do if the sum of the monthly pledges goes down at
| some point? Will you make those features private again?
|
| I guess it's a bit counter-intuitive for me that a one-time
| release of a feature is tied to a recurring sponsorship level.
|
| On the other hand, that's basically the monthly-license-fee
| subscription model, so I guess it DOES make sense.
| joshspankit wrote:
| There's likely enough people continuing to support. As well:
| if needed there's exercising the option to set the next
| feature at the next highest MRR goal.
| squidfunk wrote:
| > What do you do if the sum of the monthly pledges goes down
| at some point? Will you make those features private again?
|
| Nope, any feature that is released will remain public.
|
| > I guess it's a bit counter-intuitive for me that a one-time
| release of a feature is tied to a recurring sponsorship
| level.
|
| In the end, I'm selling early access to new features, that's
| it. If you need something now, and it's available for
| sponsors only, you need to subscribe to get access to it. You
| can always implement it yourself, the project is very
| hackable and puts a great emphasis on extensibility. The
| documentation is very thorough, also in respect to
| customization. However, sometimes, maybe especially for
| something like technical documentation, you don't want to be
| fighting browser bugs and edge cases.
| vgaldikas wrote:
| I think certain percentage will just keep the donations on.
| And of course some will cancel them after the feature is
| released.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| I'm concerned about the idea of open source turning into teaser
| content, the main goal of which is to get people to pay to unlock
| "sponsors only" content.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Isn't that the "open core" model? Frankly, I encounter many
| projects that claim to be open source, based on the license,
| that sell a cloud version while having difficult or impossible
| to install/update/maintain community versions. And then there
| is the old gimmick where the community version is broken, but
| the cloud version isn't (presumably because the developers know
| how to fix what's broken).
| fixmycode wrote:
| donateware becomes sponsorware
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah that sounds scary, but we already get that with a lot of
| open source software written by consultancies selling a paid
| version.
|
| (Red hat is disincentivized from making the Linux ecosystem
| more sane on a deep level.)
|
| At the end of the day, given
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law, it's probably
| more feasible to incentivize less sharply: UBI with the
| incentive improve society's productivity and you and everyone
| else get's more stuff. Do that overly-blunt incentivisation
| along with the overly-sharp incentivisation we have today, and
| we might strike some sort of better balance if not spectral
| (bluntness ~ wavelength) coverage.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Red hat is disincentivized from making the Linux ecosystem
| more sane on a deep level.
|
| That's a bit confusing. Are you able to expand on that, so
| it's easier to understand?
| lez wrote:
| Red Hat is making its money by selling support. The more
| obfuscated the system is, the more $$$ they make.
| comex wrote:
| Eh. Most of the Red Hat projects people complain about
| are targeted mainly at desktops, as opposed to servers.
| And when it comes to desktops, Red Hat's biggest
| competition isn't Ubuntu or CentOS or whoever; it's
| Microsoft. There are far, far more users using Windows,
| who might be convinced to switch to Red Hat if it works
| well, than there are users using other Linux distros, who
| might be convinced to buy support if the packages they
| share work poorly.
| justinclift wrote:
| Not sure how it is these days, now that IBM is calling
| the shots, but when I worked at Red Hat (~2010-2015) the
| vast majority of people did their level best to make
| things work well.
|
| Some points:
|
| * While "support" is part of their business, so is
| training, consulting, etc.
|
| * Not sure what to lump performance tuning under, nor
| writing up white papers, tuning guides, and best practise
| docs. But there are whole teams which did that (back then
| anyway) for products like RHEL.
|
| With support, wouldn't it make more sense for things to
| be _clearer and easier_ , so there's less staff time
| needed to provide the documentation and support?
|
| Saying that because AFAIK the places that pay for support
| (rather than use CentOS or similar) are more doing it for
| compliance reasons than straight out really _needing_
| (much?) support. eg they 're going to pay for it anyway,
| even if they don't really use it
| avipars wrote:
| love the name
| caniszczyk wrote:
| I think folks need to be wary of supporting github sponsors, the
| way it's currently structured only perpetuates a gig style
| economy for open source maintainers, my guess is <1% of folks
| using sponsors get enough money equivalent to a salary
| (unfortunately GitHub doesn't share data on how well the sponsors
| program is doing)
|
| https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-...
| bkyan wrote:
| I think this would be more compelling to me, if the focus was on
| premium support options, rather than additional content.
| jedberg wrote:
| Here is my biggest problem with supporting open source:
| discoverability.
|
| At the end of last year, I was doing all my last minute
| charitable giving, and after my PSF donation, I wanted to donate
| to open source projects. I opened up Github's sponsor page, and
| stopped there. There were thousands of projects, but I have no
| idea which ones are important to me, other than a few big ones.
|
| It would be great if a tool existed that would look at everything
| I've installed via Brew(or your package manager of choice) and
| all the imports in my own Github projects, and follow all the
| dependency paths to the bottom, and then give me a report of how
| often a dependency shows up in that graph.
|
| For example, I know ffmpeg is at the bottom of a few of my
| stacks. But what else? There might be a library that I rely on 12
| different ways, but it's so fundamental and deep in the stack
| that I have no idea.
|
| It would be even better if this magical tool could then directly
| link me to the support page (or figure out if one even exists).
|
| My other problem with all of these open source sponsorships is
| that it seems for some reason none of them support one time
| donations. They all want me to sign up for a monthly gift (and I
| don't even get to chose the amount). I understand that that helps
| their cash flow, but that's now how I donate. I look at my income
| at the end of the year, set a target percentage, and then make
| all my donations at the end of December until I run out of budget
| (except for various fundraisers during the year).
|
| And I know I'm not the only one who donates that way. December is
| always the biggest month of gifts for charity. They really should
| have an option for people like me.
| david_allison wrote:
| GitHub Sponsors community[0] now performs suggestions based on
| project dependencies on an organization/personal level, which
| is a start.
|
| ----
|
| Other platforms have better discoverability UX than GitHub, but
| nowhere near the standard proposed by your post:
|
| Open Collective[1] - supports one-time donations
|
| Liberapay[2] - Recurrent, but supports "manual" renewal of
| donations
|
| IssueHunt[3] - one time payment for issue sponsorship
|
| [0]: https://github.com/sponsors/community
|
| [1]: https://opencollective.com/discover?show=open%20source
|
| [2]: https://liberapay.com/explore/
|
| [3]: https://issuehunt.io/r
| 0x008 wrote:
| Not sure if that is relevant for you, but npm hints to
| dependencies which are looking for funding. There is even a
| command ,,npm fund" I think?
| jedberg wrote:
| I don't use NPM (mostly write in Python), but that is the
| right idea.
| swrobel wrote:
| Decided to finally get onboard with Github sponsors and was
| dismayed to see this message:
|
| "You'll be @babel's 13th sponsor, helping them reach their goal
| of $12,000 per month."
|
| If a project as widely-used as babel can only attract 13
| sponsors, this model is definitely broken
| jjjeii3 wrote:
| they make more like 100K per month...
| bigethan wrote:
| They get _many_ more sponsors through Open Collective
| https://opencollective.com/babel
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| https://backyourstack.com has you covered! (it's still in beta
| and has only basic functionality, but at least it's a step in
| the right direction).
|
| It scans your dependency file (e.g. Gemfile in Rails).
| jedberg wrote:
| Fantastic!! I had a feeling that if I posted this, someone
| would point me to a tool that does exactly that. Just signed
| up, thanks!
| rk06 wrote:
| OP here. I didn't make onlysponsors. I found out about it while
| listening to a podcast about Vue. and decided it is quite
| interesting and useful for many open sourcers here.
|
| Original creator is @posva[1]
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/posva/
| posva wrote:
| I'm curious: do you have a link to the podcast?
| ryancnelson wrote:
| can you correct the mangled misspelling of the site's actual
| name in your posting title?
| codetrotter wrote:
| Just a couple of weeks ago I did a search on Google for
| "OnlyDevs" to see if anyone had already thought of this. I didn't
| immediately see anything relevant at the time, so I then looked
| to see if onlydevs.com was available, which it wasn't - parked by
| some domain shark. But the service I used for looking for domain
| availability suggested only.dev which is available and I was like
| oh neat but then I saw the price that it would cost and it was
| too much for me.
|
| Only.dev would cost ~870 USD per year which is way to expensive
| for a domain for some random idea.
|
| Anyways, neat to see that someone came built this, and nice that
| they were able to come up with a name for it that would not cost
| them an arm and a leg for the domain :p
| jahewson wrote:
| Are paywalls really what open source needs?
| Copenjin wrote:
| I actually like the idea but without a Pricing page it's hard to
| tell if it's build to last or just an experiment. OnlyFans is
| clearly for a different kind of content for now, until this
| changes I don't see why something like this shouldn't be
| considered a good alternative.
|
| Other than github providing something similar, why don't they
| also expose something useful about github users supporter info
| through their API? Maybe they already do, don't think so.
| geofft wrote:
| I worry about this sort of model because it incentivizes you to
| poorly document your code, or alternatively, it breaks down if
| _someone else_ documents your code well.
|
| For instance - if there's a particularly tricky way to do
| something, and you release a sponsor-only video or post
| explaining it, and then one of your sponsors sees a question
| about the same topic on StackOverflow and explains it in their
| own words (StackOverflow already prohibits linking to external
| explanations without including an answer in-line), would you feel
| like that is unfair to you?
|
| If you publish a performance trick (as demonstrated on this
| site), and one of your sponsors sends you a PR to improve
| performance in the common case, would you want to accept it?
|
| As your project grows, more people will ask questions and more
| people will be building a community around it. If you want to
| have market exclusivity for answers, you effectively need to
| prevent that community from growing so that people _must_ go to
| you.
|
| It might be possible to do this at scale. This is _part_ of Red
| Hat 's business model, for instance: they have a customer-facing
| knowledge base that isn't public that includes answers to tricky
| questions. But Red Hat doesn't depend on the secrecy of this
| knowledge base. Your entire organization can get access to the KB
| if you buy a _single_ Red Hat license of any type, which costs
| something like $50 /year. And developers at Red Hat would be
| happy for those problems to get fixed in the upstream projects.
|
| Red Hat's business model is more strongly around support instead
| of secret documentation, that is, around responses to specific
| questions instead of restricted-broadcast answers that help
| everyone. If you're having a problem in production, Red Hat can
| help you figure it out (as long as you've been paying them for
| server licenses for all your servers). And the knowledge base
| mostly exists to deal with the problem of people having limited
| time - they document something that's broken, but the intent is
| to actually solve it, not to leave it in the long-term state
| where it requires reading the KB article.
|
| Now, people have been trying to do smaller-than-Red-Hat-scale
| support contracts for their OSS for a long while, and it's worked
| in some cases (e.g., SQLite, Postgres) but not in general. It
| might be the case that restricted educational material works out
| better in practice!
| varispeed wrote:
| In many countries when you work as an employee you have to pay
| taxes like an employee (and tax must be collected at source). How
| this platform deals with that?
| baxtr wrote:
| Sounds like a copycat of the infamous OnlyFans platform...
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I very much applaud these people making passive money by selling
| educational content, but we shouldn't kid yourself: there is
| nothing open about this and your sponsors are not sponsoring your
| OSS contributions, they just find your content valuable enough.
|
| Do they still benefit from 0% fees from Github / Microsoft?
| zebnyc wrote:
| Unrelated, I really like artwork / images like the one on the
| hero section.
| https://onlysponsors.dev/_nuxt/img/career.67d5c3b.svg
|
| Where can I find similar (free / paid) ?
|
| Thanks
| akiselev wrote:
| One I've used is PixelTrue [1] (no relation, just a happy
| customer). The envato marketplaces [2] are probably the biggest
| platform for such content though
|
| [1] https://www.pixeltrue.com/
|
| [2] https://graphicriver.net/
| posva wrote:
| You can find the links to resources in the about page:
| https://onlysponsors.dev/about
| vienarr wrote:
| so its like onlyfans but for open source community
| 67868018 wrote:
| Idk why bother when they could literally just use OF
| rk06 wrote:
| the main thing is that onlysponsers does not take a cut and
| it is integrated with github sponsers for payment and
| sponsorship tiers
| langitbiru wrote:
| OF is blocked in my country.
| timpattinson wrote:
| because the aforementioned website is known almost
| exclusively for porn.
|
| Some, maybe most, people would be fine with it, nothing wrong
| with it really.
|
| But if you're trying to earn a living why cut yourself off
| from the 50% of people that wouldn't subscribe due to the
| site name only.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Besides the association, which one might or might not be
| fine with, I'd worry that being porn-centric would put OF
| at risk of credit card companies not wanting to work with
| them, similar to what PornHub faced recently.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| OF has high fees afaik.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Mods: Typo "Sponsers"
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Patreon (for podcasts) and onlyfans work thanks to parasocial
| relationships. People don't have a parasocial relationship with
| the authors of the open source software they use.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I would pay for specific features or bug fixes in software, as
| a user that's more important, than the lerson implementing it,
| though people are still very important.
|
| There are so many tiny things that bug me when I'm using my
| devices, it would be great to pay to improve some of them.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| Someone posted this just yesterday.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25879238
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's really cool, I will try it. It's great, as I don't
| have to wait for the maintainer to set it up.
| ma2rten wrote:
| Maybe it could be a parawork relationship instead of
| parasocial, like sponsors voting on new features and faster
| response to issues.
| um_ya wrote:
| Just having a paid priority issue section or a direct line
| contact to the core dev would be worth paying for. It seems
| to work with Youtube superchats and Twitch messages.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Phabricator has been doing that for years (but more extreme -
| you can't even submit it comment on bugs without paying) and
| I think they're the only open source project my company gives
| money to. Definitely a reasonable option.
| rexpop wrote:
| Don't we?
|
| I can name a few Ruby celebrities off the top of my head:
|
| - Matz
|
| - TenderLove (Aaron Patterson)
|
| - DHH
|
| - _why (Jonathan Gillette)
| samesense wrote:
| Excellent. I'd pay to see guido's python.
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