[HN Gopher] GitHub now officially supports polar.sh as a funding...
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GitHub now officially supports polar.sh as a funding platform
Author : zegl
Score : 120 points
Date : 2024-02-15 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| birk wrote:
| Hey HN,
|
| Birk from Polar here. We're building a platform for open source
| developers offering better funding & community tools. We're
| building it open source too: https://github.com/polarsource/polar
|
| Here to answer any questions you might have. You can read more
| about this on our own Polar page for Polar:
| https://polar.sh/polarsource/posts/github-supports-polar-in-...
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| Hey! More funding options for open source is incredible.
|
| Have you thought about opening up the platform to more than
| just Github? Having Github be the sole source for all open
| source projects is not very healthy for the ecosystem. There
| are other platforms like Codeberg and Sourcehut.
| birk wrote:
| Yes, supporting more platforms is definitely something I see
| as part of our mission and long-term development. Started
| with GitHub since it's where most open source initiatives are
| hosted + analysis on large registries, e.g npm, pypi,
| confirmed that almost all of them where.
|
| We're big fans of other platforms and looking forward to
| expand our support. But main focus now is helping open source
| developers on GitHub get meaningfully more funding & helping
| more than a few work on it full-time to even start small
| businesses. Once we've achieved that & proved our product can
| make a big difference, it's time to expand.
| jahsome wrote:
| I understand and agree with the sentiment, but "why only
| GitHub?" comments are practically at the top of every similar
| HN thread. There's certainly no harm in asking.
|
| The question strikes me as naive though, akin to asking "have
| you thought about using precious capital and momentum on
| .00001% (clearly exaggerated) of the DVCS market?"
|
| The sad truth is "healthy for the ecosystem" isn't really
| profitable. I'm sure supporting other platforms is harmless
| in a roadmap/backlog, but seems like wasted effort early on
| in a company's development to split their focus.
| cowfish wrote:
| Are you planning to add support for non-Western countries?
| birk wrote:
| We're building on Stripe Connect with the following countries
| supported for payouts today:
| https://docs.polar.sh/faq/maintainers/#which-countries-
| are-s...
|
| Will expand as we can with Stripe. Long-term, in order to
| expand truly world-wide, I think we'll need to integrate
| support for other payment providers too. Definitely something
| we want. Just a question of short-term capabilities & main
| priority being to reach a v1 that truly makes a dent in open
| source funding. Expanding markets, platforms and more once we
| have.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| One week from community suggestions to production? Pretty good!
| okhuman wrote:
| Woah impressive - thanks for building this platform, I see the
| possibilities of it.
|
| In terms of fees its polar.sh at 5% + stripe connect at x (us
| region)? What's roughly the stripe fee expected?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Often I want to fund a PR in someone else's project. Please
| don't only make tools available to repo owners. Let us crowd
| fund work without the maintainers taking the lead. Sometimes
| the maintainers don't have time or will to coordinate that,
| even if they will take the effort to click the merge button on
| PRs.
| jraph wrote:
| Such a thing needs to be carefully designed.
|
| It can lead to difficult situations for maintainers, where
| they were not willing to accept some work and didn't have the
| chance to express this (yet) (lack of time for instance), and
| now they have a work that somebody else paid for but didn't
| really want to accept but rejecting it could be harder,
| emotionally. So you would need at least an okay from them.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I know those things must be accounted for. However I
| believe there's a strong opportunity there. Many projects
| will accept PRs and merge them, but not take much lead on
| the project and soliciting particular contributions top-
| down, or promoting community requests into top down calls
| to action. And they already field PRs from people paid to
| produce them (a lot of open source contribution happens on
| company time)
|
| I would even be happy to fund the work done in a fork until
| the maintainers decide or not to accept the PR. Whether the
| PR gets merged upstream is sometimes a secondary concern.
| The bounty for this work in a fork should still be
| advertised by community in upstream repo though (inside an
| issue ticket etc)
| mholt wrote:
| Congrats on this milestone!
|
| Love to see more ways to keep open source sustainable. Thanks
| for the work you do. Hopefully Polar is very successful!
| Tmpod wrote:
| First of all, congratulations on building another option for
| OSS funding!
|
| Now onto the questions:
|
| How does Polar compare to other open-centric platforms, such as
| OpenCollective?
|
| The latter has some great transparency features, are you
| planning on implementing anything like that?
|
| Thank you!
| vault wrote:
| Cool to see it's open source! I don't have time right now to go
| through the codebase, so hope you don't mind if I ask you
| instead. What are you using "Act on your behalf" GitHub
| permission for?
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Congratulations!
| birk wrote:
| Thank you! :)
| hobofan wrote:
| Previous discussion when they launched 7 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36722702
| birk wrote:
| Just to help highlight some big updates since:
|
| - Posts & newsletter support to build direct relationship with
| your community
|
| - Subscriptions to offer sustainable & recurring funding
|
| - Built-in subscription benefits: Premium posts, Discord
| invites, Automate sponsor logos in README/site/docs, access to
| private GitHub repo(s)
|
| - Rewards: Split issue funding with contributors
|
| - Merchant of record & handling VAT for the above
|
| - Public API
|
| We've also lowered our pricing to 5%.
| hobofan wrote:
| That looks like quite an impressive output in that time!
|
| It appears that there is now more of focus on subscriptions
| with tiered private content rather than the "funded backlog"
| mechanic highlighted in the announcement blog post, which I
| think is a good choice.
|
| I think that you can now act as a merchant of record is
| overall the biggest deal for me. The shaky legal situation of
| Github Sponsors once you offer rewards was always the show-
| stopper for not signing up with Github Sponsors for me. In
| case I pick up some significant open-source work again, I'll
| likely sign up with you! :)
|
| P.S.: You have to do double-newlines if you want your list to
| render correctly.
| birk wrote:
| Thank you! Yes, we've shipped most of the features
| mentioned as aspirations in that original post now. We'll
| soon share an updated one on the big goals for 2024 :)
|
| Agree. I love our issue funding feature (now with
| contributor rewards too), but it was always part of a
| larger suite of funding tools we wanted to offer & now can.
| Getting recurring funding/income (subscriptions) is
| definitely crucial.
|
| Yes, completely agree re: merchant of record. I've chatted
| with hundreds of open source maintainers and this has been
| a big pain point & concern for many. So we wanted to
| address it. As a platform, we can work with tax
| professionals & lawyers to help solve this once vs. N times
| for each maintainer standalone (an impossible burden).
| nottorp wrote:
| So it's another Patreon but for open source exclusively?
|
| Every time I feel like donating to something I get pushed
| into a subscription and I end up donating... zero.
|
| Last one was Mozilla. Please make it recurring! Please make
| it recurring! No thank you.
| hobofan wrote:
| I think seeing it as Patreon for open source is fine, as
| Patreon's offering is quite ill-suited for OSS (e.g.
| bad/abandoned API), leaving a lot of room in that niche.
|
| As far as I can tell you can still contribute financially
| via Polar.sh without having to subscribe.
| MapleWalnut wrote:
| I like that polar supports funding specific issues or pull
| requests. Seems like a nice way to help fund a project while also
| helping prioritize issues you care about.
| birk wrote:
| Thank you! Important callout: We designed issue funding for
| maintainers & contributors vs. bounty hunters. We don't believe
| in traditional bounties. More on this here:
| https://polar.sh/polarsource/posts/introducing-rewards
| KomoD wrote:
| I'm curious what the main differences are compared to all the
| other platforms
| prophesi wrote:
| Jumped to the comment section for this as well. Any open source
| devs successfully fund their projects through similar services
| that can give input on polar.sh and its competitors?
| SushiHippie wrote:
| (kind of offtopic)
|
| I see these tutorial videos where it zooms in out to the cursor
| relatively often and I find them really dizzying/distracting, am
| I alone with that or what do others think about this?
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| I concur that the style doesn't appeal to me, but I figure it's
| ne of those marketing things like over-the-top thumbnails that
| no one likes but statistically works. FWIW, the XFCE desktop
| lets you zoom in on your cursor with integer scaling and /i
| love it/, legit use that as a magnifying glass (even to show
| people things) all the time-- but it /feels/ very different.
| The thing is okay, it's the style that feels patronizing.
| codelobe wrote:
| It IS distracting, and a waste of time vs Jump-cut-to-results.
|
| In the right hands the zooming effect could reduce
| disorientation due to "Doorway Effect", but in the wrong hands
| zooming animations may induce motion sickness in some people.
|
| We need to start creating guidelines for 3D and/or animated
| UI/DOCs now, the "tyranny of the default" will make reactionary
| efforts ineffective after the fact.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Polar is Onlyfans for devs?
| INTPenis wrote:
| With less feet pics.
| awesomekling wrote:
| That's great! We've been using Polar for funding GitHub issues in
| the SerenityOS & Ladybird projects for a couple months now, and
| it always makes me super happy when I see someone collect a
| reward!
|
| Also, as someone who has navigated the "how to pay taxes as a
| crowd-funded OSS developer" swamp myself, I'm super happy to see
| Polar take on the task of becoming a Merchant of Record and
| abstracting away much of the complexity for all developers. :)
| birk wrote:
| So proud to have SerenityOS & Ladybird onboard Polar. You're
| such an inspiration and the community is incredible with
| talented & kind developers uniting to build something many deem
| impossible to begin with. Thanks for showing that those are the
| ambitions we should pursue.
| omoikane wrote:
| There were many negative news about another funding platform that
| basically took the money and ran away[1]. I am curious how Polar
| would be able to avoid that fate.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=BountySource
| rasso wrote:
| How can I create a polar account for a GitHub org instead of only
| a single user?
| pointlessone wrote:
| One downside is that they operate only in a few countries.
| Wealthy countries, too. So like GitHub sponsors it's available in
| countries that need it least.
| hwbunny wrote:
| Still too many jumps to funnel money to the devs. Github needs to
| be shaken up.
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