GitHub Sponsors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sponsors <comment><USER2> This is a nice start for allowing sending "coffee money" between persons. If however you want to drive Serious Money into actually funding OSS projects please remember this: While virtually no company has a donations budget, almost every company has a $$$ marketing budget.

Please let me give you some of that money that would otherwise be spent on blue pens with logos and endless display ads to GitHub projects. I'd be happy to drive $xxK/mo to open source projects my company depends on or that are simply being used by an audience that aligns with our own. To sell that internally, I need (as in, I would be laughed out of the room to propose it without):

\- My sponsoring company logo on the GitHub project page

\- UTM links and all that jazz to attribute traffic and campaigns to the specific projects that we sponsor

See [https://webpack.js.org/](https://webpack.js.org/) for a good example of a successful sponsorship program. Literally the biggest hurdle remaining for BigCorp to sponsor something like Webpack today is selling your boss on "Patreon" and "OpenCollective". But if you just increase our GitHub budget by a few K/month, AND the marketers get attributable traffic to boot that we can point to, well that's an easy sell!

<comment><USER3> This is a good idea, but also the behavior will probably be emergent with the introduction of this feature - I can definitely see OSS maintainers offering logos/links in the README in exchange for monthly sponsorship. I bet we'll see the emergence of "Gold/Silver/Bronze" tiers too, just like at conferences.

<comment><USER4> Take a look at the Webpack page that GP mentioned. This is already happening

<comment><USER5> This has been happening since at least the late 90's when I started to get involved in open source.

Heck, I've sponsored a number of projects back then as a teenager with a fledgling Internet business - with the express purpose of advertising to highly technical users I wanted to potentially sell to.

I'm not sure if it was terribly effective at sales marketing, but it was _highly_ effective at marketing towards the types of employees I wanted to work with. I see sponsoring open source projects as more of a recruitment thing than sales thing these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like it's needed and (dareisay) overdue?

Integrating sponsorship subscriptions into the core experience is sure to increase payments, a la twitch subscriptions/payments (which Youtube is just now copying).

I imagine this will change the fundamental dynamics around OSS projects, but not sure how, nor whether it is all positive.

\- If maintainers can see who donated, do they prioritize issues / pull requests? (I think that could be a good thing actually).

\- Do companies use GitHub sponsorships to judge the health of dependencies? Will they create budgets to support their dependencies systematically?

\- Does this hurt FOSS contributions, because now people start to expect to be paid rather than doing it for inherent motivations? Will this generate toxic politics among project contributors regarding who gets credit + gets paid?

\- Will this mean that microsoft gets a bunch of PII on top-notch developers (have to enter name + address info to receive or send payments), and get much more value from that data than I can imagine?

<comment><USER7> > This seems like it's needed and (dareisay) overdue?

Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay).

In fact, it seems less than the existing options. The existing options are open platforms with open source code. What GitHub is introducing, seems to be a loss-leader (they give free cash away) for the sole purpose of getting attention. It's obvious the feature they are now introducing is not for making the ecosystem better, but to lock the ecosystem harder to GitHub.

<comment><USER8> > Seems what they are planning to offer is not better nor different than what > others already are providing (see OpenCollective or LiberaPay).

It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with a raft of compliance all handled already. It might just be me, but if I were to speculate I would guess that OpenCollective and LiberaPay can't quite claim the same. I know that if I want to, I can get a SOC 2 report from GitHub.

These are nor minor administrative details to be brushed aside idly. They matter, particularly to a company keen to ensure that they never have to apologize for a partner fucking up credit card handling or to someone with a corporate card who has to be careful how they use it. These things are _major features_.

<comment><USER9> > It's got a major company with deep and signficant expertise in security, > payments, and accouting. A name that people and companies already trust with > a raft of compliance all handled already.

Yes, and they are absolutely _robbing_ the opportunity from others to build in this space, when there are already some really capable players who would have gotten somewhere great. This is a total asshole, closed source company approach. The "loss leader" thing feels totally malicious, and designed to starve the open competition. This is classic Microsoft and rolls back all the positive feelings that had been growing about their growing in the right direction. Amazon does the same shit, to starve competition: "Yeah, you've a spot on our system, but we're going to steal every feature and embed our deeper and drive you out."

For a real example of how OPEN companies work together: Balanced Payments was a daring effort to run an open source payment processor. When they wanted a way to fund and support Gratipay, they went in and submitted a pull request to incorporate their own open source payment processor into the Gratipay platform. If GitHub were in the true spirit of open source, it would have engaged OpenCollective in such a capacity.

I am really disappointed about the hooray optimism and lack of criticism in this thread. I feel like we're all failing to engage in critical engagement with this idea and premise.

<comment><USER8> What kind of critical engagement do you think we are failing to offer? What kind of response would leave you thinking "This person engaged critically with the issue at hand, but still came away with a strongly positive position"?

For my own part, I don't think anybody is owed a position in a space. I also don't think the existence of small players that get displaced by a big player means that the small players were destined to become big players. It's worth considering that LiberaPay and OpenCollective would never have gotten somewhere great. Perhaps they would always have been doomed to be small and essentially irrelevant. We'll never know, obviously, but it's worth considering.

But let's talk about OpenCollective and how Github could have worked with them. Do you think OpenCollective would have passed a security audit? Are they SOC compliant? Could they have handle the scale?

An even more interesting question: has Github ever claimed to be an OPEN company? I'm certainly not aware of such, though of course my knowledge is less than comprehensive. Charging them with failing to be something that they've never claimed to be seems odd.

Yes. Your charge is correct in an important detail. Github isn't an open source company. As far as I can tell they never have been. It's perhaps somewhat less than maximally reasonable to expect them to become one.

For my own part, this enhances my positive feelings about Microsoft running Github. They're making changes to popularize the idea that it's OK to pay developers to do open source, and doing so in a way that lets developers get paid in a manner of their choice.

It could still be an open platform, of course. Someone just needs to be able to do it better than Github. As Dependabot shows, that's _absolutely_ possible.

<comment><USER10> _> It could still be an open platform, of course. Someone just needs to be able to do it better than Github. As Dependabot shows, that's absolutely possible._

Awkward, this literally happened today: [https://dependabot.com/blog/hello- github/](https://dependabot.com/blog/hello-github/)

(I agree with the thrust of your comment; I just think the timing here is funny.)

<comment><USER8> That's actually _exactly my point_. Dependabot did Github security alerts so much better than Github did, that Github gave up on trying to compete entirely.

Which is to say that it's incontrovertibly possible to beat Github at their own game and on their own platform. To the point where even Github agrees they've been beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really neat! As someone who works on open-source full time and is largely sponsored by my users, here's my take:

The good:

\- gets money into open source with an intuitive and accessible interface that will get it to the forefront of people's minds

\- they're the only platform that isn't taking a slice off the top (yet)

\- (temporary) donation matching and eating payment processing fees

The bad:

\- a few projects on github are disproportionately large and influential and will probably receive a majority of the funds from this

\- this risks creating a stronger form of platform lock-in than ever: who's going to switch to sourcehut when their github repo makes them real world money?

I find this interesting because it runs into a place where my interests are seriously split. I depend on funding for my open source projects and this seems like a really necessary and powerful move that fills a gaping hole in the ecosystem, and might do it really well. At the same time, I'm working on a competing platform to GitHub and I'm worried about getting people locked into a proprietary platform. I have always recommended that people who accept donations for their open-source work avoid putting all of their eggs into one basket, like Patreon, in case that platform changes in a way they dislike. I encourage that for anyone interested in this GitHub offering as well, and I signed up for the waitlist to see how it goes. I still keep a number of projects there and will for the foreseeable future, so it might be a nice revenue source.

I have put a lot of thought into open source funding in general, I'd love to sit down with the team and chat if they have the time. Shoot me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER12> It'll also be interesting to see how GitHub competitors respond.

GitLab may be in a position to do so, unsure about others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I run community sites for which I am paid donations to cover running costs including writing code, bug fixes, servers, etc.

Today I take donations via PayPal, but the catch with this is that it's hard to provide visibility to donors of how healthy this is (WRT to costs), and whilst I considered Patreon that seemed to be very focused on creative deliverables to donors of a non-code/service nature.

I am trying Browser Attention Tokens, but these feel to be detached from the delivery of code, and still don't provide enough visibility to the donors of the overall health of the projects.

This though... this could be good. If Github sponsorship were attached to projects and people donated to a given org or repo, and then that were visible "this repo receives $500 per month" it would encourage code contribution whilst providing visibility over the health of a project.

I know my donors would appreciate the visibility (as would I, I manually create periodic reports on income and costs - at least this solves the income side).

The only question I have is how easy it would be for those who don't use Github to subscribe to a recurring donation?

Edit: Signed up for the waitlist, received a link to [https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github- sponsors](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors) which appears to clarify that you'd be sponsoring a developer not a repo/org... which means popularity/celebrity is everything. Oh well.

<comment><USER14> > _visible "this repo receives $500 per month" it would encourage code > contribution whilst providing visibility over the health of a project._

I fear this might snowball. Many people don't donate if they see a project with very small donations. It goes like this: "well, my contribution would not make any difference anyway"...

The reverse is also true: "this guy is OBVIOUSLY doing something right if he gets $500 a month for OSS work, I'll donate!". Yet another example of whales vs. small fish.

As you said in your edit, it will likely encourage celebrity cheering and everybody else won't get a cent as before.

<comment><USER15> This logic is strange.

If this repo receives $20 a month, if I donate $5 I'll increase their budget by 1/4, a huge impact.

If this repo receives $500 a month, my $5 will increase their budget by 1%, barely visible.

<comment><USER16> Many people who get paid this way prefer the 1% case to the 25% case. It's much more stable. This means if you decide to _stop_ , they only lose 1%, not 25%.

I mean, people are still going to enjoy getting more money, don't get me wrong. But they'd rather have 1000 people giving a dollar than two people giving 500.

<comment><USER14> Exactly your last. We could all take a page out of the Twitch streamers' books -- they do exactly like this: (a) set donation or subscription goals and (b) make it really cheap and (c) aim for volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To summarize,

\- OSS contributors on GitHub can apply to become "sponsored developer" to accept donations

\- Developer sets monthly sponsorship tiers (amounts & benefits)

\- GitHub will match upto $5k in donation in Developer's first year (1:1 match)

\- GitHub will not charge any fees in the first year

\- In the future, they may charge a nominal processing fee

\- Currently only individuals can donate to individuals, org/team support (on both sides) to come soon

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't like this. There has always been a purity around writing open source software simply for the benefit of mankind.

Let's not kid ourselves, probably no one is going to make a living from github sponsors, and projects that bring in any significant money are probably written by developers who already make good money do something else anyway. This would basically be beer money to them.

You would be amazed at how people that do not contribute any sort of money to an open source software project will come in and make _demands_ to the creator to implement some feature or fix some bug. Now imagine if they donate $10 and suddenly feel like there is a _debt_ the creator must pay to them by doing what they want.

I will not be using github sponsors for my open source projects. Instead I will continue to ask for things like tickets to conferences or speaking engagements where I can better develop my brand and clout. That's the way it should be, but that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER19> Don't let them manipulate you. Assert your policy that they are paying for the software as it is at the time of donation. I would donate with the same thought without any expectations of further development because of my donation. Only that the software has already helped me in its current state.

<comment><USER20> Exactly this. The "purity" of OSS development needs to be reflected in the "purity" of donations for this to work. Small donations should represent nothing more than a token of appreciation. Large donations, well... money shouldn't buy project influence, though that is easier said. It's a complicated matter of corporate sponsored engineers contributing both good and bad (influence wise) patches back to OSS, but people need to make a living somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 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.

<comment><USER22> >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.

<comment><USER23> Maybe they meant credit card interchange fees of 1-3%?

<comment><USER7> If 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?

<comment><USER24> Because they can control it and use it as a moat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm glad open-source maintainers will get one more way to get paid... But it feels wrong to lock this into a git hosting platform. Maintainer payment is important enough to be a first-class product, open and accessible to all... instead it's being used as a bargaining chip to keep developers on a hosting platform. The subtext is pretty clear: "if you want to get paid, you better not leave Github!".

Meanwhile nonprofits and startups focused on solving the problem of open- source sustainability for everyone, not just Github customers, will suffer from this announcement.

I think that's a shame.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, it's a shame the GitHub is starting to actually take advantage of their hosting monopoly, to the detriment of solutions like OpenCollective and Liberapay.

On the other hand, Git is distributed. Can't you just use GitHub as a mirror, and direct users elsewhere for actual development through the README?

<comment><USER27> Or just include external donation links in the readme?

<comment><USER26> I assume you can't just do that since GitHub might offer to give donors regular activity updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome!

Some Feature Requests:

1) Let me sponsor a project, not a person

2) Let a project have a private, or a public, allocation of how funding goes. At first, simple percents would be awesome.

3) Let a project assign funding to another project. Probably one it depends on.

4) For a given project, let me see which other projects are funding it.

5) Allow the set up of Unions. These five projects all have one pool where all the money goes, which is then divided back to the projects by some percentage.

6) Fund a charity. If this person or project receives money, please directly send it to a specified charity instead. (Don't make the person who receives the donation have to handle the paperwork for it.)

7) Try to make it easy to set up a sponsorship in your will

8) Let a project use their funding to pay for hosting, directly. So, I give to some project, they pay for CPU and Storage on some cloud host.

I'm certain there are legal complications with all of these ideas. If you solve the legal issues, that would be amazing. Cheers!

<comment><USER29> For #1, it looks like that's coming? The documentation[1] has been updated for project sponsor buttons to include up to 4 github-sponsor enabled users. I can't find a project using it yet, but I imagine this divides your donation to the project among the 4?

[1]: [https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor- but...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in- your-repository#displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-your-repository)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is NOT about helping us out, fellow maintainer-kids, it's about owning the playground and burning the forest.

This fee structure is predatory af & straight outta amazon's playbook. (2x matching funds and all fees waived for first year?[1])

There has been an ecosystem. If this was about anything except market capture through burning VC/reserve funding, GitHub would have engaged in existing nacent and experimental spaces. They haven't: [http://opencollective.com/github](http://opencollective.com/github)

If a company is truly trying to be embody open culture, they support and and- yes existing projects as step 1. Case in point: [https://words.steveklabnik.com/why-im-partnering-with- balanc...](https://words.steveklabnik.com/why-im-partnering-with-balanced)

If we have a problem or idea for OpenCollective/Liberapay/etc, the staff live on open chat rooms -- the github issue queues are public -- the code is interrogable by the curious and adventurous. With GitHub, we get bupkis. Or wait, we get coaxed into a one-on-one email support channel where we can't see one another, speak together, nor find fellow travellers. Or we get the unofficial wailing wall that is [https://github.com/isaacs/github](https://github.com/isaacs/github)

Really disappointed in the lack of critical reflection from technologists. This is not good for us as executed.

[1]: [https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github- sponsors#ab...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github- sponsors#about-the-github-sponsors-matching-fund)

<comment><USER30> You can add sponsor button next to Watch/Star button [1] which supports opencollective. For example, ReactiveUI [2] repo has one.

[1] [https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor- but...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in- your-repository)

[2] [https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI](https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI)

<comment><USER31> Also what is up with "These external links will take you off GitHub to pages we haven't verified, so beware." ?

You can put links to stuff in all other places without warnings. Now ok I guess they can argue that most other places do not entail with people sending money. But why not at least keep a list of "trusted" places?

<comment><USER32> I'd wager this is more of a "cover your ass" kind of situation for GitHub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Dan Ariely's 2008 book "Predictably Irrational" [1], which presents experiments in behavioral economics, has one chapter [2] that discusses the introduction of money ("market norms") in an otherwise money-free social context, typically of favors being exchanged ("social norms")

To summarize, the introduction of hard currency completely disrupts the social dynamics and the resulting work quality, usually for the worst.

You can find an more in-depth summary in the links:

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational)

[2] [http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%...](http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational) "Chapter 4: The Cost of Social Norms"

<comment><USER34> I mean yes, this is obviously a thing, no argument. But I'm not sure that means that Open Source maintainers are feeding themselves off the goodwill and feelgoodness they are getting from maintaining these projects.

I would gander to guess that most maintainers are supported by a small minority of enterprisy agreements they have, either through large sponsorship or by working for a company that is supporting their Open Source work.

And I think that's a bad thing. I would much rather see them supported by 10,000 $1 monthly donations than 5, $2,000 donations. That is more likely to lead to features and attention focused on the needs of the masses than the enterprise.

I say this as someone who maintains an Open Source platform primarily funded by a single enterprise. I would love to flip that on its head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 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 email@example.com as well.

<comment><USER36> 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)

<comment><USER37> 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.

<comment><USER38> I'm in your shoes too. I've got 457 stars (and I don't think I've ever un- starred a project).

I think it'd be a reasonable default for most people to start with though.

Perhaps offering the projects that you `watch` a higher priority than those you've starred would be a fairer default?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love this. I do wonder though if anyone can educate me on the choice to do a monthly sponsorship? I think that's awesome but at the same time, there are a lot of developers I want to send 10 dollar tips to for that library that they made.

Just wondering if there's a reason to not have both. My guess is that foregoing one time transactions in favour of ensuring that people gravitate towards making a more sustainable donation seemed like a rational choice. Pure speculation there so if there's any other reason why it wasn't done I'd be really grateful if anyone from Github might be able to share.

<comment><USER40> I also think it's about sustainability. As a developer receiving an X amount every month (+/\- Y%) can heavily reduce the financial risk and help plan better.

I'm currently not developing any open source software but if I was and worked as a freelancer knowing that by the end of the month I'll receive $500 for GitHub would allow me to balance my open source work with the freelance work, ensuring I have enough money to support myself.

<comment><USER41> If they offered both (monthly and one-time payments) then the solution would be to allow the project to allow only one or the other or both or neither. So you could select that you'd only receive monthly payments and people wouldn't be able to send you one-time payments.

<comment><USER42> Even better _(imo)_ , try to buffer one time payments over months. This _(and other similar features)_ could allow a developer to see upcoming income from OSS, if it's declining, etc.

Being able to predict how much you're going to make it hugely helpful imo. Especially if you're a freelancer. You might see that in 3 months your funds are drying up, so plan accordingly.

Just brainstorming: But "similar features" could be trying to favor longer term donations. If a user wants to donate $20/m, maybe ask them for $10/m for 3 month increments?

Though, I suppose this isn't any better than the developer themself buffering funds in their bank. BUT, it seems like a meaningful concept, regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A logical next step would be to add bounty on specific bugs or features requests.

If a company is relying on open source, and has no capability to fix a critical bug (which is a bad strategy but it certainly happens), it would probably be ready to pay a hefty sum so that the maintainer, or anyone involved in the project, will have at least a look at it.

Today, unless you can contact directly the maintainer and hope he or she has some spare time, I don't know how you can solve that kind of issue.

However, I am not sure who will decide a bug is fixed or a feature properly implemented.

<comment><USER44> One not-so-bad solution could be similar to what StackOverflow does: The issuer of the bounty may decide who gets it. But even if they don't issue it to anyone, they don't receive their sum back. There there currency is points, but if it's real money, any unreleased bounties could go to some kind of general community pot for that project or whole Github after a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I support one project on Open Collective [1] on a monthly basis. They do take a cut from the money I donate to cover the credit card fees and their operational costs. GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow!

While this news sounds amazing on the surface, I am also concerned it might have negative effects on the OSS ecosystem overall. Let's see how this pans out!

[1] [https://opencollective.com/](https://opencollective.com/)

<comment><USER46> > GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow!

Maybe I didn't fully understand what "cut" means, but ....

> 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.

[https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github- sponsors](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors)

<comment><USER47> Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services, or at least that is what it says for now.

<comment><USER22> >Keep in mind that they will only take a payment processing fee, unlike other services that charge a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services...

How are those different exactly?

<comment><USER48> The first scenario is a loss leader -- it doesn't contribute _any_ revenue for the business to stay afloat.

The second may or may not be a loss leader, but it will contribute something in revenue for the business to stay afloat.

<comment><USER22> That's charitable. Nowhere do they say that their "payment processing fee" will be limited to the fees charged by their payment processor. They could very well charge some multiple of that value to generate a profit.

<comment><USER49> There is: _nominal_ processing fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > To supercharge community funding, GitHub created the GitHub Sponsors > Matching Fund, which matches up to $5000 per sponsored developer in their > first year of sponsorship. 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.

What's to stop me^Wsomeone else and their friend from sponsoring each other for $5K to collect the $5K in matching funds?

<comment><USER51> If Github aren't doing KYC and AML, then their payment processor better have. Otherwise this is the swiftest way I've seen to make $5K.

<comment><USER52> KYC: know your customer.

AML: anti money-laundering.

Basics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have been curious for a while what Microsoft plans for LinkedIn and GitHub.

It seems like one possible future here is that open source becomes less like passion projects that scratch an itch and more like driving for Uber.

Maybe that is good. Maybe GitHub just took a step toward becoming Fiverr. I really don't know.

<comment><USER26> > Maybe that is good.

How is that good?

<comment><USER54> Maybe the quality would improve? There's a condition I call "open-source-itis" that a lot of projects suffer from, where tons of new features (usually of dubious merit) get added but nobody ever bothers to fix bugs or make sure the foundation is actually solid. It makes sense, because that's unsexy work that people generally don't want to do and they're all working for free, but it makes a lot of open source software really crap.

However, if people were getting paid for fixing bugs and cleaning up old code, maybe that'd improve.

<comment><USER55> I'd expect it to get worse. People pay for features over maintenance even more strongly than they allocate prestige.

<comment><USER56> Nah, there's a bug out there right now blocking my work I'd throw money at if I could. I can't be the only one who feels like this.

<comment> james-skemp Rich, the creator of the Phaser framework, does something like this (I haven't dug into it much): [https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/issues/3390](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/issues/3390)

It appears they leverage Bountysource (not familiar with it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I am cautiously optimistic about this. I recently built a prototype GPU-based 2D renderer which I think has huge potential, but obviously also needs quite a bit of work to become a real product. I've been considering various kinds of hybrid open source business models, where there's a free part but also parts people pay for. I'm pretty sure that can fly, but I'm also hesitating at the idea of spending a huge amount of my time and energy on building a business - I want to concentrate on the tech itself. If I can get close to paying cost of living through sponsorship, that's pretty appealing.

For this to really fly, though, needs to come revenue streams from businesses who depend on open source, rather than other individuals. I'm hopeful this can get there.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is such a watershed moment in the history of software development that I don't think most of us can grasp its significance yet. Sure we're familiar with other services that do the same, but the adoption rate (like for GH itself) will be clearly different.

One could argue that this is more societally important than YouTube, Twitch, etc funded content for _consuming_ because this funds content for _leveraging_ to build/work on top of. And this is not just limited to the entrepreneurial devs out there, of which "the man" has new employment competition with now. It can also fund entire company departments.

I look forward to mass adoption of this, wallet in hand.

<comment><USER59> This is a sad commentary on software development as a profession, as well as society as well. A watershed moment is when private individuals might be able to get paid for the extremely valuable work that they do that allows thousands of companies to make a profit with some companies becoming worth billions. The fact that the ability to socially beg for money for valuable software makes the idea of writing valuable software more viable is a sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER60> What's the line between patronage and just hiring someone outright for a pet project?

<comment><USER49> Dignity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Just wanted to add here for those interested in this kind of thing, that we have over 4000 packages with income maintainers can claim today on Tidelift.

If you're a maintainer, ctrl-f through this list and see if you're in there: [https://blog.tidelift.com/is-your-package-eligible-for- incom...](https://blog.tidelift.com/is-your-package-eligible-for-income-on- tidelift-heres-the-complete-list-may-2019)

Tidelift is also supported via the new GitHub Sponsors feature: [https://tidelift.com/subscription/how-to-connect-tidelift- wi...](https://tidelift.com/subscription/how-to-connect-tidelift-with-github)

If you aren't in the 4000+ packages we have income for now, you can still sign up (which helps us get to subscribers who are specifically using your stuff, meaning income in the future).

</comment><comment><USER62> Prior to sponsors, you developed that project for the fun of it. It was useful to some, so you gave this sponsorship thing a try. It was a success, maybe not a great success, but still. Now that you have sponsors, you feel somewhat obligated, but still not on the level of that "professional software industry" that destroyed so much about programming for you.

Time passes, and at some point it becomes clear that sponsors don't have infinite resources, and at some point some of them take their money and leave. It lingers in the back of your head, but you continue development. You notice however, that your motivation lessens, especially for that particular project people care about. You decide that you want to move on.

Many of the remaining sponsors don't take it well and back away. Now you feel that there's no point to even work on something else. Your soft income is nil. You remember the days you worked that software job. Back then, you managed to write a bit of code, push to a GitHub public repository, and be content that programming was not just a profession to you. Now, you don't even have that.

You look around. There are sponsored celebrities, political cases where sponsors withdrew en-masse because of some controversy, and the usual monetary disputes. Having GitHub sponsors has become yet another status signal for potential employers or clients, and it's another a standard goodie to have them, by contract, transfer a small sum that way every month. Sickened, you turn back to your own issues.

You decide not to let Microsoft poke bytes in your Incentive Unit that way. An optimist, you assure yourself that in a few months you'll repair yourself and be able to write some code again, this time Free Software, since you well know what Open Source means, what it always meant. The GitHub demon is no longer an option. No big deal, since it's also become more like a "social network for developers" with status lines and people using their legal names and professionalism all over it. GitLab still requires JavaScript to view source code, so that's DOA, what with you having your default browser running with JavaScript disabled (the Internet went to shit a long time ago).

So you consider setting up some private GitHub-like that's actually accessible on your own server, or maybe use that FSF hosting site. You learned your lesson, but the software world took yet another step towards the void.

<comment><USER63> This... seems pessimistic and overly dramatized.

<comment><USER64> Hopefully it will balance out the crazy optimism so many other posters are having over this announcement because they think they'll make money off of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Great feature! Something to consider for the feature which would allow us to donate more is: 1) Sponsor a project rather an individual developer 2) Sponsor a specific issue/bug

<comment><USER66> I would absolutely sponsor issue's. It'd be a great way to lure people into a longer term sponsorship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ugh, not again! First they introduce a Package Registry that not only splits the ecosystem in two parts but also has no open governance or even open source code. Great. Now they are doing the same thing with donations. Instead of collaborating with already open platforms (like OpenCollective or LiberaPay), they decide to build their own closed-source platform.

I love that more people are figuring out ways to pay open source developers, but doing it via a closed-source platform they developed on their own, they are effectively saying they don't care about "open development", they just want to be the one-stop for everything open source as to not lose mind-share of developers.

I'd be wary of joining this program and I urge people to get involved with something like OpenCollective instead, which is a open project you can actually contribute to. It also helps that OpenCollective's success is based on it's members success. "GitHub Sponsors" isn't as well aligned with you as a developer, as OpenCollective et al.

Obviously, I'm a bit biased, as I run a project for creating transparent open source infrastructure. But I do think this is a important issue, and I'm getting more and more scared GitHub is out to make open source development more ivory tower-like.

<comment><USER67> > Obviously, I'm a bit biased, as I run a project for creating transparent > open source infrastructure. But I do think this is a important issue, and > I'm getting more and more scared GitHub is out to make open source > development more ivory tower-like.

This point is brought many times. Why use GitHub if we can host git repositories anywhere? (A: GitHub providers discovery). Why use GitHub PRs if we have mailing lists? (A: GitHub has better UX).

The same is with their Sponsors program, registering billing method and clicking on a button is all that's needed. No separate sites with different UI.

For the record I'm also not happy with the centralized structure of it (it reminds me of early Google), but I get why it's getting popular.

<comment><USER68> > _This point is brought many times. Why use GitHub if we can host git > repositories anywhere? (A: GitHub providers discovery). Why use GitHub PRs > if we have mailing lists? (A: GitHub has better UX)._

Using Github as a git repo hoster is okayish in the sense that it does not lock your code in. Using Github as a central management tool is problematic, but still manageable.

But this introduces money into the game, and it's dangerous. Github will be the gatekeeper for money flows. It's the same for Patreon, but Patreon has less incentives to lock the whole Open Source ecosystem into their products (Github: hosting, code, issues, PRs, pages with CNAMEs!, package registry and now financial transactions).

My bet is that due to the current state of the ecosystem, people will jump on it and forget that Microsoft is behind all of this. We need organisations which are forced to be open and collective to handle Open Source, not privately owned corporate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Is there any way I could add a button to my projects that would route "sponsorship" to a charity? Because I have a full time job, I do open source for fun, and I want to keep it that way — taking sponsorship would make that harder. But it would feel great to know that anything people wanted to put in the tip jar went straight to a non-profit.

Edit: answering my own question, their help page — [https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor- but...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in- your-repository) — says "We don't support the use of funding links for other purposes, such as for advertising, or supporting political, community, or charity groups."

</comment><comment><USER70> Great news! I hope this will enhance the development of many great open source projects.

This has already been discussed at GitLab and it would be nice if something similar is implemented on other platforms as well. Here's the issue with more details [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/43468](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43468)

</comment><comment><USER71> I was really expecting GitLab to double down on features like this to attract floss community, but this coming from now Microsoft's GitHub is trully surprising. I hope GitHub is working on some more social features as I feel like bringing back my project to GitHub more and more these days.

That being I think it's a great idea as we had many of bounty/subscription tools but they always fail to get adopted and in general lack proper integrations with projects itself. Bounty integration in issue tracker has been on my wishlist forever now, can we get that going next?

</comment><comment><USER72> This is great; it's basically either 1) an alternative to Patreon for developers (which is something I have always wanted to exist) or 2) an alternative to Patreon for Patreon creators who are the tiniest bit intelligent and able to actually use GitHub (every aspect of Patreon is bad for creators, so this is an upgrade, except in user reach).

The missing element here is a nice end-user focused browsing experience, layered on top. A user-focused portal which lets you subscribe to projects, sponsor them on GitHub, and see updates, with GitHub behind the scenes.

<comment><USER73> > every aspect of Patreon is bad for creators

Why? What do you mean exactly?

<comment><USER72> Their content creator tools are shit. No integration with anything people use, and they are pretty buggy.

They are capricious censors. I'd be fine with a platform articulating an arbitrary censorship policy and then following it. They don't do thst — instead they just do what they want and justify it post hoc.

They don't have a real business model and they are too small to operate as a loss leader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Sponsorships and donations don't work in any substantial way because they are optional.

What might work is "KeepAlive" subscriptions, where companies pay substantive amount of money monthly to keep projects that they depend on alive.

KeepAlive payments are about corporate self interest - ensuring that the projects they depend on aren't abandoned.

The secret to success is naming.

Calling it "KeepAlive" subscriptions conveys the self interest, and connects the potential death of the project to your need for it to be healthy because you've built it into your systems.

Naming payments to open source projects as "Sponsorships" or "Donations" leads to the expected outcome - a trivial trickle of money.

The payment amounts must be predefined and set high too - $200 - $500/month for small businesses $500-$5000 / month for medium and large business. It's critically important not to leave the amount to the "purchaser" \- that's when you get payments of $1/month which is what happens on Patreon.

</comment><comment><USER75> What's stopping me creating a sponsored project and donating myself $5,000 to get a free $5,000?

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing part of the waitlist requires an application where they gather info for fraud prevention.

I'm sure you'll need to enter PII to send and receive payments -- MSFT doesn't strike me as a BTC operation. Money laundering is illegal :).

<comment><USER76> What info can possibly prevent this fraud though? Even the real large projects could ask friends and family to donate 5k that they gift back later. It's so easy/undetectable to do it's just leaving free money on the table.

<comment><USER77> Well the IRS would have something to say about it for sure, i doubt github would hide the transactions from them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> cool feature but putting the burden of funding on individuals vs companies is supporting what I call the "open source gig economy" \- doesn't work well for Patreon and others - we need better ways to sustain individuals who choose not start their own company around open source projects or work full time at a company supporting open source

[https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the- open-...](https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source- gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/)

<comment><USER79> > doesn't work well for Patreon and others

What do you mean? What's wrong with Patreon?

<comment><USER78> "Take Patreon as an example, a popular funding platform for all sorts of things including open source projects that has been around since 2013 and has paid out $1 billion to creators since then. While that's an astonishing figure, Patreon isn't a sustainable business with its current private company model and level of VC funding of $105M:

"Under the company's current business model, 90 percent of funds are paid directly to content creators. Patreon takes 5 percent, and the remaining 5 percent covers transaction fees." Patreon CEO Jack Conte said in an interview with CNBC, that the platform will soon be facing the challenge of maintaining a profitable model as the company continues its growth.

In 2019, the company is also on track to pay out $500 million to content creators, 5% of that is $25 million and Patreon has ~300 employees, so probably not even covering their labor costs."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform- patre...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon- announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators- in-2019.html)

<comment><USER80> It's a bit mind blowing to think that Patreon is 300 employees. What are they all doing?

<comment><USER71> I wonder that too. Liberapay is just as capable open platform being run by like 10 people, right?

<comment><USER81> Like most VC-funded startups, they have a huge staff of people whose job it is to promote Patreon and manage larger accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'd be tempted to sign up and just donate $5k to myself to get the 100% match.... #freemoney

<comment><USER83> Well then you'd be stealing...that's a real downside to me.

<comment><USER82> No, it would be immoral, which is why I would not do it, but I'm also sure a lot of people won't have that problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> A one time contribution would be great - since I personally cannot afford sponsoring monthly.

<comment><USER85> I think that you can set it up, and cancel it after one month. It's just a simple click.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I'm excited about this but fearful that it will create unfair (I.e. monetary) incentive structures for FOSS maintenance.

<comment><USER87> Monetary == unfair? Why?

<comment><USER86> Imagine you're a solo maintainer of an NPM package, and you know that one of the FAANG companies uses your package. Normally, you respond to issues on weekends and cut new builds when reasonable bugs are reported.

Then, the FAANGco starts sponsoring you, a pittance for them but a solid amount for you. They put in issues and submit PRs that are intended for their own use case, or even worse, that constrain the utility of the package to that company's use case.

Other people put in issues, but let's be real, they're not sponsoring you.

A maintainer can reject an issue or PR from a sponsor to keep the package pure and generalized, but would risk getting that sponsorship revoked. And if you don't think coercion would be involved in that, think again.

It is FOSS so someone could fork it. But then, you've got a situation where potentially tens of thousands of projects and consumers would have to switch over.

All straw men for sure, but I am thinking that the ecosystem of FOSS might be shook by this, from both the maintainer and consumer side.

<comment><USER87> I don't know, I don't really see it as a problem. What is the difference between this and FANGco hiring the developer to specialize the product for them in-house, which is something that happens often?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Say a sponsored developer Bob has some software, that another person, Alice forks. The fork becomes wildly more successful than the original for some reason, and Bob loses many sponsors in the course of time. Would a situation like this force developers to use restrictive licenses? (I get that Bob can just integrate Alice's fork into his original - assume that it's too much work for Bob to do so)

<comment><USER15> Won't a restrictive license mean fewer users, and thus fewer sponsors?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well damn, this is sneaky and I love it. I say sneaky, because I was in a situation where I mentally debated Github vs Gitlab. This tips it a bit towards Githubs favor. Not that I'm even planning on being sponsored or w/e, but simply that I already view GH as a social network for a thing I love (code), but now it seems even more.. socially.. if that makes sense.

Purely my perception of course.

<comment><USER27> GitLab actually has an open source SCM that you can selfhost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Hi Devon, I think this is a great idea.

speaking as someone working for a small company with the ability to sponsor projects of interest, could you evaluate the possibility of assigning rewards to specific milestones? for example, if I'm using a particular FOSS library and see that the maintainer has set up certain functionality as a long-term milestone could I attach a sort of carrot to a particular milestone to provide incentive to continue development?

This would be in conjunction with standard sponsorship, of course. But, for some developers, it's easier to find the motivation to complete a task if there is a defined reward waiting at the end of it.

it doesn't even have to be new functionality; it could simply be implementing a testing protocol to meet internal corporate requirements, or reorganizing old code to fit new standards; stuff that's necessary but boring and shoved to the bottom of the pile for a hobby project. This might really open up the corporate pursestrings instead of relying on individual contributions.

</comment><comment> TBF-RnD Being a full time open source independent research in an extremely tight financial spot, due to my cursed idealism, what means of surival are there for someone who can't stop working on my obsession?

I am an honest to God searcher of the truth, so I'd hate to turn this into a commercial project. Also getting a job would be a highway to a psychiatric hospital due to being overworked. Done that multiple times and wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy,

Anybody have experience on how to make this lifestyle work, or do I have to give up on my dreams and get into to the line as the rest?

[http://tbf-rnd.life](http://tbf-rnd.life) [http://sigma.eruditenow.com](http://sigma.eruditenow.com)

* had I been the kind of person who have enemies

</comment><comment><USER90> If I click on any of the actual sponsor buttons it redirects to [https://github.com/users/$user/sponsorship](https://github.com/users/$user/sponsorship) and 404's. Happening for anybody else?

<comment><USER91> happens for me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> > To boost community funding, we'll match contributions up to $5,000 during a > developer's first year in GitHub Sponsors with the GitHub Sponsors Matching > Fund.

How will GitHub deal with bad actors who might create a project and donate $5,000 to himself to get free money?

</comment><comment><USER93> Could this end up in commodotizing software engineering so much that it will drive the prices of software engineering down even further? How long till we are like panhandlers on the street throwing code at people in exchange for lunch money?

</comment><comment><USER36> Would be 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.

</comment><comment><USER94> This is the best thing to have happened to open source since GitHub has launched. Thank you to whomever has internally pushed for it!

</comment><comment><USER95> It's an interesting idea but I wonder what will make this different than gittip from years ago, or gratipay, or Patreon, or just having a "donate" button in your README file.

I guess I'm just skeptical in that this will change anything for the developers who are trying to make some type of income for their contributions.

On a related note, DHH recorded a very nice keynote at Railsconf 2019 on expectations of payments in open source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBwWbFpkltg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBwWbFpkltg)

</comment><comment><USER96> Leave it to Microsoft to finally figure out a way to get people and more importantly businesses to fund OSS work.

<comment><USER97> * Getting linux on desktop. Check * Getting OSS contributors paid. Check

Unlike Google, it seems Microsoft (Satya) isn't just doing OSS for PR but he probably sincerely believes in it.

Thanks also to Hanselman who seemingly has been a major pro-OSS voice.

<comment><USER27> WSL is absolutely terrible and can't be taken seriously.

<comment><USER98> Maybe for your use case, but there are plenty of basic applications for which it works fine, if a little slow. The WSL2 implementation should make it fully competitive option for lightweight tasks like frontend web dev and introductory programming - if MS's figures on performance improvements are accurate.

WSL _replacing_ Linux in the near future is, as you say, not a serious concern. But it being a viable alternative for a portion of the people who would normally use desktop Linux is quite realistic, I think. What say?

<comment><USER27> When it is released it will likely be as buggy as WSL is today. WSL is over 20x slower due to Microsoft's crappy filesystem. They are still using a custom kernel even though it is a VM now. I don't have high hopes about their terminal either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Geez... it must be hard for other payment processors to compete with Github/MSFT's "give away free money" offering. :/ I guess all is fair in love & war (and Uber does the same, losing money to kill competition) but this sort of behaviour sure seems innovation-killing and massively entrenched-big-corp- player-favouring.

This seems to go beyond killing competitors by offering their product for free, because in this case they're actually paying users cash to use their platform.

</comment><comment><USER100> This is a game changer for people like me, who do a lot of open source work, but might not have the pockets to sustainably continue putting in so many hours each week (i.e. students).

</comment><comment><USER101> This is also about making developers behave.

If you want to get paid on GitHub you shouldn't commit anything controversial and you have to behave on the site. If they go full Twitch then they could take into consideration your actions outside the site. including posts on social media or at conferences.

So we would first see those wikileak dumps, code leaks and vulnerability repos being got rid of first, then we might see right wing bloggers who code being denied monetisation. Who wants to see Nazis get funded? Or even perhaps if your code still uses slave and master and you won't change then maybe repos can't be sponsored.

With monetization comes control. Opaque rules and decisions and no consistency. It won't come in the first year but it will come soon enough after developers are fully invested into using it for their livelihoods.

<comment><USER102> The reason Twitch does all that stuff is because they are beholden to advertisers and nobody wants to be advertising on "the site with all the white nationalists" or whatever, it isn't a good look. Github doesn't have that issue since they do not have a model based on advertising

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> This might be a deal-breaker not only from the developers' side but also from the business side. If the companies see that a project is well-funded, they can invest their time (maybe their money also?) more confidently. It might become a real marketplace at some point and let (some of the) open-source businesses to focus on their project rather than starting a company and dealing with boring business work.

</comment><comment><USER104> This is real nice to see. I Sponsor hzoo through patreon but may do it through GitHub sponsors. Babel is a great project.

What i'd really love to see is GitHub bounties though. Like you want a feature bad or a bug fixed because you depend on it. You can assign it some monetary value. GitHub is the escrow. When the bug/feature is done and verified by people who put the bounty, it gets paid out to the implementors.

</comment><comment><USER52> Joey Hess raises questions: "What I would ask my lawyers about the new Github TOS'

 _If I were looking over the TOS with my lawyers, I 'd ask these questions..._

 _4 License Grant to Us_

 _This seems to be saying that I 'm granting an additional license to my software to Github. Is that right or does "license grant" have some other legal meaning?_

 _If the Free Software license I 've already licensed my software under allows for everything in this "License Grant to Us", would that be sufficient, or would my software still be licenced under two different licences?_

 _There are violations of the GPL that can revoke someone 's access to software under that license. Suppose that Github took such an action with my software, and their GPL license was revoked. Would they still have a license to my software under this "License Grant to Us" or not?...._

[http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/what_I_would_ask_my_lawyers_abo...](http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/what_I_would_ask_my_lawyers_about_the_new_Github_TOS/)

</comment><comment><USER105> I get that some people are concerned about github strengthening its monopoly here, but that shouldn't be solved by preventing or opposing the improvement of the platform. There's a sense in which it's like opposing Tesla improving its autopilot tech because it further entrenches them as the leader in the electric car market - or whatever - you get the idea. Monopolies can lead to very bad outcomes for society, but we probably need to handle that by some means other than attacking improvements to the platform.

This comment of course assumes that you think that it is actually an improvement. It does seem like there is a risk of hurting the "spirit" of open source, but then you'd have to hold the position that things like librepay/opencollective/patreon are bad for open source, which at least makes the claim a little dubious. I don't have strong predictions here, but if I had to gamble I'd say that lowing the friction to rewarding content producers (of any sort) is going to be a good think more often than not.

</comment><comment><USER106> While seemingly good news and will definitely have positive side effects to open source projects, I cannot stop myself from questioning if this is just good old Microsoft using one of its edges over Gitlab (money) to come on top.

After all, this is the embrace, extend, and extinguish company.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to see a similar feature implemented by Gitlab, even without the matching donations.

<comment><USER107> > Anyhow, I'm looking forward to see a similar feature implemented by Gitlab, > even without the matching donations.

You can check out this issue [1]. Please upvote it if you want to see this implemented, or join the discussion if you have any additional ideas.

[1] - [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/43468](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43468)

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> The best part of open-source is that draws in people who are focused on long- term benefits instead of short-term profit. Contributing to open-source projects teaches you how to write better code, how to work well with other developers and how to communicate your ideas effectively. It also gives you a network of other super smart people who can open all sorts of doors for you once you earn their respect.

Money is a funny thing. Introducing money into something that you were previously doing out of passion completely changes the dynamic. Take sex for example.

I like that Github Sponsors seems to be focused on supporting the developer for their ongoing efforts instead of being too transactional. Other companies have tried incentivizing specific features or bug fixes but they tend to draw in mercenaries who do the bare minimum to get the reward. This seems like a much better way to go.

I'm impressed by the way Github are rolling this out. It will be interesting to watch how it changes the nature of open-source.

</comment><comment><USER109> this would a slam dunk if you could sponsor projects or organizations besides just developers. if that happened, this would destroy patreon and paypal in the donation space for OSS projects.

<comment><USER110> otoh, sponsoring developers avoids the friction between teams about how to share sponsorships etc. they should offer both though

<comment><USER27> No, it gives the owners of the team/org the ability to distribute funds as they wish. There should be no friction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> From the signup page :

> What are your preferred pronouns? (optional)

So this is actually happening ?

<comment><USER112> I am seeing this trend of asking or indicating one's preferred pronoun more and more.

I find asking people how they would like to be referred to as a really positive thing and I fail to see any downside for this trend.

And since this is optional, nobody is forced to answer the question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Great to see GitHub is finally introducing a direct way to support OSS developers.

Try IssueHunt ([https://issuehunt.io/](https://issuehunt.io/)) as well! A open-source bounty platform for open source. Great place for open source developers to earn extra cash!

</comment><comment><USER114> Wow! Long overdue. I'm not capable enough to contribute technically to the open source projects which I use. This will be a great way for me to make my contribution.

Also, I do believe this is a plus for open source projects that often find it tough to stay afloat because of financial constraints.

</comment><comment><USER115> @Github/Microsoft feature request:

It would be nice to see sponsorship or bounties for individual issues in Github.

</comment><comment><USER116> Sorry to bring my ethical and philosophical view on the subject but I don't agree with forcing a capitalist system to something that is essentially volunteer work.

Open source has worked fine being just volunteer for the past several decades. In fact I'd argue it's one of the only ecosystem that keeps on being awesome. I don't think adding money to the equation will change any of this. In fact it might risk making it worst.

<comment><USER61> I'd argue that money's been in OSS since its inception.

To try to put a number on it, here's a random study that 50% of oss is people at their paid job: [https://dirkriehle.com/2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work- in-...](https://dirkriehle.com/2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work-in-open- source/)

But anecdotally that number is consistent with my experience.

When we created the GNOME Foundation in 2000, it was in part to manage the commercial vendors and money involved (Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code, IBM, Sun Microsystems and VA Linux Systems, see the press release [https://www.gnome.org/press/2000/08/red-hat-joins- industry-v...](https://www.gnome.org/press/2000/08/red-hat-joins-industry- vendors-as-a-founding-member-of-the-gnome-foundation/)).

This was not at all unique to GNOME, same kinda stuff around all the major projects at that time.

One thing I think is new and constructive is more ways to pay maintainers without asking them to join a giant company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> I love this. It's actually huge, but I wonder why you have to apply for a waitlist in order to be able to get sponsored? Why wouldn't we be allowed to sponsor anyone? I suppose it has something to do to prevent money laundry?

<comment><USER118> I guess because it is still in limited beta. Pretty sure it's gonna open for everyone in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> I wonder if this will create pressure to consolidate projects - there might be a non-linearity in the perception of project value. Two tiny repos may seem worth X each, but combined they may seem large enough to generate > 2X.

</comment><comment><USER120> I very much doubt it will work..for the devs..Developers are a special category of people,who like to earn a lot at their day job,yet tirelessly praise open source and try their best not to pay for anything.The best example of this is vue.js,which is extremely popular and used by thousands of people.The creator and main contributor is accepting Patreon, corporate sponsorship and etc.Go on his Patreon account and see how much he's pulling in.If that's the money for one of the most popular projects in JS ecosystem, the rest of the guys will be making $100/month..

</comment><comment><USER121> I think this is a bad development. The allure of getting paid for something you do for free can be too great. This may lead to OSS devs, especially those who do the work for free now, expecting extrinsic reward for their work. Extrinsic reward for work that once provided intrinsic reward can lead to cessation of that work, if the external reward lessens or goes away. A new type of dev may emerge from this who won't have the same values as the ones who do it free of charge.

I can see this support feature changing things, but it won't in the way you suspect it will.

<comment><USER122> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Many projects that have had contributor sponsorship efforts in the past have had negative experiences with it, due to contributors showing up motivated by farming the payments with minimal investment.

In my experience sponsorship that isn't at a level that can sustain a developer at least at an ongoing significant part time level often ends up being toxic-- pulling in the worst outcomes from funding it (changing motivations to being dollar driven, bringing in low effort farming contributions) without bringing most of the positive outcomes.

I really hope that this is handled carefully.

</comment><comment><USER124> I'd still like a product for putting putting bounties on small individual scripts / functions / pieces of code.

Kind of a payment system on top of Stack Overflow or Github Gists; less-so a competitor to Upwork.

I don't want the overhead of "hiring a freelancer" to do the work. But I'd definitely pay a bounty if someone came in with the answer / script / extension / app that solved the problem.

previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554542)

</comment><comment><USER51> As I've read the comments here, I've realized that I really don't like the idea.

This puts: a) A lot of power into the control of Github b) changes the entire incentive model for FOSS development c) devalues the aspects of a "sharing economy" and "co-opetition" that FOSS has grown.

My question: Will a sponsored person be able to see who has donated to them? That should be kept anonymous. Otherwise people will be able to "buy" the feature they want over others. Community interests will be lost.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are quite a few OS projects saying that they will prioritize bugs that affect sponsor. And even here on HN it's not a rare comment 'If a company cares about it, they could pay somebody to fix the bug`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> It would be interesting to see if most of the people who are cautious/guarded/hostile about this are older people who've seen Microsoft work their "magic" before.

</comment><comment><USER126> It's interesting to see the gradual monetization of Open Source. 10 years ago this was just something you did for fun but with the proliferation of services charging for it, the landscape is shifting rapidly. Github are moving in some interesting directions and it'll be interesting to see if they can stay ahead of the competition with how trivial it is to migrate to a rival. I wouldn't bet on them personally but it'll be fun to watch either way!

<comment><USER61> As someone who was around 10 years ago I'd question that a little, there were lots of OSS companies then, and lots of people getting hired and paid to work on OSS too.

A difference today is trying to move some of the money down to smaller-scale projects that have little chance of becoming a standalone company, and also more options to get paid without having to go work at a big company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> They should also launch one-off contributions for people who want particular features . Still a great move , and loooong overdue, i hope it succeeds massively.

</comment><comment><USER127> It looks like you sponsor an individual and not necessarily an entire project. I get that it is wayyy less complex to build that MVP, but I wonder how project dynamics will change if you have a team of, say, 3 core contributors that are in actuality dividing work fairly evenly but one contributor is for some reason getting 50%, 100%, 200%+ more in contributions than another contributor.

</comment><comment><USER128> $1 is the lowest amount I have seen by clicking the big blue "Start Sponsoring" button and then making it to [https://github.com/users/dominikh/sponsorship](https://github.com/users/dominikh/sponsorship).

So it appears users can choose their own levels, I do wonder what the minimum is.

</comment><comment><USER129> Very cool, this feature was much needed. It would be nice to be able to sponsor specific issues that pay bounties once the pull request is merged and issue is closed instead of only a specific developer. Would also be cool if the developer can specify a preferred payment option other than fiat such as open to accepting cryptocurrencies

</comment><comment><USER130> One of the people promoted on this page is not like the others. Two projects, essentially zero work done (one is literally a single line in a readme file, the other a basic html page with a list of words), and yet already asking people for $100 per month to support her. Everyone else put in the work first. smh

</comment><comment><USER131> Here's when MSFT gets to throw their weight around. GitLab simply could not afford to match this program, and I doubt Atlassian could as well. In a year Microsoft will have won so much share of OSS that this will pay for itself many, many times over in the years to come.

</comment><comment><USER132> I've been trying to find out which countries are eligible to receive payments, but I haven't found any information. Most likely I expect this to be like Kickstarter where basically only developers living in certain developed countries can participate.

</comment><comment><USER133> Interesting alternative to...

Anyone remember how cryptocurrency was going to be the way to pay for open source projects? By which I mean buying the kickstarter-like tokens of the project and trading them on markets, speculating until it launches?

</comment><comment><USER134> GitHub is really on a roll lately. Another long awaited feature, if a little late.

</comment><comment><USER135> Contributing to open source software has never been about money. I would be very interested in reading the economical analysis of the impact of this move by GitHub.

How will the money incentive align with the existing incentives.

</comment><comment><USER136> Is this the embrace, extend, extinguish method at work? Introducing a feature that would likely not translate to significant income boost, only to widen the appeal of the free tier? There are plenty of similar sites like others have already mentioned, surely GitHub could've just helped them integrate better instead?

Insteaf of developing this feature, maybe GitHub could've spent more time enhancing their issue tracker to be able to fit more complex workflows if necessary? There's always opportunity cost that should be considered when working on new features for such a large userbase.

</comment><comment><USER137> Finally, and they also allow to specify additional external funding platforms via .yaml file (no more wondering if a patreon account is legit or not).

</comment><comment><USER138> Damn! This is surely an amazing QoL feature. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER139> Can i just give myself $5K and get the matched $5K?

</comment><comment><USER140> Anyone has any idea how thiswill work for EU residents? Will we be paying the outrageous US 30% tax and local taxes too?

<comment><USER141> Double taxation prevention treaties will do their jobs. US should have one with EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> That's how Microsoft plans to monetize GitHub? Not bad....

</comment><comment><USER143> For a decentralized alternative, see Gitcoin, currently used especially by projects in and around the Ethereum space: [https://gitcoin.co/](https://gitcoin.co/)

</comment><comment><USER144> Is this GitHub's version of a GitCoin competitor?

</comment><comment><USER145> Microsoft is gonna centralize the sh*t out of the eco-system. Let's see how it goes this time.

<comment><USER146> To be fair, it's us who created this problem, not Microsoft. GitHub was too central long before Microsoft acquired it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> Your move GitLab!

<comment><USER27> GitLab actually has an open source SCM platform and developers have always been free to put links to their favorite sponsorship platforms in the readme, wiki or on their GitLab Pages site built using their favorite generators. Your move GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER147> Not so fast. People have said this about gittip (now Gratipay), Patreon, Twitch, and now YouTube and Facebook. All of these have been mixed blessings. Here's an article about how Patreon doesn't work out even when everything goes smoothly: [https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on- pa...](https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on- patreon?zd=1&zi=e4lqrxpb)

"After launching my Patreon, I struggled for months to find work. Patreon filled my downtime, and became a full time job itself. I'd spend hours combing through photos, looking back on notes I'd taken on the road, researching where I'd been. I'd post on Twitter and Instagram with teasers, free stories, anything to attract my followers to my Patreon page. I made friends on the site, I shared their projects on my own social media, and kept up with all my subscribers' projects. It was a lot of work for little pay, but I was determined. A year later my monthly earnings on Patreon have grown from $120 to $163."

$163 a month in extra income? Cool, right? Not when you spend 5+ hours a week thinking about it.

If GitHub gets a lot of participation it will be unsustainable to only take a little on top of a credit card processing fee, and the fee it will be increased to be more like Facebook's 30% cut. There are plenty of articles on here about the costs and difficulties of running a payment platform.

<comment><USER148> Who's making a living on Patreon? The same people who make a living on Kickstarter, or via "gift" transfers through PayPal (before that was clamped down upon): people who can pull in whale patrons/backers.

Certain verticals have more whale patrons than others. The common story is that if you're an artist and you want to go where the whale patrons are, that's—for some reason—art targeting the furry subculture. That's as true for patronage as it is for doing commissions.

It's unlikely that you can just _do what you're doing_ and make a living off of Patreon; but if you want to _shape_ what you're doing based off of what will _attract_ wealthy patrons, it's pretty easy to find niches where your skills will translate to dollars.

<comment><USER54> I patronize several people who literally make their living on Patreon (and YouTube), and it doesn't look like "whales" are necessary. Take LGR: currently making just over $6k/mo on pateron which is $72k/year, or $68k with an assumed 5% cut for Patreon. Depending on where you live that's already a reasonable income for a single person household, and he presumably makes some YouTube money on top of that. That money comes from 2808 patrons, making an average contribution of just over $2 each.

You're unlikely to make a _fortune_ on Pateron without "whales" but a living can be had if you can build a decent audience. Though, that isn't out of line with the "It's unlikely that you can just do what you're doing and make a living off of Patreon" sentiment at all, as LGR puts a lot of work into his videos.

<comment><USER148> If you already have a million YouTube subscribers (LGR apparently has 1.3MM), you can certainly translate that fanbase into patronage, vis. "wealth by a thousand cuts." There's existing, pent-up demand (guilt?) to give you money for all the stuff you've already provided for free.

But if you're that much of an "influencer" already, with that large an audience, then you're likely already making money off of ads run on your content, and you're likely already being offered plenty of sponsorship opportunities that you could take advantage of in place of—or alongside—pursuing patronage. (At a certain size, you even get offered to just have your name stuck on products as a brand. I know there are a good number of beauty and fashion "influencers" who end up—with no more effort than signing a contract—getting beauty/fashion products co-branded, and make royalties off of that.)

I'm more talking about what you have to do to make money off of Patreon if you aren't starting with a built-in audience of potential subscribers. If you want to _build_ that audience, directly _through_ Patreon (i.e. via word-of-mouth of your subscribers, with no public presence), then you need whales, and you need a niche. It becomes something very similar to making money off of commissions, except that you can make more than a 100% return on any particular commission, relative to what you'd have made if you just did it as a work-to-order for the person who suggested it.

<comment><USER149> I'm a YouTuber in the IT field. Nearly 20 million views in all, 40,000 students on Udemy and 122,000 subscribers. Anecdotal, but I don't mess with Patreon, it doesn't work for me.

You are right about the sponsorships, ad's, affiliates and merch deals being where the money is for YouTubers.

<comment><USER150> Curious what is your yearly income?

<comment><USER149> I honestly can't release that. I have a full time software engineering job. I do pretty well for a 37 year old college dropout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER151> For now, it seems that the Microsoft acquisition has gone well, right?

<comment><USER152> Yes, free private repos alone was amazing and now this? With 2x matching (up to 5k) from MS themselves - this is amazing.

If only they would release something similar to GitLab Runner a.k.a. GitHub Runner it would be golden!

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. Running your own gitlab runner is the feature of GitLab I would want the most on GitHub

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> Does this service work also per project or per user only?

<comment><USER85> User only. Only a user has the payment setting in its configuration. But you can set it up via a custom tier, with a special amount per month, and divide it then amongst your org. Everything is public and transparent, so you got oversight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> New mode of production please lord anything but capitalism</comment>


The ugly, gory, bloody secret life of National Hockey League dentists - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/27851359/the-ugly-gory-bloody-secret-life-nhl-dentists <comment><USER2> Back in colonial times, a common part of two people getting married was the bride's father paying to have all her teeth pulled and replaced with a set of false teeth -- because the state of dental hygiene was so bad then that it was just assumed that she would lose all her teeth eventually, and that way the husband wouldn't have to bear the expense of dealing with it. It was a kind of dowry.

I look at those photos and wonder if something similar wouldn't be a nice benefit for newly minted pro hockey players...

</comment><comment><USER3> God this article is dreadful--the content, not the writing. I couldn't finish it because it was so gruesome!</comment>


Long-living trees account for bulk of biomass in some tropical rainforests - <AUTHOR> https://nuadox.com/post/615038337350303744/long-living-trees-tropical-forests <comment><USER2> Blogspam of / plagiarized from

[https://cns.utexas.edu/news/long-living-tropical-trees- play-...](https://cns.utexas.edu/news/long-living-tropical-trees-play- outsized-role-in-carbon-storage)

Actual author (uncredited) is Marc Airhart.</comment>


Ask HN: What can programmers do to help with the coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> Apart from helping getting groceries or medicine for the quarantined, what can programmers do to help in this health crisis? How can we use our skills to aid the effort to prevent spreading of the virus, effort to help the affected or the effort to put the economy back on track when we're through this? <comment><USER2> Realize this is a non-technical problem that won't be solved by an App with location tracking and ad-based monetization model...

Follow the CDC advice, wash your hands, social distancing, encouraging smart policies at your company. Avoid contact with the elderly and stop thinking you're so smart surely YOU'RE the one who's going to solve this problem (with your magical skillset to build CRUD apps).

<comment><USER3> This is the kind of argument I see from people who say things like "busses, you invented busses".

Use tech skills to help people setup video conferencing so that more people can be less emotionally isolated, while still be physically isolated.

Create a crud app where you can "trade grandmas" \- I help bring groceries to your relatives nearby me, you help to bring some to my relatives near you.

This situation is serious we can no longer afford nihilists.

<comment><USER4> > Create a crud app where you can "trade grandmas" \- I help bring groceries > to your relatives nearby me, you help to bring some to my relatives near > you.

There could be unforeseen consequences of this, such as criminals using it to find vulnerable people to rob. If you were a grandmother living alone, would you be comfortable opening your door to a random person who found you on a web site? Or would you rather trust a neighbor who lived in your own apartment building?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- Increased demand for food-at-home combined with reduced traffic on the roads => sign up as a bicycle courier?

\- Social isolation of the elderly => provide TV/media installation help?

\- More spare time => relax, do a bit more reading, look at some software projects you use and try to fix a random bug or two?

\- Risks to public health and healthcare => become well-informed, be on the look out for misinformation online, and try to stay optimistic and good- natured to help everyone through it

Although there's always a big temptation to hack on something huge and world- changing (a new social platform, building healthcare equipment) -- it could be more realistic to step back and do some smaller things in your community, especially if they already know what help they need and are asking for assistance.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're eating out or getting food delivered by a courier, tip extra if you can.

Food service workers are exposed to many more people and typically lack the salary/benefits programmers get. If they get infected by the virus or laid off from economic slowdown the extra money will help them the most.

</comment><comment><USER7> Using tech skills specifically? Not a lot comes to mind right this minute. Maybe if you're a licensed ham radio operator, join ARES[1] or RACES[2].

Outside of that, one way to help very directly, depending on where you live, is to join a volunteer fire department / EMS squad. But not all areas are covered by volunteer departments, and there's a lot of latency in terms of training time to do a lot of things (eg, you can't just become an EMT overnight). But there are always people needed around the station to do maintenance on equipment, clean, help with paperwork, etc.

[1]: [http://www.arrl.org/ares](http://www.arrl.org/ares)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Amateur_Civil_Emergency_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Amateur_Civil_Emergency_Service)

</comment><comment><USER8> With so many people in lockdown, the extent to which we depend on the internet has probably never been so large, so the last thing we need is a global internet outage. A wormable vulnerability spreading through operating systems, web servers or web frameworks (to name a few) could put a serious strain on society, to put it lightly. Also less complex attacks like denial-of-service vectors in major internet software could have debilitating effects right now if targeted against critical institutions like hospitals.

Everyone who can write code can read code and find bugs. The projects that are in scope for the Google patch rewards program are a good starting point: [https://www.google.com/about/appsecurity/patch- rewards/](https://www.google.com/about/appsecurity/patch-rewards/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It has also been suggested to me that some elderly/disadvantaged folks don't have devices/Internet connectivity/tech savvy in order to be able to do remote anything. (some grandmas still attend religious services or community groups in person because they can't or don't know how to do it online)

Ideally their kids or caregivers could help with this, but not everyone is tech savvy. There could be an opportunity here -- matching tech-savvy folks with these folks. The trick is how to do it without personal contact.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I'm fully agree with the "this isn't a tech problem" comment, there are indirect ways that people can help.

I think the biggest problems many are going to face aren't related to the illness itself, but the effects of self-isolation and the outcomes, such as:

* Dealing with your loved ones getting sick or dying - online services to talk to others that are suffering or going through tough times would be good.

* Boredom - putting that "empty time" to good use by building your skills.

* Loneliness - providing a platform to utilise existing or new social networks to make people feel that they aren't alone.

* Volunteering - one of the biggest hit areas is going to be in elderly care, and to be honest it wouldn't be unsurprising to see care homes shut down and relatives being left to look after their relatives. Anything that can help people in these situations would be welcomed, whether it's supplies, stuff for people to do, etc.

* Aiding remote workers. For many, remote working is an alien concept, so if you've got experience in working from home in an optimal way create an in-depth guide to help others.

* Small gym relief funds - many gyms or martial arts schools have shut down, and many practitioners rely on teaching as their sole form of income. Building a relief fund for those small businesses would help tremendously, on the basis that it can be "paid forward" in the future through private lessons, online instructionals, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe not programmers alone, but programmers working together with business/finance/economics folks:

 _How do we help small businesses weather this?_

Gift cards have been suggested, and they work for some scalable businesses, but not non-scalable ones with finite capacity. Barbershops for instance have a finite number of appointment slots, so when people redeem their gift cards in the future, they lose future income.

The question is: how do we creatively come up with a form of an business/economic model that will help consumers help small businesses stay afloat and sustainably ramp back up in the future?

</comment><comment><USER11> In a week or two. There will be a great need for volunteers when medical personal have fallen ill themselves or are breaking down. Tolls to help organize those volunteers could help put a lot.

</comment><comment> marcus-grant Mutual aid is going to be crucial especially here in America where the government has so fundamentally f __*ed up. I 'm currently thinking of ways to make tools to help organize and facilitate the various kinds of aid we're going to need, I'd love to hear people's suggestions

</comment><comment><USER12> We need an app that tracks any nearby (few meters) MAC address it encounters and stores it on device. When someone finds out they are infected , they post their address to a database online. People can check in every day to see if they have been nearby the phone of an infected person

<comment><USER9> This does not work anymore due to MAC randomization by most newer devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am with other people that your magical skills aren't going to wish the virus away. Listen to medical professionals and practice social distancing. If you want a related project, maybe crate a robot that allows you to further practice social distancing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Create fun things for people to do online from home so that they stay home and reduce spread

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been thinking of volunteering my consulting services at a local lab or hospital. But I'm not sure how to go about it even. Once Monday rolls in I'll try to make some calls.

(If anyone knows a place in need, feel free to email me. Brussels, BE)

</comment><comment><USER16> i just posted [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585852) with app idea we hackers could get live asap

</comment><comment><USER17> Bild software that helps (especially elderly) people avoid loneliness.

<comment><USER18> Second Life, Chat Roulette?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Clean their keyboards with alcohol-based wipes!

<comment><USER20> i would heavily recommend a soap-based solution:

"why does soap work so well on sars cov-2?"

* [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236549305189597189.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236549305189597189.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Keep a distance of 5 parsecs minimum from your favourite holy cows in computer science definitely would help. I understand that is difficult not jumping over they at sight, but some are fragile (some are even valuable).

On the other hand, maybe your old computer science teacher would appreciate a few kind words and some remote conversation online.

> "Due to Covid-19, the talks in Spain will not occur on the dates previously > planned"

Rresspuista correcta, Señor Bond...

</comment><comment><USER22> Please take the time to reach out to local CS clubs and provide mentoring.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nothing - tell people close to you to wash your hands, and chill at home as much as possible. You can't nodejs your way out of this.

</comment><comment><USER24> Design 3D printed respirators?</comment>