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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 ma
by usrusr 7y ago
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 7y ago>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 7y agoMaybe they meant credit card interchange fees of 1-3%?
- diggan 7y agoIf 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 7y agoBecause they can control it and use it as a moat.
- 0xffff2 7y agoMaybe so, but when did we suddenly start giving companies like Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this?
- anticensor 7y agoThey do not need donation cut because they already sell Windows etc.
- some_random 7y agoFrom a few pages deeper: >In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee. That might be where they're headed, but from their diction I'm guessing they plan to try and keep this part of their business cost neutral. Who knows, maybe this is part of the ol' embrace extend extinguish, but I'm guessing they value the goodwill above the money in this case.
- techntoke 7y agoThey should just use Google Pay API if that is the case. As far as I know they still don't charge fees.
- rurban 7y agoNo, they will take much less than Patreon. They will only charge the Stripe fees, which are much lower. And they will withhold nothing for Github by themselves, only for Stripe, their payment processor.
- icebraining 7y agoWhat about the Liberapay model? The platform is just one explicit project to which you can donate, just like any other. It's not a tax, nor running only on the creators' donations.
- aloisdg 7y agoGreat case of Dogfooding. Contribute here: https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/ https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/
- usrusr 7y agoIs that something different than "An independent zero fee platform run entirely on altruism"? My critique of those want particularly strong: basically "nice if it works, but will it?". I have to admit that it looks kind of promising now, but at current funding levels the organisation could still disappear faster than a Google API. And if it was more successful a new threat could become visible at the horizon, the failure mode of uncontrolled bloat, funded basically by threatening to allow an important institution to disappear. (Yes I'm talking about you, Wikimedia) PS: thanks for bringing it up, looks interesting!