GitHub Launches New Sponsors-Only Repositories

"A few years ago, GitHub introduced sponsorships that allowed anybody to make direct financial contributions to open source developers," TechCrunch reported this week, adding that Microsoft-owned GitHub is now "taking this concept a bit further by launching sponsor-only repositories, that is, private repositories that only sponsors will get access to." GitHub says the idea here is to give funders early access to projects as they are being built, for example, or access to what the company calls "sponsorware," that is access to projects just for sponsors. The company notes that developers can also use these repositories to host discussions with sponsors. And to give developers some flexibility here, they can attach specific repositories to different sponsorship tiers... The company is also adding a new call to action to sponsor-enabled repositories to give more visibility to the program.
"In effect, the new feature formalizes something that many developers were already enabling themselves manually," reports VentureBeat, "but GitHub now takes care of all the heavy lifting such as sending invites..." The launch comes at a time when industry and government are looking for new ways to support and secure the software supply chain. The recently discovered Log4j vulnerability resurfaced age-old questions around the security of open source software, particularly software that isn't backed by full-time developer teams. For example, one of Log4j's core maintainers has a full-time job elsewhere as a software architect, and only works on "Log4j and other open source projects" in his spare time.

With Sponsors-only repositories, developers will not only be able to solicit donations, but also better engage with backers — corporate or otherwise — at a deeper and more personalized level... Elsewhere, GitHub also now allows developers to attach metadata to their sponsor page URLs, which may help them track how new sponsors arrived on the scene — for example, they can see whether a tweet they sent out resulted in any direct sponsor signups.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[waspleg]

At least it's optional

For now. Without looking, how much does M$ get from each "sponsorship"? 30%?

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[shanen]

Mod parent Funny and FP scary, but true.

My position remains that FOSS needs a viable financial model. I'm quite sure this is not it, but it isn't just the embrace, extend, and extinguish thing. It isn't even the fundamental conflict of interests thing. It might be the reverse Midas touch of Microsoft's lawyers, but I'm not sure about that. So I'm just agreeing with the Subject?

On second thought, make that "FOSS needed a viable financial model." Lots of stuff I'm not sure about, but I'm increasingly sure it'

Re:So nothing to do with FOSS

[dontbemad]

Is this a joke? Are you so blind to the realities of OSS that you really think "big businesses" are the ones who stand to benefit here? What makes you think that developers won't use this as a means to support their independent project while continuing to provide the end result (the compiled binaries) to users for free? Developers have long-since been able to sell closed-source software, and many include a copy of the source code with their purchase. This gives OSS maintainers a middle-ground, being able to still give away software while generating some degree of income if more advanced users want to go a step further and fork the code, contribute fixes, analyze it, etc. Seriously, is it possible for Microsoft to do anything without you people immediately clinging to the three E's of fear, unrest, and doubt? The "cloud computing" branch of the company (that controls GitHub) already leverages tons of FOSS, while contributing a giant amount themselves. Their cashcow is service delivery, not proprietary software. This is a great option on the long road to solving OSS funding, and complaining about it doesn't change that fact.

Re:

[evil_aaronm]

If you act in a predatory manner, especially for so long, the stench kind of follows you. Because of this, it's reasonable to be skeptical of MS from the outset, until they prove otherwise. Else, we're just a bunch of Charlie Browns letting Lucy pull the football from us repeatedly.

MS may turn out to be completely innocent, here. You can't hold it against others for wanting proof, first.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[Catvid-22]

This reduces the chances for random security audits from ethical hackers or advanced computing technology students. If you force all advanced users to be paid users then what you get are essentially business users whose goal is optimized or "feature-full" code rather than security. So for certain business-oriented software this might work. But for the hobbyist or software hacker, not much.

Re:

[nasch]

the three E's of fear, unrest, and doubt?

Three E's?

Re:

[pete6677]

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

That's the entire reason why Microsoft bought Github in the first place. Gain control over all of open source and then gradually close it.

Re:

[eneville]

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

That's the entire reason why Microsoft bought Github in the first place. Gain control over all of open source and then gradually close it.

You have a scary point.

Re:

[spanommers]

Free software is usually understood to mean "free as in speech" and not "free as in beer." Most free software doesn't cost anything, but that doesn't need to be the case. For example, the very first release of BSD [gunkies.org] cost $400 to acquire. However because of its famously permissive license, once one person paid (usually institutions like universities) they could redistribute it free of cost.

That codebase went on to become the underpinning of the modern network stack and the rest is history!

Re:

[Aighearach]

Shareware 2.0!

I'm ready for some bootleg floppy disks.

Re:

[Mr0bvious]

It's the Only Fans of the software industry.

Trust me, you should join - that way you can get some of the good stuff.

30% comission?

[bumblebees]

So will there be a 30% comission? Or perhaps they are reasonable and only charge a smal 27% comission?

Re:

[i.r.id10t]

I was wondering the same thing, since in order for GitHub to know that FooInc is sponsoring the LibBar project they'd have to have some method of knowing about payment, etc. so of course they have to handle that at the low low price of only 25% (see, so much better than apple...)

On the other hand, I can see where just having a private project/repo and sending invites manually like devs have been doing (I assume...) but having a toggle option to "badge as sponsor" or even "badge as (gold|silver|bronze|tin) l

Re:

[timeOday]

That's a good point that ought to have been in the article.

Here is the page for their Sponsors [github.com] program, so, assuming it's the same for the new "Sponsors Only" program:

GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from user accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization. The 10% fee for sponsorships from organizations is waived during the beta. For more information, see "About billing for GitHub Sponsors."

So it sounds like the business they want to get

Fucking Microsoft

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Trying to embrace, extend, extinguish FOSS with pseudo-OSS commercial crap. Not unexpected, but sad nonetheless.

Re:

[Aighearach]

You do know that github is just a centralized source code repository, right?

Re:

[edis]

Not anymore.

Scorpion meet frog

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Well, it looks like it's finally time to switch from Microsoft pretend open software community to a proper FOSS one then. We all knew it was only a matter of time, right?

Re:

[Aighearach]

People who felt that way probably never used github in the first place.

Most users aren't contributors

[Cbs228]

I don't see how this funding model is at all sound. Most projects don't have a very high contributor : user ratio. This is especially true for many of the little utilities that are often very deep in the dependency tree. Do you use the tzdata timezone file? Probably. Have you ever even looked at the timezone file? Less likely. Have you ever needed to engage with the maintainers of tzdata? Unlikely. The maintainer caused a big stir [slashdot.org] when he retired, but fortunately he did so in a controlled manner with a tran

Re:

[Aighearach]

It doesn't have to be a good idea for all projects to be successful, it only has to be a good fit for some projects.

Probably projects that are BSD licensed won't use it. But perhaps some will, and those users will get a version with a Supporter icon instead of the regular icon.

This is shareware, with Microsoft handling the payments. That might actually turn out to be a market with significant latent demand.

This is not only per project, but also per developer.

Simply putting a wall around your garden of contributors doesn't encourage users to become contributors.

Projects don't have users, and no developers. Pro

Re:

[Cbs228]

This is shareware, with Microsoft handling the payments. That might actually turn out to be a market with significant latent demand.

I wouldn't call the demand latent. "App stores" already distribute a good volume of closed-source shareware apps to end users, and they make a ton of money doing it. The big difference is that they're distributing complete products: a text editor, an email client, a game, etc. These things are ready to use and (should) work out-of-the-box.

On the other hand, many of the repositories on Github are for parts of things: a character set converter, a domain validator, a linear algebra library, etc. If I am a soft

Re:

[tlhIngan]

This model is already being used for some projects though. They aren't critical major software projects, but often fun little ones.

For example, more than a few MiSTer cores are being developed this way - the developers of a few of them have created Patreons that subscribers can get access to the pre-release versions to play with while the core is developed. I do believe this is happening for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn cores.

In the end, once the core is developed, then it will be fully open-sourced, but

Saw it before somewhere

[zdzichu]

Will it be called GitHub OnlyFans?

Screw up a working service?

[bradley13]

You have a service that works, you *could* just leave it alone. But no - we must innovate. We must add new cruft that no one wants.

It's like the disease of "growth" for companies. Do you know which companies pay the best dividends on the stock market? It's not the ones growing - their share price is driven by speculation, by people's desire to get rich quick.

No,the best dividends come from companies that are stable, earning goid money from a good service. It might be your local garbage collector, just c

Microsoft open source ©

[takionya]

Microsoft open source ©