This is great! How will this pay for itself? ...and this is where they'll make their money. Because they're in control of the payment processing costs, they can just take their percentage here. It...
GitHub Sponsors charges zero platform fees when you support the work of other developers.
This is great! How will this pay for itself?
We’ll also cover payment processing fees for the first 12 months of the program to celebrate the launch. 100% percent of your sponsorship goes to the developer.
...and this is where they'll make their money. Because they're in control of the payment processing costs, they can just take their percentage here. It won't be as large as Patreon, certainly, but after the promotional period they'll definitely be making money on this.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. There's plenty of open source projects on GitHub that would definitely benefit from this as opposed to a mostly empty Patreon page, but it shouldn't be considered an entirely philanthropic action, which is how they're framing it.
They may add an additional fee in the future as well, the FAQ page says: It's very possible that they're willing to lose money on this though, and use it as a way to try to draw more users onto...
They may add an additional fee in the future as well, the FAQ page says:
In the first year, GitHub will not charge any fees, so 100% of sponsorships will go to the sponsored developer. In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee.
It's very possible that they're willing to lose money on this though, and use it as a way to try to draw more users onto GitHub. Microsoft can afford it. I imagine that's what the year delay is for—letting it get used for a while and see if they'll need to start charging for it, or if it seems to have enough other positive impacts to keep it free.
Possibly supporting the work of other developers means that there is no fee for transactions between developers using funds already in the github ecosystem but there will be a fee when the money...
GitHub Sponsors charges zero platform fees when you support the work of other developers.
Possibly supporting the work of other developers means that there is no fee for transactions between developers using funds already in the github ecosystem but there will be a fee when the money originally enters github from a nondeveloper.
Hopefully Gitlab won't be late to launch their own version of this. IIRC Reddit is launching something similar for their users too. There is also https://www.brew.com/ which specialises in...
Hopefully Gitlab won't be late to launch their own version of this. IIRC Reddit is launching something similar for their users too. There is also https://www.brew.com/ which specialises in podcasts. I think this sort of specialisation in recurring pledges is nice, it allows for diversifying one's revenue streams and increases discoverability and potential to support given most devs and many OSS users will already have Github accounts, or those who want to support redditors will already have reddit accounts. Whereas if you use Patreon, you're asking your audience to start a new account and learn to use a brand new service, which is a serious enough barrier.
I think this is great news. I have one project that has what I think has up to around a hundred or so users, and I'll be launching a new thing that might get something near that or even catch on and be popular. If it could end up even buying me a couple cups of coffee a month, I'd really appreciate it.
I doubt they would; and if they did end up doing it, it'd be a mistake imo. Github has the best pull to do this. Gitlab needs to be its own beast. They've been heavily focusing on devops etc which...
I doubt they would; and if they did end up doing it, it'd be a mistake imo.
Github has the best pull to do this. Gitlab needs to be its own beast. They've been heavily focusing on devops etc which is great, they're a much better product than Github in many regards and I will not go back to hosting my production cycle code on Gitlab. But if I want to open source something (as in: actually get open source contributions, not just make its source available), I'll go with Github any and every day.
Gitlab was a poor product when it was a poor Github clone. Now it's a great product because it does things that Github doesn't do. The things it does that Github does too, it tends not to be great at those.
This is great! How will this pay for itself?
...and this is where they'll make their money. Because they're in control of the payment processing costs, they can just take their percentage here. It won't be as large as Patreon, certainly, but after the promotional period they'll definitely be making money on this.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. There's plenty of open source projects on GitHub that would definitely benefit from this as opposed to a mostly empty Patreon page, but it shouldn't be considered an entirely philanthropic action, which is how they're framing it.
They may add an additional fee in the future as well, the FAQ page says:
It's very possible that they're willing to lose money on this though, and use it as a way to try to draw more users onto GitHub. Microsoft can afford it. I imagine that's what the year delay is for—letting it get used for a while and see if they'll need to start charging for it, or if it seems to have enough other positive impacts to keep it free.
Possibly supporting the work of other developers means that there is no fee for transactions between developers using funds already in the github ecosystem but there will be a fee when the money originally enters github from a nondeveloper.
Hopefully Gitlab won't be late to launch their own version of this. IIRC Reddit is launching something similar for their users too. There is also https://www.brew.com/ which specialises in podcasts. I think this sort of specialisation in recurring pledges is nice, it allows for diversifying one's revenue streams and increases discoverability and potential to support given most devs and many OSS users will already have Github accounts, or those who want to support redditors will already have reddit accounts. Whereas if you use Patreon, you're asking your audience to start a new account and learn to use a brand new service, which is a serious enough barrier.
I think this is great news. I have one project that has what I think has up to around a hundred or so users, and I'll be launching a new thing that might get something near that or even catch on and be popular. If it could end up even buying me a couple cups of coffee a month, I'd really appreciate it.
I doubt they would; and if they did end up doing it, it'd be a mistake imo.
Github has the best pull to do this. Gitlab needs to be its own beast. They've been heavily focusing on devops etc which is great, they're a much better product than Github in many regards and I will not go back to hosting my production cycle code on Gitlab. But if I want to open source something (as in: actually get open source contributions, not just make its source available), I'll go with Github any and every day.
Gitlab was a poor product when it was a poor Github clone. Now it's a great product because it does things that Github doesn't do. The things it does that Github does too, it tends not to be great at those.