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Friend, you are going to be waiting for a very, very long time. In the meantime, every day OSS project maintainers get burned out, depressed, and often called

Friend, you are going to be waiting for a very, very long time. In the meantime, every day OSS project maintainers get burned out, depressed, and often called mean names and there is no viable mechanism for them to get paid for it. CodeFund shut down, Flattr is not a significant player - I first heard of it in this thread. Frankly, the network effects of GH make them the only viable place for this to happen in the medium future.

jmiskovic 6y ago
I agree with all your points, but I'm still optimistic. The biggest two issues are that anything related to finances is heavily regulated, and that third-party services integrated into repositories/blogs/posts create lot of friction for users. It should come down to 1 button: donate fixed amount immediately. It's easy to press that button few times, or to press the button every time you update to new version. Simple is good. One way around regulation would be for each online service to have a independent credit system. Like karma, but you can also spend it to reward others. Communities would reward each other for creating content. Independent entities could offer to exchange your GitHub credits to Reddit credits. Those entities could also handle exchange to and from actual money, with credit card fees and necessary financial regulation isolated to just those entities. Let the market regulate itself.
- peteforde 6y ago
  Do you not see that the very thing that made GH a social hub for something that was previously totally disconnected is exactly what is required to push something like this anywhere close to a critical mass? What other service is going to provide a consistent, trusted interface with payment details already stored that is so close to the projects that you're using? Maybe the npm registry... oh wait. :P Seriously, if what you want was going to happen, it would have happened by now. There isn't another force on the planet today that could make even a small dent.

jmiskovic 6y ago

I agree with all your points, but I'm still optimistic. The biggest two issues are that anything related to finances is heavily regulated, and that third-party services integrated into repositories/blogs/posts create lot of friction for users. It should come down to 1 button: donate fixed amount immediately. It's easy to press that button few times, or to press the button every time you update to new version. Simple is good. One way around regulation would be for each online service to have a independent credit system. Like karma, but you can also spend it to reward others. Communities would reward each other for creating content. Independent entities could offer to exchange your GitHub credits to Reddit credits. Those entities could also handle exchange to and from actual money, with credit card fees and necessary financial regulation isolated to just those entities. Let the market regulate itself.

peteforde 6y ago
Do you not see that the very thing that made GH a social hub for something that was previously totally disconnected is exactly what is required to push something like this anywhere close to a critical mass? What other service is going to provide a consistent, trusted interface with payment details already stored that is so close to the projects that you're using? Maybe the npm registry... oh wait. :P Seriously, if what you want was going to happen, it would have happened by now. There isn't another force on the planet today that could make even a small dent.