GitHub launches Sponsors, a Patreon-like way to fund open source projects

Community Tech Policy & News
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This could be pretty cool.

I like the recurring subscription model a lot, and maybe this will encourage more devs to do it.

Of particular note, they’re not charging fees to use the service and are covering payment fees for the first year.

100% percent of your sponsorship goes to the developer.

Open source projects can also express their funding models directly from their repositories. When .github/FUNDING.yml is added to a project’s master branch, a new “Sponsor” button will appear at the top of the repository.

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This sounds like a great thing.

but looking at the state of the “Current Year™” with its deplatforming shenanigans, and the deep corporate involvement in all corners of the internet, I forsee this being a shitshow.

Things that will definitely happen:

Projects made by devs who have committed “Wrongthink™” or projects using the wrong code of conduct will be financially harassed via charge-backs or smear campaigns to get their funding cut. A fork of the same software + “correct” code of conduct/philosophy will be made, and funds will go there.

Reverse engineered/legally grey projects that get funded will get nuked from orbit by whatever company is buttmad about it, and cause major headaches for github for allowing them to be paid, which will probably affect other projects (site wide payment processing put on hold)

Bonus*
Also guaran-fucking-teed to happen: shitty rebranded fork of good but obscure project with no changes except malware/tracking bullshit integrated into it will roll in the cash and the original project won’t get a penny.

bonus Vantablack blackpilled take:
leaving donation links should be an option… but patreon/game-ifying open source software will, in the long run, probably frustrate people and push them away and possibly kill old-but good projects.

-final edit, then i’m leaving this depressing chain of thought.

github sort of fit the unix “do one thing, and do it well” idea.
hosting source for teams/projects, tracking bugs… that was great.

They’re expanding it into different territory now, crowdfunding.

i’m sure they’ll eventually take a cut, to help turn a profit, understandable considering all the free projects they’re hosting.

But its opening them up to legal issues and will wind up making them have to set new policies (projects are on their own if they break copyright,etc).

Microsoft has been doing a lot of smart things the past few years, maybe they can pull it off without shitting things up, but i can’t not press X to doubt.

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I suspect you’re right about that, too. :rofl:

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Agreed.

The nice thing is that Microsoft already has all the payment processing infrastructure, so they don’t need to 100% support that investment with their revenue stream, like patreon.

I wonder if they’ll be able to take a smaller cut.

Yeah, this will definitely happen.

I haven’t seen any evidence of them being upset about wrongthink or any of this yet, I’m not sure why that would change.

Not to mention, most open source projects lean left anyways.

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Not GitHub itself. They’ve been relatively neutral. It’ll be the activists in the userbase that drive it.

I can’t remember where, but reading the comments from people when sqlite added their own CoC was hilarious, but also sad.

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:thinking:

Eh, in three years there will be a mass exodus of all the bullshit on github into windows and then MS will sue for the money or some dumb shit.

Am I really going to be the tinhat gay?

…

Fuckit. I don’t trust fuckin bully from them.

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Creator donation implementation unavoidable now. Its like the DRM of influencer content and I don’t think there is any way to put that genie back in the bottle… Either they implement it or someone else is going to and people will migrate there.

I’m not a big fan of the donation train myself but that is the best reason I can see them for doing it.

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mmmm… sometimes things seem awful convenient.

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I don’t see a problem with projects having links for people to donate to patreon or paypal or something like that. Its optional, etc, sort of a tip jar or a way to say thanks.

but the subscription/donation thing being integrated into a cloud hosted source version control system… it has a smell.

It also seems like a convenient way for microsoft to make money off of the open source community without putting in much work.

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I’m surprised it took them this long for them to integrate stuff like this and you guys are right, it wont’ stop here.

Github is a gateway to Open Source code and methods.

Embrace

Extend

Extinguish

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From the moment microsoft bought github people were suspicious. It sort of died down as people took the “wait and see what they do” approach, but there have been a few people that have been speaking up about their concerns lately.

Three years might be a bit generous.

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Gotta give them time to make windows a linux OS and try to take over the free software foundation first. Thats just what they’re doing right now. I can wait to see everything burn in 3 years.