
GitHub Sponsors - Heliosmaster
https://github.com/sponsors
======
Androider
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 happy
to drive $xxK/mo to open source projects my company depends on or that are
simply being used by an audience that aligns with our own. To sell that
internally, I need (as in, I would be laughed out of the room to propose it
without):

\- My sponsoring company logo on the GitHub project page

\- UTM links and all that jazz to attribute traffic and campaigns to the
specific projects that we sponsor

See [https://webpack.js.org/](https://webpack.js.org/) for a good example of a
successful sponsorship program. Literally the biggest hurdle remaining for
BigCorp to sponsor something like Webpack today is selling your boss on
"Patreon" and "OpenCollective". But if you just increase our GitHub budget by
a few K/month, AND the marketers get attributable traffic to boot that we can
point to, well that's an easy sell!

~~~
ladon86
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.

~~~
oakesm9
Take a look at the Webpack page that GP mentioned. This is already happening

~~~
phil21
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.

------
mushufasa
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? (I think that could be a good thing actually).

\- Do companies use GitHub sponsorships to judge the health of dependencies?
Will they create budgets to support their dependencies systematically?

\- Does this hurt FOSS contributions, because now people start to expect to be
paid rather than doing it for inherent motivations? Will this generate toxic
politics among project contributors regarding who gets credit + gets paid?

\- Will this mean that microsoft gets a bunch of PII on top-notch developers
(have to enter name + address info to receive or send payments), and get much
more value from that data than I can imagine?

~~~
diggan
> 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
attention. It's obvious the feature they are now introducing is not for making
the ecosystem better, but to lock the ecosystem harder to GitHub.

~~~
Kalium
> Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what
> others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay).

It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security,
payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a
raft of compliance all handled already. It might just be me, but if I were to
speculate I would guess that OpenCollective and LiberaPay can't quite claim
the same. I know that if I want to, I can get a SOC 2 report from GitHub.

These are nor minor administrative details to be brushed aside idly. They
matter, particularly to a company keen to ensure that they never have to
apologize for a partner fucking up credit card handling or to someone with a
corporate card who has to be careful how they use it. These things are _major
features_.

~~~
patcon
> It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security,
> payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with
> a raft of compliance all handled already.

Yes, and they are absolutely _robbing_ the opportunity from others to build in
this space, when there are already some really capable players who would have
gotten somewhere great. This is a total asshole, closed source company
approach. The "loss leader" thing feels totally malicious, and designed to
starve the open competition. This is classic Microsoft and rolls back all the
positive feelings that had been growing about their growing in the right
direction. Amazon does the same shit, to starve competition: "Yeah, you've a
spot on our system, but we're going to steal every feature and embed our
deeper and drive you out."

For a real example of how OPEN companies work together: Balanced Payments was
a daring effort to run an open source payment processor. When they wanted a
way to fund and support Gratipay, they went in and submitted a pull request to
incorporate their own open source payment processor into the Gratipay
platform. If GitHub were in the true spirit of open source, it would have
engaged OpenCollective in such a capacity.

I am really disappointed about the hooray optimism and lack of criticism in
this thread. I feel like we're all failing to engage in critical engagement
with this idea and premise.

~~~
Kalium
What kind of critical engagement do you think we are failing to offer? What
kind of response would leave you thinking "This person engaged critically with
the issue at hand, but still came away with a strongly positive position"?

For my own part, I don't think anybody is owed a position in a space. I also
don't think the existence of small players that get displaced by a big player
means that the small players were destined to become big players. It's worth
considering that LiberaPay and OpenCollective would never have gotten
somewhere great. Perhaps they would always have been doomed to be small and
essentially irrelevant. We'll never know, obviously, but it's worth
considering.

But let's talk about OpenCollective and how Github could have worked with
them. Do you think OpenCollective would have passed a security audit? Are they
SOC compliant? Could they have handle the scale?

An even more interesting question: has Github ever claimed to be an OPEN
company? I'm certainly not aware of such, though of course my knowledge is
less than comprehensive. Charging them with failing to be something that
they've never claimed to be seems odd.

Yes. Your charge is correct in an important detail. Github isn't an open
source company. As far as I can tell they never have been. It's perhaps
somewhat less than maximally reasonable to expect them to become one.

For my own part, this enhances my positive feelings about Microsoft running
Github. They're making changes to popularize the idea that it's OK to pay
developers to do open source, and doing so in a way that lets developers get
paid in a manner of their choice.

It could still be an open platform, of course. Someone just needs to be able
to do it better than Github. As Dependabot shows, that's _absolutely_
possible.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> It could still be an open platform, of course. Someone just needs to be
able to do it better than Github. As Dependabot shows, that's absolutely
possible._

Awkward, this literally happened today: [https://dependabot.com/blog/hello-
github/](https://dependabot.com/blog/hello-github/)

(I agree with the thrust of your comment; I just think the timing here is
funny.)

~~~
Kalium
That's actually _exactly my point_. Dependabot did Github security alerts so
much better than Github did, that Github gave up on trying to compete
entirely.

Which is to say that it's incontrovertibly possible to beat Github at their
own game and on their own platform. To the point where even Github agrees
they've been beat.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Really neat! As someone who works on open-source full time and is largely
sponsored by my users, here's my take:

The good:

\- gets money into open source with an intuitive and accessible interface that
will get it to the forefront of people's minds

\- they're the only platform that isn't taking a slice off the top (yet)

\- (temporary) donation matching and eating payment processing fees

The bad:

\- a few projects on github are disproportionately large and influential and
will probably receive a majority of the funds from this

\- this risks creating a stronger form of platform lock-in than ever: who's
going to switch to sourcehut when their github repo makes them real world
money?

I find this interesting because it runs into a place where my interests are
seriously split. I depend on funding for my open source projects and this
seems like a really necessary and powerful move that fills a gaping hole in
the ecosystem, and might do it really well. At the same time, I'm working on a
competing platform to GitHub and I'm worried about getting people locked into
a proprietary platform. I have always recommended that people who accept
donations for their open-source work avoid putting all of their eggs into one
basket, like Patreon, in case that platform changes in a way they dislike. I
encourage that for anyone interested in this GitHub offering as well, and I
signed up for the waitlist to see how it goes. I still keep a number of
projects there and will for the foreseeable future, so it might be a nice
revenue source.

I have put a lot of thought into open source funding in general, I'd love to
sit down with the team and chat if they have the time. Shoot me an email:
sir@cmpwn.com.

~~~
justinclift
It'll also be interesting to see how GitHub competitors respond.

GitLab may be in a position to do so, unsure about others.

------
buro9
I run community sites for which I am paid donations to cover running costs
including writing code, bug fixes, servers, etc.

Today I take donations via PayPal, but the catch with this is that it's hard
to provide visibility to donors of how healthy this is (WRT to costs), and
whilst I considered Patreon that seemed to be very focused on creative
deliverables to donors of a non-code/service nature.

I am trying Browser Attention Tokens, but these feel to be detached from the
delivery of code, and still don't provide enough visibility to the donors of
the overall health of the projects.

This though... this could be good. If Github sponsorship were attached to
projects and people donated to a given org or repo, and then that were visible
"this repo receives $500 per month" it would encourage code contribution
whilst providing visibility over the health of a project.

I know my donors would appreciate the visibility (as would I, I manually
create periodic reports on income and costs - at least this solves the income
side).

The only question I have is how easy it would be for those who don't use
Github to subscribe to a recurring donation?

Edit: Signed up for the waitlist, received a link to
[https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-
sponsors](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors) which
appears to clarify that you'd be sponsoring a developer not a repo/org...
which means popularity/celebrity is everything. Oh well.

~~~
pdimitar
> _visible "this repo receives $500 per month" it would encourage code
> contribution whilst providing visibility over the health of a project._

I fear this might snowball. Many people don't donate if they see a project
with very small donations. It goes like this: "well, my contribution would not
make any difference anyway"...

The reverse is also true: "this guy is OBVIOUSLY doing something right if he
gets $500 a month for OSS work, I'll donate!". Yet another example of whales
vs. small fish.

As you said in your edit, it will likely encourage celebrity cheering and
everybody else won't get a cent as before.

~~~
nine_k
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.

~~~
steveklabnik
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.

~~~
pdimitar
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.

------
amirathi
To summarize,

\- OSS contributors on GitHub can apply to become "sponsored developer" to
accept donations

\- Developer sets monthly sponsorship tiers (amounts & benefits)

\- GitHub will match upto $5k in donation in Developer's first year (1:1
match)

\- GitHub will not charge any fees in the first year

\- In the future, they may charge a nominal processing fee

\- Currently only individuals can donate to individuals, org/team support (on
both sides) to come soon

------
xwdv
I don’t like this. There has always been a purity around writing open source
software simply for the benefit of mankind.

Let’s not kid ourselves, probably no one is going to make a living from github
sponsors, and projects that bring in any significant money are probably
written by developers who already make good money do something else anyway.
This would basically be beer money to them.

You would be amazed at how people that do not contribute any sort of money to
an open source software project will come in and make _demands_ to the creator
to implement some feature or fix some bug. Now imagine if they donate $10 and
suddenly feel like there is a _debt_ the creator must pay to them by doing
what they want.

I will not be using github sponsors for my open source projects. Instead I
will continue to ask for things like tickets to conferences or speaking
engagements where I can better develop my brand and clout. That’s the way it
should be, but that’s just my opinion.

~~~
radium3d
Don't let them manipulate you. Assert your policy that they are paying for the
software as it is at the time of donation. I would donate with the same
thought without any expectations of further development because of my
donation. Only that the software has already helped me in its current state.

~~~
JoshuaRLi
Exactly this. The "purity" of OSS development needs to be reflected in the
"purity" of donations for this to work. Small donations should represent
nothing more than a token of appreciation. Large donations, well... money
shouldn't buy project influence, though that is easier said. It's a
complicated matter of corporate sponsored engineers contributing both good and
bad (influence wise) patches back to OSS, but people need to make a living
somehow.

------
usrusr
I think it's a very compelling deal: under the patreon model (company takes a
cut to fund the funding mechanism), the "platform tax" is a permanent sore
that makes donating feel less good than it could. Am I giving to the cause or
am I giving to the platform? An independent zero fee platform run entirely on
altruism will always be in the edge of failure, with one of the failure modes
being transfer to untrustworthy operators.

A commercial zero fee platform run as a loss leader on a perfectly obvious
business case just makes sense. It's clear that both ends of the transaction
"pay" by adding relevance to the platform, but that's a positive sum game.

~~~
0xffff2
>GitHub will not charge fees for GitHub Sponsors. And to celebrate the launch,
we’ll cover payment processing costs for the first year, too! One-hundred
percent of your sponsorship goes to the developer.

My reading is that they're only going to forgo the fees for the first year,
and after that it's going to be basically similar to Patreon in terms of where
the money goes.

~~~
dangjc
Maybe they meant credit card interchange fees of 1-3%?

~~~
diggan
If there is money being moved around on GitHub's platform, you can be sure
that they are interested in grabbing a piece of it. Otherwise, why not
integrate with existing open platforms?

~~~
captn3m0
Because they can control it and use it as a moat.

------
zapita
I’m glad open-source maintainers will get one more way to get paid... But it
feels wrong to lock this into a git hosting platform. Maintainer payment is
important enough to be a first-class product, open and accessible to all...
instead it’s being used as a bargaining chip to keep developers on a hosting
platform. The subtext is pretty clear: “if you want to get paid, you better
not leave Github!”.

Meanwhile nonprofits and startups focused on solving the problem of open-
source sustainability for everyone, not just Github customers, will suffer
from this announcement.

I think that’s a shame.

~~~
pingucrimson
Yeah, it's a shame the GitHub is starting to actually take advantage of their
hosting monopoly, to the detriment of solutions like OpenCollective and
Liberapay.

On the other hand, Git is distributed. Can't you just use GitHub as a mirror,
and direct users elsewhere for actual development through the README?

~~~
techntoke
Or just include external donation links in the readme?

~~~
pingucrimson
I assume you can't just do that since GitHub might offer to give donors
regular activity updates.

------
VikingCoder
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 where all
the money goes, which is then divided back to the projects by some percentage.

6) Fund a charity. If this person or project receives money, please directly
send it to a specified charity instead. (Don't make the person who receives
the donation have to handle the paperwork for it.)

7) Try to make it easy to set up a sponsorship in your will

8) Let a project use their funding to pay for hosting, directly. So, I give to
some project, they pay for CPU and Storage on some cloud host.

I'm certain there are legal complications with all of these ideas. If you
solve the legal issues, that would be amazing. Cheers!

~~~
TkTech
For #1, it looks like that's coming? The documentation[1] has been updated for
project sponsor buttons to include up to 4 github-sponsor enabled users. I
can't find a project using it yet, but I imagine this divides your donation to
the project among the 4?

[1]: [https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-
but...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-
your-repository#displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-your-repository)

------
patcon
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 spaces. They haven't:
[http://opencollective.com/github](http://opencollective.com/github)

If a company is truly trying to be embody open culture, they support and and-
yes existing projects as step 1. Case in point:
[https://words.steveklabnik.com/why-im-partnering-with-
balanc...](https://words.steveklabnik.com/why-im-partnering-with-balanced)

If we have a problem or idea for OpenCollective/Liberapay/etc, the staff live
on open chat rooms -- the github issue queues are public -- the code is
interrogable by the curious and adventurous. With GitHub, we get bupkis. Or
wait, we get coaxed into a one-on-one email support channel where we can't see
one another, speak together, nor find fellow travellers. Or we get the
unofficial wailing wall that is
[https://github.com/isaacs/github](https://github.com/isaacs/github)

Really disappointed in the lack of critical reflection from technologists.
This is not good for us as executed.

[1]: [https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-
sponsors#ab...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-
sponsors#about-the-github-sponsors-matching-fund)

~~~
sercand
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...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-
your-repository)

[2]
[https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI](https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI)

~~~
lsmith77
Also what is up with “These external links will take you off GitHub to pages
we haven't verified, so beware.” ?

You can put links to stuff in all other places without warnings. Now ok I
guess they can argue that most other places do not entail with people sending
money. But why not at least keep a list of “trusted” places?

~~~
bcyn
I'd wager this is more of a "cover your ass" kind of situation for GitHub.

------
AceJohnny2
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.

You can find an more in-depth summary in the links:

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational)

[2]
[http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%...](http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational)
"Chapter 4: The Cost of Social Norms"

~~~
nicpottier
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.

------
devonzuegel
Hi, I’m Devon the product manager behind GitHub Sponsors. We’re excited to
launch the beta program today and learn how we can best serve the community.

It’s great to already see the conversation on this thread! We’re eager to hear
all of your feedback, and feel free to email me at devonzuegel@github.com as
well.

~~~
mherrmann
Hi Devon, I posted this comment elsewhere in this thread [1], but now feel
that here is a better place to write it:

It would be very cool if there was an easy way to sponsor all the projects
I've starred. Then I could just pay (say) $10 per month to "support open
source", without having to worry about any of the details such as picking
projects. If you as GitHub then also reach out to the project maintainers and
say "hey, there's someone who'd sponsor you", then I feel this could
significantly increase the uptake of this feature on both the sponsor and the
maintainer side.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990110)

~~~
neurotrace
Am I using stars wrong? I have starred 771 projects on GitHub. To me, a star
means anything from "I use this" to "I think this is a cool project". Giving
$10 a month to 771 projects would result in about a penny for each project.

I'd rather separate starred from sponsored. If I could select a subset of that
771 and say "split $10 among these projects" then I'd be happy.

~~~
mceachen
I'm in your shoes too. I've got 457 stars (and I don't think I've ever un-
starred a project).

I think it'd be a reasonable default for most people to start with though.

Perhaps offering the projects that you `watch` a higher priority than those
you've starred would be a fairer default?

------
nstart
I love this. I do wonder though if anyone can educate me on the choice to do a
monthly sponsorship? I think that's awesome but at the same time, there are a
lot of developers I want to send 10 dollar tips to for that library that they
made.

Just wondering if there's a reason to not have both. My guess is that
foregoing one time transactions in favour of ensuring that people gravitate
towards making a more sustainable donation seemed like a rational choice. Pure
speculation there so if there's any other reason why it wasn't done I'd be
really grateful if anyone from Github might be able to share.

~~~
msadowski
I also think it's about sustainability. As a developer receiving an X amount
every month (+/\- Y%) can heavily reduce the financial risk and help plan
better.

I'm currently not developing any open source software but if I was and worked
as a freelancer knowing that by the end of the month I'll receive $500 for
GitHub would allow me to balance my open source work with the freelance work,
ensuring I have enough money to support myself.

~~~
adrianmsmith
If they offered both (monthly and one-time payments) then the solution would
be to allow the project to allow only one or the other or both or neither. So
you could select that you'd only receive monthly payments and people wouldn't
be able to send you one-time payments.

~~~
asdkhadsj
Even better _(imo)_ , try to buffer one time payments over months. This _(and
other similar features)_ could allow a developer to see upcoming income from
OSS, if it's declining, etc.

Being able to predict how much you're going to make it hugely helpful imo.
Especially if you're a freelancer. You might see that in 3 months your funds
are drying up, so plan accordingly.

Just brainstorming: But "similar features" could be trying to favor longer
term donations. If a user wants to donate $20/m, maybe ask them for $10/m for
3 month increments?

Though, I suppose this isn't any better than the developer themself buffering
funds in their bank. BUT, it seems like a meaningful concept, regardless.

------
seren
A logical next step would be to add bounty on specific bugs or features
requests.

If a company is relying on open source, and has no capability to fix a
critical bug (which is a bad strategy but it certainly happens), it would
probably be ready to pay a hefty sum so that the maintainer, or anyone
involved in the project, will have at least a look at it.

Today, unless you can contact directly the maintainer and hope he or she has
some spare time, I don't know how you can solve that kind of issue.

However, I am not sure who will decide a bug is fixed or a feature properly
implemented.

~~~
blauditore
One not-so-bad solution could be similar to what StackOverflow does: The
issuer of the bounty may decide who gets it. But even if they don't issue it
to anyone, they don't receive their sum back. There there currency is points,
but if it's real money, any unreleased bounties could go to some kind of
general community pot for that project or whole Github after a while.

------
marktani
I support one project on Open Collective [1] on a monthly basis. They do take
a cut from the money I donate to cover the credit card fees and their
operational costs. GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches
donations... wow!

While this news sounds amazing on the surface, I am also concerned it might
have negative effects on the OSS ecosystem overall. Let's see how this pans
out!

[1] [https://opencollective.com/](https://opencollective.com/)

~~~
rqs
> GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow!

Maybe I didn't fully understand what "cut" means, but ....

> 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](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors)

~~~
fesoliveira
Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other
services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their
services, or at least that is what it says for now.

~~~
0xffff2
>Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other
services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their
services...

How are those different exactly?

~~~
sah2ed
The first scenario is a loss leader -- it doesn't contribute _any_ revenue for
the business to stay afloat.

The second may or may not be a loss leader, but it will contribute something
in revenue for the business to stay afloat.

~~~
0xffff2
That's charitable. Nowhere do they say that their "payment processing fee"
will be limited to the fees charged by their payment processor. They could
very well charge some multiple of that value to generate a profit.

~~~
Drdrdrq
There is: _nominal_ processing fee.

------
koolba
> To supercharge community funding, GitHub created the GitHub Sponsors
> Matching Fund, which matches up to $5000 per sponsored developer in their
> first year of sponsorship. 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.

What's to stop me^Wsomeone else and their friend from sponsoring each other
for $5K to collect the $5K in matching funds?

~~~
rswail
If Github aren't doing KYC and AML, then their payment processor better have.
Otherwise this is the swiftest way I've seen to make $5K.

~~~
dredmorbius
KYC: know your customer.

AML: anti money-laundering.

Basics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering)

------
SquishyPanda23
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.

~~~
pingucrimson
> Maybe that is good.

How is that good?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Maybe the quality would improve? There's a condition I call "open-source-itis"
that a lot of projects suffer from, where tons of new features (usually of
dubious merit) get added but nobody ever bothers to fix bugs or make sure the
foundation is actually solid. It makes sense, because that's unsexy work that
people generally don't want to do and they're all working for free, but it
makes a lot of open source software really crap.

However, if people were getting paid for fixing bugs and cleaning up old code,
maybe that'd improve.

~~~
naniwaduni
I'd expect it to get worse. People pay for features over maintenance even more
strongly than they allocate prestige.

~~~
libria
Nah, there's a bug out there right now blocking my work I'd throw money at if
I could. I can't be the only one who feels like this.

~~~
james-skemp
Rich, the creator of the Phaser framework, does something like this (I haven't
dug into it much):
[https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/issues/3390](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/issues/3390)

It appears they leverage Bountysource (not familiar with it).

------
raphlinus
I am cautiously optimistic about this. I recently built a prototype GPU-based
2D renderer which I think has huge potential, but obviously also needs quite a
bit of work to become a real product. I've been considering various kinds of
hybrid open source business models, where there's a free part but also parts
people pay for. I'm pretty sure that can fly, but I'm also hesitating at the
idea of spending a huge amount of my time and energy on building a business -
I want to concentrate on the tech itself. If I can get close to paying cost of
living through sponsorship, that's pretty appealing.

For this to really fly, though, needs to come revenue streams from businesses
who depend on open source, rather than other individuals. I'm hopeful this can
get there.

------
kodablah
This is such a watershed moment in the history of software development that I
don't think most of us can grasp its significance yet. Sure we're familiar
with other services that do the same, but the adoption rate (like for GH
itself) will be clearly different.

One could argue that this is more societally important than YouTube, Twitch,
etc funded content for _consuming_ because this funds content for _leveraging_
to build/work on top of. And this is not just limited to the entrepreneurial
devs out there, of which "the man" has new employment competition with now. It
can also fund entire company departments.

I look forward to mass adoption of this, wallet in hand.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
This is a sad commentary on software development as a profession, as well as
society as well. A watershed moment is when private individuals might be able
to get paid for the extremely valuable work that they do that allows thousands
of companies to make a profit with some companies becoming worth billions. The
fact that the ability to socially beg for money for valuable software makes
the idea of writing valuable software more viable is a sad state of affairs.

~~~
cutenewt
What's the line between patronage and just hiring someone outright for a pet
project?

~~~
Drdrdrq
Dignity.

------
hp
Just wanted to add here for those interested in this kind of thing, that we
have over 4000 packages with income maintainers can claim today on Tidelift.

If you're a maintainer, ctrl-f through this list and see if you're in there:
[https://blog.tidelift.com/is-your-package-eligible-for-
incom...](https://blog.tidelift.com/is-your-package-eligible-for-income-on-
tidelift-heres-the-complete-list-may-2019)

Tidelift is also supported via the new GitHub Sponsors feature:
[https://tidelift.com/subscription/how-to-connect-tidelift-
wi...](https://tidelift.com/subscription/how-to-connect-tidelift-with-github)

If you aren't in the 4000+ packages we have income for now, you can still sign
up (which helps us get to subscribers who are specifically using your stuff,
meaning income in the future).

------
bluefox
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.

~~~
_bxg1
This... seems pessimistic and overly dramatized.

~~~
el_cujo
Hopefully it will balance out the crazy optimism so many other posters are
having over this announcement because they think they'll make money off of it.

------
euph0ria
Great feature! Something to consider for the feature which would allow us to
donate more is: 1) Sponsor a project rather an individual developer 2) Sponsor
a specific issue/bug

~~~
mritchie712
I would absolutely sponsor issue's. It'd be a great way to lure people into a
longer term sponsorship.

------
diggan
Ugh, not again! First they introduce a Package Registry that not only splits
the ecosystem in two parts but also has no open governance or even open source
code. Great. Now they are doing the same thing with donations. Instead of
collaborating with already open platforms (like OpenCollective or LiberaPay),
they decide to build their own closed-source platform.

I love that more people are figuring out ways to pay open source developers,
but doing it via a closed-source platform they developed on their own, they
are effectively saying they don't care about "open development", they just
want to be the one-stop for everything open source as to not lose mind-share
of developers.

I'd be wary of joining this program and I urge people to get involved with
something like OpenCollective instead, which is a open project you can
actually contribute to. It also helps that OpenCollective's success is based
on it's members success. "GitHub Sponsors" isn't as well aligned with you as a
developer, as OpenCollective et al.

Obviously, I'm a bit biased, as I run a project for creating transparent open
source infrastructure. But I do think this is a important issue, and I'm
getting more and more scared GitHub is out to make open source development
more ivory tower-like.

~~~
Leace
> Obviously, I'm a bit biased, as I run a project for creating transparent
> open source infrastructure. But I do think this is a important issue, and
> I'm getting more and more scared GitHub is out to make open source
> development more ivory tower-like.

This point is brought many times. Why use GitHub if we can host git
repositories anywhere? (A: GitHub providers discovery). Why use GitHub PRs if
we have mailing lists? (A: GitHub has better UX).

The same is with their Sponsors program, registering billing method and
clicking on a button is all that's needed. No separate sites with different
UI.

For the record I'm also not happy with the centralized structure of it (it
reminds me of early Google), but I get why it's getting popular.

~~~
grx
> _This point is brought many times. Why use GitHub if we can host git
> repositories anywhere? (A: GitHub providers discovery). Why use GitHub PRs
> if we have mailing lists? (A: GitHub has better UX)._

Using Github as a git repo hoster is okayish in the sense that it does not
lock your code in. Using Github as a central management tool is problematic,
but still manageable.

But this introduces money into the game, and it's dangerous. Github will be
the gatekeeper for money flows. It's the same for Patreon, but Patreon has
less incentives to lock the whole Open Source ecosystem into their products
(Github: hosting, code, issues, PRs, pages with CNAMEs!, package registry and
now financial transactions).

My bet is that due to the current state of the ecosystem, people will jump on
it and forget that Microsoft is behind all of this. We need organisations
which are forced to be open and collective to handle Open Source, not
privately owned corporate.

------
dsumenkovic
Great news! I hope this will enhance the development of many great open source
projects.

This has already been discussed at GitLab and it would be nice if something
similar is implemented on other platforms as well. Here's the issue with more
details [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/43468](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43468)

------
rdl
This is great; it's basically either 1) an alternative to Patreon for
developers (which is something I have always wanted to exist) or 2) an
alternative to Patreon for Patreon creators who are the tiniest bit
intelligent and able to actually use GitHub (every aspect of Patreon is bad
for creators, so this is an upgrade, except in user reach).

The missing element here is a nice end-user focused browsing experience,
layered on top. A user-focused portal which lets you subscribe to projects,
sponsor them on GitHub, and see updates, with GitHub behind the scenes.

~~~
honzzz
> every aspect of Patreon is bad for creators

Why? What do you mean exactly?

~~~
rdl
Their content creator tools are shit. No integration with anything people use,
and they are pretty buggy.

They are capricious censors. I’d be fine with a platform articulating an
arbitrary censorship policy and then following it. They don’t do thst —
instead they just do what they want and justify it post hoc.

They don’t have a real business model and they are too small to operate as a
loss leader.

------
andrewstuart
Sponsorships and donations don't work in any substantial way because they are
optional.

What might work is "KeepAlive" subscriptions, where companies pay substantive
amount of money monthly to keep projects that they depend on alive.

KeepAlive payments are about corporate self interest - ensuring that the
projects they depend on aren't abandoned.

The secret to success is naming.

Calling it "KeepAlive" subscriptions conveys the self interest, and connects
the potential death of the project to your need for it to be healthy because
you've built it into your systems.

Naming payments to open source projects as "Sponsorships" or "Donations" leads
to the expected outcome - a trivial trickle of money.

The payment amounts must be predefined and set high too - $200 - $500/month
for small businesses $500-$5000 / month for medium and large business. It's
critically important not to leave the amount to the "purchaser" \- that's when
you get payments of $1/month which is what happens on Patreon.

------
hdv011
What's stopping me creating a sponsored project and donating myself $5,000 to
get a free $5,000?

~~~
mushufasa
I'm guessing part of the waitlist requires an application where they gather
info for fraud prevention.

I'm sure you'll need to enter PII to send and receive payments -- MSFT doesn't
strike me as a BTC operation. Money laundering is illegal :).

~~~
zawerf
What info can possibly prevent this fraud though? Even the real large projects
could ask friends and family to donate 5k that they gift back later. It's so
easy/undetectable to do it's just leaving free money on the table.

~~~
kkarakk
Well the IRS would have something to say about it for sure, i doubt github
would hide the transactions from them...

------
caniszczyk
cool feature but putting the burden of funding on individuals vs companies is
supporting what I call the "open source gig economy" \- doesn't work well for
Patreon and others - we need better ways to sustain individuals who choose not
start their own company around open source projects or work full time at a
company supporting open source

[https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-
open-...](https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source-
gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/)

~~~
Kiro
> doesn't work well for Patreon and others

What do you mean? What's wrong with Patreon?

~~~
caniszczyk
"Take Patreon as an example, a popular funding platform for all sorts of
things including open source projects that has been around since 2013 and has
paid out $1 billion to creators since then. While that’s an astonishing
figure, Patreon isn’t a sustainable business with its current private company
model and level of VC funding of $105M:

“Under the company’s current business model, 90 percent of funds are paid
directly to content creators. Patreon takes 5 percent, and the remaining 5
percent covers transaction fees.” Patreon CEO Jack Conte said in an interview
with CNBC, that the platform will soon be facing the challenge of maintaining
a profitable model as the company continues its growth.

In 2019, the company is also on track to pay out $500 million to content
creators, 5% of that is $25 million and Patreon has ~300 employees, so
probably not even covering their labor costs."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-
patre...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon-
announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators-
in-2019.html)

~~~
AYBABTME
It's a bit mind blowing to think that Patreon is 300 employees. What are they
all doing?

~~~
kabacha
I wonder that too. Liberapay is just as capable open platform being run by
like 10 people, right?

~~~
Kye
Like most VC-funded startups, they have a huge staff of people whose job it is
to promote Patreon and manage larger accounts.

------
wincent
Is there any way I could add a button to my projects that would route
"sponsorship" to a charity? Because I have a full time job, I do open source
for fun, and I want to keep it that way — taking sponsorship would make that
harder. But it would feel great to know that anything people wanted to put in
the tip jar went straight to a non-profit.

Edit: answering my own question, their help page —
[https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-
but...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-
your-repository) — says "We don’t support the use of funding links for other
purposes, such as for advertising, or supporting political, community, or
charity groups."

------
kabacha
I was really expecting GitLab to double down on features like this to attract
floss community, but this coming from now Microsoft's GitHub is trully
surprising. I hope GitHub is working on some more social features as I feel
like bringing back my project to GitHub more and more these days.

That being I think it's a great idea as we had many of bounty/subscription
tools but they always fail to get adopted and in general lack proper
integrations with projects itself. Bounty integration in issue tracker has
been on my wishlist forever now, can we get that going next?

------
NKCSS
I'd be tempted to sign up and just donate $5k to myself to get the 100%
match.... #freemoney

~~~
jabits
Well then you’d be stealing...that’s a real downside to me.

~~~
NKCSS
No, it would be immoral, which is why I would not do it, but I'm also sure a
lot of people won't have that problem.

------
gowthamgts12
A one time contribution would be great - since I personally cannot afford
sponsoring monthly.

~~~
rurban
I think that you can set it up, and cancel it after one month. It's just a
simple click.

------
beager
I’m excited about this but fearful that it will create unfair (I.e. monetary)
incentive structures for FOSS maintenance.

~~~
dual_basis
Monetary == unfair? Why?

~~~
beager
Imagine you’re a solo maintainer of an NPM package, and you know that one of
the FAANG companies uses your package. Normally, you respond to issues on
weekends and cut new builds when reasonable bugs are reported.

Then, the FAANGco starts sponsoring you, a pittance for them but a solid
amount for you. They put in issues and submit PRs that are intended for their
own use case, or even worse, that constrain the utility of the package to that
company’s use case.

Other people put in issues, but let’s be real, they’re not sponsoring you.

A maintainer can reject an issue or PR from a sponsor to keep the package pure
and generalized, but would risk getting that sponsorship revoked. And if you
don’t think coercion would be involved in that, think again.

It is FOSS so someone could fork it. But then, you’ve got a situation where
potentially tens of thousands of projects and consumers would have to switch
over.

All straw men for sure, but I am thinking that the ecosystem of FOSS might be
shook by this, from both the maintainer and consumer side.

~~~
dual_basis
I don't know, I don't really see it as a problem. What is the difference
between this and FANGco hiring the developer to specialize the product for
them in-house, which is something that happens often?

------
throwaway_7718
Say a sponsored developer Bob has some software, that another person, Alice
forks. The fork becomes wildly more successful than the original for some
reason, and Bob loses many sponsors in the course of time. Would a situation
like this force developers to use restrictive licenses? (I get that Bob can
just integrate Alice's fork into his original - assume that it's too much work
for Bob to do so)

~~~
nine_k
Won't a restrictive license mean fewer users, and thus fewer sponsors?

------
asdkhadsj
Well damn, this is sneaky and I love it. I say sneaky, because I was in a
situation where I mentally debated Github vs Gitlab. This tips it a bit
towards Githubs favor. Not that I'm even planning on being sponsored or w/e,
but simply that I already view GH as a social network for a thing I love
(code), but now it seems even more.. socially.. if that makes sense.

Purely my perception of course.

~~~
techntoke
GitLab actually has an open source SCM that you can selfhost.

------
bshipp
Hi Devon, I think this is a great idea.

speaking as someone working for a small company with the ability to sponsor
projects of interest, could you evaluate the possibility of assigning rewards
to specific milestones? for example, if I'm using a particular FOSS library
and see that the maintainer has set up certain functionality as a long-term
milestone could I attach a sort of carrot to a particular milestone to provide
incentive to continue development?

This would be in conjunction with standard sponsorship, of course. But, for
some developers, it's easier to find the motivation to complete a task if
there is a defined reward waiting at the end of it.

it doesn't even have to be new functionality; it could simply be implementing
a testing protocol to meet internal corporate requirements, or reorganizing
old code to fit new standards; stuff that's necessary but boring and shoved to
the bottom of the pile for a hobby project. This might really open up the
corporate pursestrings instead of relying on individual contributions.

------
TBF-RnD
Being a full time open source independent research in an extremely tight
financial spot, due to my cursed idealism, what means of surival are there for
someone who can't stop working on my obsession?

I am an honest to God searcher of the truth, so I'd hate to turn this into a
commercial project. Also getting a job would be a highway to a psychiatric
hospital due to being overworked. Done that multiple times and wouldn't wish
it upon my worst enemy,

Anybody have experience on how to make this lifestyle work, or do I have to
give up on my dreams and get into to the line as the rest?

[http://tbf-rnd.life](http://tbf-rnd.life)
[http://sigma.eruditenow.com](http://sigma.eruditenow.com)

* had I been the kind of person who have enemies

------
alphast0rm
If I click on any of the actual sponsor buttons it redirects to
[https://github.com/users/$user/sponsorship](https://github.com/users/$user/sponsorship)
and 404's. Happening for anybody else?

~~~
haddr
happens for me too

------
wonjohnchoi
> 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?

------
nautilus12
Could this end up in commodotizing software engineering so much that it will
drive the prices of software engineering down even further? How long till we
are like panhandlers on the street throwing code at people in exchange for
lunch money?

------
mherrmann
Would be cool if there was an easy way to sponsor all the projects I've
starred. Then I could just pay (say) $10 per month to "support open source",
without having to worry about any of the details such as picking projects.

------
dessant
This is the best thing to have happened to open source since GitHub has
launched. Thank you to whomever has internally pushed for it!

------
nickjj
It's an interesting idea but I wonder what will make this different than
gittip from years ago, or gratipay, or Patreon, or just having a "donate"
button in your README file.

I guess I'm just skeptical in that this will change anything for the
developers who are trying to make some type of income for their contributions.

On a related note, DHH recorded a very nice keynote at Railsconf 2019 on
expectations of payments in open source:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBwWbFpkltg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBwWbFpkltg)

------
gigatexal
Leave it to Microsoft to finally figure out a way to get people and more
importantly businesses to fund OSS work.

~~~
OrangeManBad
* Getting linux on desktop. Check * Getting OSS contributors paid. Check

Unlike Google, it seems Microsoft (Satya) isn't just doing OSS for PR but he
probably sincerely believes in it.

Thanks also to Hanselman who seemingly has been a major pro-OSS voice.

~~~
techntoke
WSL is absolutely terrible and can't be taken seriously.

~~~
rudiv
Maybe for your use case, but there are plenty of basic applications for which
it works fine, if a little slow. The WSL2 implementation should make it fully
competitive option for lightweight tasks like frontend web dev and
introductory programming - if MS's figures on performance improvements are
accurate.

WSL _replacing_ Linux in the near future is, as you say, not a serious
concern. But it being a viable alternative for a portion of the people who
would normally use desktop Linux is quite realistic, I think. What say?

~~~
techntoke
When it is released it will likely be as buggy as WSL is today. WSL is over
20x slower due to Microsoft's crappy filesystem. They are still using a custom
kernel even though it is a VM now. I don't have high hopes about their
terminal either.

------
sequoia
Geez... it must be hard for other payment processors to compete with
Github/MSFT's "give away free money" offering. :/ I guess all is fair in love
& war (and Uber does the same, losing money to kill competition) but this sort
of behaviour sure seems innovation-killing and massively entrenched-big-corp-
player-favouring.

This seems to go beyond killing competitors by offering their product for
free, because in this case they're actually paying users cash to use their
platform.

------
thosakwe
This is a game changer for people like me, who do a lot of open source work,
but might not have the pockets to sustainably continue putting in so many
hours each week (i.e. students).

------
thinkingemote
This is also about making developers behave.

If you want to get paid on GitHub you shouldn't commit anything controversial
and you have to behave on the site. If they go full Twitch then they could
take into consideration your actions outside the site. including posts on
social media or at conferences.

So we would first see those wikileak dumps, code leaks and vulnerability repos
being got rid of first, then we might see right wing bloggers who code being
denied monetisation. Who wants to see Nazis get funded? Or even perhaps if
your code still uses slave and master and you won't change then maybe repos
can't be sponsored.

With monetization comes control. Opaque rules and decisions and no
consistency. It won't come in the first year but it will come soon enough
after developers are fully invested into using it for their livelihoods.

~~~
anchpop
The reason Twitch does all that stuff is because they are beholden to
advertisers and nobody wants to be advertising on "the site with all the white
nationalists" or whatever, it isn't a good look. Github doesn't have that
issue since they do not have a model based on advertising

------
buremba
This might be a deal-breaker not only from the developers' side but also from
the business side. If the companies see that a project is well-funded, they
can invest their time (maybe their money also?) more confidently. It might
become a real marketplace at some point and let (some of the) open-source
businesses to focus on their project rather than starting a company and
dealing with boring business work.

------
nojvek
This is real nice to see. I Sponsor hzoo through patreon but may do it through
GitHub sponsors. Babel is a great project.

What i’d really love to see is GitHub bounties though. Like you want a feature
bad or a bug fixed because you depend on it. You can assign it some monetary
value. GitHub is the escrow. When the bug/feature is done and verified by
people who put the bounty, it gets paid out to the implementors.

------
dredmorbius
Joey Hess raises questions: "What I would ask my lawyers about the new Github
TOS'

 _If I were looking over the TOS with my lawyers, I 'd ask these questions..._

 _4 License Grant to Us_

 _This seems to be saying that I 'm granting an additional license to my
software to Github. Is that right or does "license grant" have some other
legal meaning?_

 _If the Free Software license I 've already licensed my software under allows
for everything in this "License Grant to Us", would that be sufficient, or
would my software still be licenced under two different licences?_

 _There are violations of the GPL that can revoke someone 's access to
software under that license. Suppose that Github took such an action with my
software, and their GPL license was revoked. Would they still have a license
to my software under this "License Grant to Us" or not?...._

[http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/what_I_would_ask_my_lawyers_abo...](http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/what_I_would_ask_my_lawyers_about_the_new_Github_TOS/)

------
rewq4321
I get that some people are concerned about github strengthening its monopoly
here, but that shouldn't be solved by preventing or opposing the improvement
of the platform. There's a sense in which it's like opposing Tesla improving
its autopilot tech because it further entrenches them as the leader in the
electric car market - or whatever - you get the idea. Monopolies can lead to
very bad outcomes for society, but we probably need to handle that by some
means other than attacking improvements to the platform.

This comment of course assumes that you think that it is actually an
improvement. It does seem like there is a risk of hurting the "spirit" of open
source, but then you'd have to hold the position that things like
librepay/opencollective/patreon are bad for open source, which at least makes
the claim a little dubious. I don't have strong predictions here, but if I had
to gamble I'd say that lowing the friction to rewarding content producers (of
any sort) is going to be a good think more often than not.

------
always4getpass
While seemingly good news and will definitely have positive side effects to
open source projects, I cannot stop myself from questioning if this is just
good old Microsoft using one of its edges over Gitlab (money) to come on top.

After all, this is the embrace, extend, and extinguish company.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to see a similar feature implemented by Gitlab,
even without the matching donations.

~~~
btasovac
> Anyhow, I'm looking forward to see a similar feature implemented by Gitlab,
> even without the matching donations.

You can check out this issue [1]. Please upvote it if you want to see this
implemented, or join the discussion if you have any additional ideas.

[1] - [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/43468](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43468)

------
joshfraser
The best part of open-source is that draws in people who are focused on long-
term benefits instead of short-term profit. Contributing to open-source
projects teaches you how to write better code, how to work well with other
developers and how to communicate your ideas effectively. It also gives you a
network of other super smart people who can open all sorts of doors for you
once you earn their respect.

Money is a funny thing. Introducing money into something that you were
previously doing out of passion completely changes the dynamic. Take sex for
example.

I like that Github Sponsors seems to be focused on supporting the developer
for their ongoing efforts instead of being too transactional. Other companies
have tried incentivizing specific features or bug fixes but they tend to draw
in mercenaries who do the bare minimum to get the reward. This seems like a
much better way to go.

I'm impressed by the way Github are rolling this out. It will be interesting
to watch how it changes the nature of open-source.

------
thrownaway954
this would a slam dunk if you could sponsor projects or organizations besides
just developers. if that happened, this would destroy patreon and paypal in
the donation space for OSS projects.

~~~
return1
otoh, sponsoring developers avoids the friction between teams about how to
share sponsorships etc. they should offer both though

~~~
techntoke
No, it gives the owners of the team/org the ability to distribute funds as
they wish. There should be no friction.

------
Toine
From the signup page :

> What are your preferred pronouns? (optional)

So this is actually happening ?

~~~
jraph
I am seeing this trend of asking or indicating one's preferred pronoun more
and more.

I find asking people how they would like to be referred to as a really
positive thing and I fail to see any downside for this trend.

And since this is optional, nobody is forced to answer the question.

------
issuehuntcoo
Great to see GitHub is finally introducing a direct way to support OSS
developers.

Try IssueHunt ([https://issuehunt.io/](https://issuehunt.io/)) as well! A
open-source bounty platform for open source. Great place for open source
developers to earn extra cash!

------
os7borne
Wow! Long overdue. I'm not capable enough to contribute technically to the
open source projects which I use. This will be a great way for me to make my
contribution.

Also, I do believe this is a plus for open source projects that often find it
tough to stay afloat because of financial constraints.

------
discordance
@Github/Microsoft feature request:

It would be nice to see sponsorship or bounties for individual issues in
Github.

------
sktrdie
Sorry to bring my ethical and philosophical view on the subject but I don't
agree with forcing a capitalist system to something that is essentially
volunteer work.

Open source has worked fine being just volunteer for the past several decades.
In fact I'd argue it's one of the only ecosystem that keeps on being awesome.
I don't think adding money to the equation will change any of this. In fact it
might risk making it worst.

~~~
hp
I'd argue that money's been in OSS since its inception.

To try to put a number on it, here's a random study that 50% of oss is people
at their paid job: [https://dirkriehle.com/2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work-
in-...](https://dirkriehle.com/2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work-in-open-
source/)

But anecdotally that number is consistent with my experience.

When we created the GNOME Foundation in 2000, it was in part to manage the
commercial vendors and money involved (Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code, IBM, Sun
Microsystems and VA Linux Systems, see the press release
[https://www.gnome.org/press/2000/08/red-hat-joins-
industry-v...](https://www.gnome.org/press/2000/08/red-hat-joins-industry-
vendors-as-a-founding-member-of-the-gnome-foundation/)).

This was not at all unique to GNOME, same kinda stuff around all the major
projects at that time.

One thing I think is new and constructive is more ways to pay maintainers
without asking them to join a giant company.

------
benjaminsuch
I love this. It's actually huge, but I wonder why you have to apply for a
waitlist in order to be able to get sponsored? Why wouldn't we be allowed to
sponsor anyone? I suppose it has something to do to prevent money laundry?

~~~
anastalaz
I guess because it is still in limited beta. Pretty sure it's gonna open for
everyone in the future.

------
gilbetron
I wonder if this will create pressure to consolidate projects - there might be
a non-linearity in the perception of project value. Two tiny repos may seem
worth X each, but combined they may seem large enough to generate > 2X.

------
cosmodisk
I very much doubt it will work..for the devs..Developers are a special
category of people,who like to earn a lot at their day job,yet tirelessly
praise open source and try their best not to pay for anything.The best example
of this is vue.js,which is extremely popular and used by thousands of
people.The creator and main contributor is accepting Patreon, corporate
sponsorship and etc.Go on his Patreon account and see how much he's pulling
in.If that's the money for one of the most popular projects in JS ecosystem,
the rest of the guys will be making $100/month..

------
kradroy
I think this is a bad development. The allure of getting paid for something
you do for free can be too great. This may lead to OSS devs, especially those
who do the work for free now, expecting extrinsic reward for their work.
Extrinsic reward for work that once provided intrinsic reward can lead to
cessation of that work, if the external reward lessens or goes away. A new
type of dev may emerge from this who won't have the same values as the ones
who do it free of charge.

I can see this support feature changing things, but it won't in the way you
suspect it will.

~~~
zachguo
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

------
nullc
Many projects that have had contributor sponsorship efforts in the past have
had negative experiences with it, due to contributors showing up motivated by
farming the payments with minimal investment.

In my experience sponsorship that isn't at a level that can sustain a
developer at least at an ongoing significant part time level often ends up
being toxic-- pulling in the worst outcomes from funding it (changing
motivations to being dollar driven, bringing in low effort farming
contributions) without bringing most of the positive outcomes.

I really hope that this is handled carefully.

------
pkamb
I'd still like a product for putting putting bounties on small individual
scripts / functions / pieces of code.

Kind of a payment system on top of Stack Overflow or Github Gists; less-so a
competitor to Upwork.

I don't want the overhead of "hiring a freelancer" to do the work. But I'd
definitely pay a bounty if someone came in with the answer / script /
extension / app that solved the problem.

previous:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554542)

------
rswail
As I've read the comments here, I've realized that I really don't like the
idea.

This puts: a) A lot of power into the control of Github b) changes the entire
incentive model for FOSS development c) devalues the aspects of a "sharing
economy" and "co-opetition" that FOSS has grown.

My question: Will a sponsored person be able to see who has donated to them?
That should be kept anonymous. Otherwise people will be able to "buy" the
feature they want over others. Community interests will be lost.

~~~
Heliosmaster
There are quite a few OS projects saying that they will prioritize bugs that
affect sponsor. And even here on HN it's not a rare comment 'If a company
cares about it, they could pay somebody to fix the bug`.

------
pbhjpbhj
It would be interesting to see if most of the people who are
cautious/guarded/hostile about this are older people who've seen Microsoft
work their "magic" before.

------
0xADEADBEE
It's interesting to see the gradual monetization of Open Source. 10 years ago
this was just something you did for fun but with the proliferation of services
charging for it, the landscape is shifting rapidly. Github are moving in some
interesting directions and it'll be interesting to see if they can stay ahead
of the competition with how trivial it is to migrate to a rival. I wouldn't
bet on them personally but it'll be fun to watch either way!

~~~
hp
As someone who was around 10 years ago I'd question that a little, there were
lots of OSS companies then, and lots of people getting hired and paid to work
on OSS too.

A difference today is trying to move some of the money down to smaller-scale
projects that have little chance of becoming a standalone company, and also
more options to get paid without having to go work at a big company.

------
return1
They should also launch one-off contributions for people who want particular
features . Still a great move , and loooong overdue, i hope it succeeds
massively.

------
dawhizkid
It looks like you sponsor an individual and not necessarily an entire project.
I get that it is wayyy less complex to build that MVP, but I wonder how
project dynamics will change if you have a team of, say, 3 core contributors
that are in actuality dividing work fairly evenly but one contributor is for
some reason getting 50%, 100%, 200%+ more in contributions than another
contributor.

------
ElijahLynn
$1 is the lowest amount I have seen by clicking the big blue "Start
Sponsoring" button and then making it to
[https://github.com/users/dominikh/sponsorship](https://github.com/users/dominikh/sponsorship).

So it appears users can choose their own levels, I do wonder what the minimum
is.

------
miguelmota
Very cool, this feature was much needed. It would be nice to be able to
sponsor specific issues that pay bounties once the pull request is merged and
issue is closed instead of only a specific developer. Would also be cool if
the developer can specify a preferred payment option other than fiat such as
open to accepting cryptocurrencies

------
55555
One of the people promoted on this page is not like the others. Two projects,
essentially zero work done (one is literally a single line in a readme file,
the other a basic html page with a list of words), and yet already asking
people for $100 per month to support her. Everyone else put in the work first.
smh

------
reilly3000
Here's when MSFT gets to throw their weight around. GitLab simply could not
afford to match this program, and I doubt Atlassian could as well. In a year
Microsoft will have won so much share of OSS that this will pay for itself
many, many times over in the years to come.

------
ceronman
I've been trying to find out which countries are eligible to receive payments,
but I haven't found any information. Most likely I expect this to be like
Kickstarter where basically only developers living in certain developed
countries can participate.

------
EGreg
Interesting alternative to...

Anyone remember how cryptocurrency was going to be the way to pay for open
source projects? By which I mean buying the kickstarter-like tokens of the
project and trading them on markets, speculating until it launches?

------
harrygeez
GitHub is really on a roll lately. Another long awaited feature, if a little
late.

------
ssn
Contributing to open source software has never been about money. I would be
very interested in reading the economical analysis of the impact of this move
by GitHub.

How will the money incentive align with the existing incentives.

------
polskibus
Is this the embrace, extend, extinguish method at work? Introducing a feature
that would likely not translate to significant income boost, only to widen the
appeal of the free tier? There are plenty of similar sites like others have
already mentioned, surely GitHub could've just helped them integrate better
instead?

Insteaf of developing this feature, maybe GitHub could've spent more time
enhancing their issue tracker to be able to fit more complex workflows if
necessary? There's always opportunity cost that should be considered when
working on new features for such a large userbase.

------
drtse4
Finally, and they also allow to specify additional external funding platforms
via .yaml file (no more wondering if a patreon account is legit or not).

------
skilled
Damn! This is surely an amazing QoL feature. Well done.

------
Vordimous
Can i just give myself $5K and get the matched $5K?

------
miki123211
Anyone has any idea how thiswill work for EU residents? Will we be paying the
outrageous US 30% tax and local taxes too?

~~~
anticensor
Double taxation prevention treaties will do their jobs. US should have one
with EU.

------
craftoman
That's how Microsoft plans to monetize GitHub? Not bad....

------
Legogris
For a decentralized alternative, see Gitcoin, currently used especially by
projects in and around the Ethereum space:
[https://gitcoin.co/](https://gitcoin.co/)

------
magnamerc
Is this GitHub's version of a GitCoin competitor?

------
k__
Microsoft is gonna centralize the sh*t out of the eco-system. Let's see how it
goes this time.

~~~
yoavm
To be fair, it's us who created this problem, not Microsoft. GitHub was too
central long before Microsoft acquired it.

------
ElijahLynn
Your move GitLab!

~~~
techntoke
GitLab actually has an open source SCM platform and developers have always
been free to put links to their favorite sponsorship platforms in the readme,
wiki or on their GitLab Pages site built using their favorite generators. Your
move GitHub.

------
benatkin
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...](https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on-
patreon?zd=1&zi=e4lqrxpb)

"After launching my Patreon, I struggled for months to find work. Patreon
filled my downtime, and became a full time job itself. I’d spend hours combing
through photos, looking back on notes I’d taken on the road, researching where
I’d been. I’d post on Twitter and Instagram with teasers, free stories,
anything to attract my followers to my Patreon page. I made friends on the
site, I shared their projects on my own social media, and kept up with all my
subscribers’ projects. It was a lot of work for little pay, but I was
determined. A year later my monthly earnings on Patreon have grown from $120
to $163."

$163 a month in extra income? Cool, right? Not when you spend 5+ hours a week
thinking about it.

If GitHub gets a lot of participation it will be unsustainable to only take a
little on top of a credit card processing fee, and the fee it will be
increased to be more like Facebook's 30% cut. There are plenty of articles on
here about the costs and difficulties of running a payment platform.

~~~
derefr
Who’s making a living on Patreon? The same people who make a living on
Kickstarter, or via “gift” transfers through PayPal (before that was clamped
down upon): people who can pull in whale patrons/backers.

Certain verticals have more whale patrons than others. The common story is
that if you’re an artist and you want to go where the whale patrons are,
that’s—for some reason—art targeting the furry subculture. That’s as true for
patronage as it is for doing commissions.

It’s unlikely that you can just _do what you’re doing_ and make a living off
of Patreon; but if you want to _shape_ what you’re doing based off of what
will _attract_ wealthy patrons, it’s pretty easy to find niches where your
skills will translate to dollars.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I patronize several people who literally make their living on Patreon (and
YouTube), and it doesn't look like "whales" are necessary. Take LGR: currently
making just over $6k/mo on pateron which is $72k/year, or $68k with an assumed
5% cut for Patreon. Depending on where you live that's already a reasonable
income for a single person household, and he presumably makes some YouTube
money on top of that. That money comes from 2808 patrons, making an average
contribution of just over $2 each.

You're unlikely to make a _fortune_ on Pateron without "whales" but a living
can be had if you can build a decent audience. Though, that isn't out of line
with the "It’s unlikely that you can just do what you’re doing and make a
living off of Patreon" sentiment at all, as LGR puts a lot of work into his
videos.

~~~
derefr
If you already have a million YouTube subscribers (LGR apparently has 1.3MM),
you can certainly translate that fanbase into patronage, vis. “wealth by a
thousand cuts.” There’s existing, pent-up demand (guilt?) to give you money
for all the stuff you’ve already provided for free.

But if you’re that much of an “influencer” already, with that large an
audience, then you’re likely already making money off of ads run on your
content, and you’re likely already being offered plenty of sponsorship
opportunities that you could take advantage of in place of—or
alongside—pursuing patronage. (At a certain size, you even get offered to just
have your name stuck on products as a brand. I know there are a good number of
beauty and fashion “influencers” who end up—with no more effort than signing a
contract—getting beauty/fashion products co-branded, and make royalties off of
that.)

I’m more talking about what you have to do to make money off of Patreon if you
aren’t starting with a built-in audience of potential subscribers. If you want
to _build_ that audience, directly _through_ Patreon (i.e. via word-of-mouth
of your subscribers, with no public presence), then you need whales, and you
need a niche. It becomes something very similar to making money off of
commissions, except that you can make more than a 100% return on any
particular commission, relative to what you’d have made if you just did it as
a work-to-order for the person who suggested it.

~~~
chrshawkes
I'm a YouTuber in the IT field. Nearly 20 million views in all, 40,000
students on Udemy and 122,000 subscribers. Anecdotal, but I don't mess with
Patreon, it doesn't work for me.

You are right about the sponsorships, ad's, affiliates and merch deals being
where the money is for YouTubers.

~~~
dbancajas
Curious what is your yearly income?

~~~
chrshawkes
I honestly can't release that. I have a full time software engineering job. I
do pretty well for a 37 year old college dropout.

------
yreg
For now, it seems that the Microsoft acquisition has gone well, right?

~~~
romanovcode
Yes, free private repos alone was amazing and now this? With 2x matching (up
to 5k) from MS themselves - this is amazing.

If only they would release something similar to GitLab Runner a.k.a. GitHub
Runner it would be golden!

~~~
Heliosmaster
Totally agree. Running your own gitlab runner is the feature of GitLab I would
want the most on GitHub

------
trpc
Does this service work also per project or per user only?

~~~
rurban
User only. Only a user has the payment setting in its configuration. But you
can set it up via a custom tier, with a special amount per month, and divide
it then amongst your org. Everything is public and transparent, so you got
oversight.

------
samirillian
New mode of production please lord anything but capitalism

