4 ms·

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,

by buro9 7y ago

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.

diggan 7y ago
Have you looked at other alternatives like OpenCollective or LiberaPay? Basically identical to what GitHub is now introducing, but with the nice feature of being open platforms and not seen as loss-leaders for their owner.
toper-centage 7y ago
LiberaPay seems popular with developers. But Patreon is not unheard of either. The guy that codes Inkscape is on Patreon for instance.
pdimitar 7y ago
> 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.
- buro9 7y ago
  Well what I'd like to do is establish a stack of budgets against a project, e.g. Kickstarter Goals. $500 p/m = all hosting and domain costs paid for $750 p/m = we'll use some paid service that makes the service better in some way $1k p/m = we'll reward contributors $250 p/m distributed across those who contributed to PRs but exact distribution determined by repo admins And then to have a budget associated to the lowest one being the means for the project to survive... with a running total on that one, showing deficits (because I do have to still cover raw costs and those end up on my credit card the months I fall short, so future months should help recoup that). In this way, it would be extremely clear what funds a project needs to survive and how donations and support makes a difference. NB: My projects do fine... we get enough support to be viable. But damn it would be great to not manage it all manually, it's a chore I'd like to give up so I can code more.
  - insomniacity 7y ago
    I like your tiers idea - optionally you could even make that happen by tying it to the Marketplace. IOW - "Help pay for our <SAAS> subscription!"
  - naikrovek 7y ago
    I'm sure it's possible to put that info in README.md and handle things according to that month's donation amount. I don't know that a GitHub-run tier system will suit everyone, when a developer (the primary users of GH, of course) could easily just automate the update of the relevant info in the README or some other relevant document in the repo on a cadence that suits the project and the developer.
- roblabla 7y ago
  Huh? Am I the only one that has exactly the opposite line of thinking? If I see an underfunded project that I enjoy, I’m much more likely to donate than if something already makes many digits money.
  - pdimitar 7y ago
devonzuegel 7y ago
Hey, Devon here. :) > The only question I have is how easy it would be for those who don’t use Github to subscribe to a recurring donation? Thanks for the question buro9! All it takes to become a sponsor is an email address and payment method. Our goal is to make sponsorships as friction-free as possible. Re: individual/repo/org question, GitHub Sponsors is launching small and simple, and as we learn from the initial beta program, we’ll look to expand the ways to participate. One thing we’ve done is put together an advisory panel of open source teams to better understand their unique needs. We’d love to have your voice on the panel, if you’re interested! Send me an email -- devonzuegel@github.com.
- buro9 7y ago
  Well feel free to enable my GH account... @buro9 there too (verified by https://keybase.io/buro9 https://keybase.io/buro9 )

by buro9 7y ago

diggan 7y ago

Have you looked at other alternatives like OpenCollective or LiberaPay? Basically identical to what GitHub is now introducing, but with the nice feature of being open platforms and not seen as loss-leaders for their owner.

toper-centage 7y ago

LiberaPay seems popular with developers. But Patreon is not unheard of either. The guy that codes Inkscape is on Patreon for instance.

pdimitar 7y ago

> 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.

buro9 7y ago
Well what I'd like to do is establish a stack of budgets against a project, e.g. Kickstarter Goals. $500 p/m = all hosting and domain costs paid for $750 p/m = we'll use some paid service that makes the service better in some way $1k p/m = we'll reward contributors $250 p/m distributed across those who contributed to PRs but exact distribution determined by repo admins And then to have a budget associated to the lowest one being the means for the project to survive... with a running total on that one, showing deficits (because I do have to still cover raw costs and those end up on my credit card the months I fall short, so future months should help recoup that). In this way, it would be extremely clear what funds a project needs to survive and how donations and support makes a difference. NB: My projects do fine... we get enough support to be viable. But damn it would be great to not manage it all manually, it's a chore I'd like to give up so I can code more.
- insomniacity 7y ago
  I like your tiers idea - optionally you could even make that happen by tying it to the Marketplace. IOW - "Help pay for our <SAAS> subscription!"
- naikrovek 7y ago
  I'm sure it's possible to put that info in README.md and handle things according to that month's donation amount. I don't know that a GitHub-run tier system will suit everyone, when a developer (the primary users of GH, of course) could easily just automate the update of the relevant info in the README or some other relevant document in the repo on a cadence that suits the project and the developer.
roblabla 7y ago
Huh? Am I the only one that has exactly the opposite line of thinking? If I see an underfunded project that I enjoy, I’m much more likely to donate than if something already makes many digits money.
- pdimitar 7y ago

devonzuegel 7y ago

Hey, Devon here. :) > The only question I have is how easy it would be for those who don’t use Github to subscribe to a recurring donation? Thanks for the question buro9! All it takes to become a sponsor is an email address and payment method. Our goal is to make sponsorships as friction-free as possible. Re: individual/repo/org question, GitHub Sponsors is launching small and simple, and as we learn from the initial beta program, we’ll look to expand the ways to participate. One thing we’ve done is put together an advisory panel of open source teams to better understand their unique needs. We’d love to have your voice on the panel, if you’re interested! Send me an email -- devonzuegel@github.com.

buro9 7y ago
Well feel free to enable my GH account... @buro9 there too (verified by https://keybase.io/buro9 https://keybase.io/buro9 )