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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 gr

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.

diggan 7y ago
Hello there Devon! I'd be interested to hear what the main reasons for not either a) building on top of existing open platforms (like OpenCollective) or b) doing your own service but building it open source and as a open platform? Also, once the one year period is over, how are you planning to setup the fee structure?
- hanniabu 7y ago
  This would be nice if there was some integration between the two.
- stephenr 7y ago
  > doing your own service but building it open source and as a open platform Why would they ever do this? Practically nothing they do is Open Source.
  - diggan 7y ago
    Well, they trying to put themselves in the middle of open source. Why wouldn't they, if they really care about their users, not just getting profits?
    - stephenr 7y ago
      > if they really care about their users, not just getting profits? [citation needed]
      - diggan 7y ago
        It's a for-profit company who "loves" open source and hosts a lot of it's projects. But the platform is still not open source. Go figure
Kagerjay 7y ago
Really excited for this new feature! Would the sponsorship be a subscription model or can you also do a one time payment donation?
- TheRealWatson 7y ago
  https://help.github.com/en/articles/sponsoring-a-developer https://help.github.com/en/articles/sponsoring-a-developer
dangjc 7y ago
Will this support micro payments like $1 or even $0.10 a month? Or would credit card fees eat all that up?
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Would be great if they could get Stripe on board with this and support 0 fees due to the application.
  - huac 7y ago
    interchange fees are attributable mostly to card networks (e.g. visa) and not stripe
- nosequel 7y ago
  $1 / month is already one of the options.
TheRealWatson 7y ago
1 - I can imagine sending money to every country isn't a simple deal. Which countries of residence will initially be allowed to receive (and send) payments? 2 - How a potential sponsor knows, without a lot of research, who is deserving of their sponsorship? Will this possibly cause people to change the way they contribute to OSS to make them more visible/noisy and create unhealthy competition?
mherrmann 7y ago
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
- hanniabu 7y ago
  This would be a nice feature, less overhead for the donator too as the amount donated can automatically be split up among all of your starred projects. Bonus points to offset a sponsor dashboard where you can use a slider to change the percentage splits. In the future a budget feature can be added for sponsored projects and this dashboard can show which projects haven't yet met their budget for the month or quarter, similar to the banners that show on wikipedia, "this is an open source project and need x amount in order to keep operations going smoothly, if everyone donates y amount that will fund development for z time period."
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    This dashboard could also have suggestions for sponsoring projects that you either forked or use as a dependency in your project.
    - bboreham 7y ago
      If I forked a repo it’s because I was making a PR to fix something. It says nothing about whether I’m still depending on that code.
- neurotrace 7y ago
  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.
C4stor 7y ago
How many sponsoring circles have you detected already ? I can't believe people able to be sponsored aren't doing background stuff to make sure they get free $5K a month from github, since it's a simple as doing a reciprocal sponsoring. Heck, anyone with a bit too much cash can just offer to be payed to sponsor, let's say you give me 1 unit, I sponsor 0,9 upon payment, you get 1,8 from github. TL;DR : really surprised you went with matching sponsoring, aren't you worried about this, is this just cost of doing business, or are you actively detecting it ? (and how if discloseable ?)
- smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
  GitHub is vetting applicants. If they do get hoodwinked, they are at least getting hoodwinked into giving money to somebody they thought was doing worthwhile work to begin with.
  - C4stor 7y ago
    So your hypothesis is that they'd rather assume this potential cost for the sake of publicity ? Also, in the "paid to sponsor" scenario they'd be hoodwinke into giving money both to someone worthwhile and someone totally unknown to them. I'd be really curious to know the technical or legal possibles responses.
    - TimothyBJacobs 7y ago
      The whole concept of giving away matching funds is for publicity.
      - C4stor 7y ago
        That's a good point actually, I suppose it doesn't indeed really matters to them where it goes as long as they can say "we gave X to open source projects", X probably being already defined.
beat 7y ago
This is a brilliant idea whose time has come, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out. I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it plays in the corporate arena; I'd love to see businesses that depend on open source every day (that is, all of them) throwing what is just pocket change to them at projects enabling their business. I hope you're planning on encouraging this behavior!
liveoneggs 7y ago
Can an organization get sponsored instead of an individual?
dopeboy 7y ago
Devon, as a contributor to a major open source project, this is really really awesome news. Thanks for all the hard work on it. In lieu of helping out OSS, your CEO put out a proposal awhile back about offering desk space to contributors of OSS [0]. Is this still in consideration? [0] - https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1103919494894772226 https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1103919494894772226

diggan 7y ago

Hello there Devon! I'd be interested to hear what the main reasons for not either a) building on top of existing open platforms (like OpenCollective) or b) doing your own service but building it open source and as a open platform? Also, once the one year period is over, how are you planning to setup the fee structure?

hanniabu 7y ago
This would be nice if there was some integration between the two.
stephenr 7y ago
> doing your own service but building it open source and as a open platform Why would they ever do this? Practically nothing they do is Open Source.
- diggan 7y ago
  Well, they trying to put themselves in the middle of open source. Why wouldn't they, if they really care about their users, not just getting profits?
  - stephenr 7y ago
    > if they really care about their users, not just getting profits? [citation needed]
    - diggan 7y ago
      It's a for-profit company who "loves" open source and hosts a lot of it's projects. But the platform is still not open source. Go figure

Kagerjay 7y ago

Really excited for this new feature! Would the sponsorship be a subscription model or can you also do a one time payment donation?

TheRealWatson 7y ago
https://help.github.com/en/articles/sponsoring-a-developer https://help.github.com/en/articles/sponsoring-a-developer

dangjc 7y ago

Will this support micro payments like $1 or even $0.10 a month? Or would credit card fees eat all that up?

hanniabu 7y ago
Would be great if they could get Stripe on board with this and support 0 fees due to the application.
- huac 7y ago
  interchange fees are attributable mostly to card networks (e.g. visa) and not stripe
nosequel 7y ago
$1 / month is already one of the options.

TheRealWatson 7y ago

1 - I can imagine sending money to every country isn't a simple deal. Which countries of residence will initially be allowed to receive (and send) payments? 2 - How a potential sponsor knows, without a lot of research, who is deserving of their sponsorship? Will this possibly cause people to change the way they contribute to OSS to make them more visible/noisy and create unhealthy competition?

mherrmann 7y ago

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

hanniabu 7y ago
This would be a nice feature, less overhead for the donator too as the amount donated can automatically be split up among all of your starred projects. Bonus points to offset a sponsor dashboard where you can use a slider to change the percentage splits. In the future a budget feature can be added for sponsored projects and this dashboard can show which projects haven't yet met their budget for the month or quarter, similar to the banners that show on wikipedia, "this is an open source project and need x amount in order to keep operations going smoothly, if everyone donates y amount that will fund development for z time period."
- hanniabu 7y ago
  This dashboard could also have suggestions for sponsoring projects that you either forked or use as a dependency in your project.
  - bboreham 7y ago
    If I forked a repo it’s because I was making a PR to fix something. It says nothing about whether I’m still depending on that code.
neurotrace 7y ago
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.

C4stor 7y ago

How many sponsoring circles have you detected already ? I can't believe people able to be sponsored aren't doing background stuff to make sure they get free $5K a month from github, since it's a simple as doing a reciprocal sponsoring. Heck, anyone with a bit too much cash can just offer to be payed to sponsor, let's say you give me 1 unit, I sponsor 0,9 upon payment, you get 1,8 from github. TL;DR : really surprised you went with matching sponsoring, aren't you worried about this, is this just cost of doing business, or are you actively detecting it ? (and how if discloseable ?)

smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
GitHub is vetting applicants. If they do get hoodwinked, they are at least getting hoodwinked into giving money to somebody they thought was doing worthwhile work to begin with.
- C4stor 7y ago
  So your hypothesis is that they'd rather assume this potential cost for the sake of publicity ? Also, in the "paid to sponsor" scenario they'd be hoodwinke into giving money both to someone worthwhile and someone totally unknown to them. I'd be really curious to know the technical or legal possibles responses.
  - TimothyBJacobs 7y ago
    The whole concept of giving away matching funds is for publicity.
    - C4stor 7y ago
      That's a good point actually, I suppose it doesn't indeed really matters to them where it goes as long as they can say "we gave X to open source projects", X probably being already defined.

beat 7y ago

This is a brilliant idea whose time has come, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out. I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it plays in the corporate arena; I'd love to see businesses that depend on open source every day (that is, all of them) throwing what is just pocket change to them at projects enabling their business. I hope you're planning on encouraging this behavior!

liveoneggs 7y ago

Can an organization get sponsored instead of an individual?

dopeboy 7y ago

Devon, as a contributor to a major open source project, this is really really awesome news. Thanks for all the hard work on it. In lieu of helping out OSS, your CEO put out a proposal awhile back about offering desk space to contributors of OSS [0]. Is this still in consideration? [0] - https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1103919494894772226 https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1103919494894772226