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!
> 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.
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.
>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...
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.
a cut from the payment in order to pay for their services = additional fee on top on payment processing fee to cover operational expenses, employee salaries etc.
Credit Processing fees pay the bank/processing fees charged to Github. The Patreon “cut” pays processing fees but it also pays for Patreon’s electric bill, employee salaries, rent, profit.
Github already has the bills paid by paid GitHub accounts. So adding this is simply another feature and the only new real cost to this feature is credit card processing fees. If there are other costs (extra employees, etc.,) that could be counted as a marketing expense.
If they only charge the card processing fee I'd say that's still pretty darn good.
Although I wouldn't necessarily be mad if they charged more than that. The incentives seem to align pretty well. GH makes money when people support OSS.
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/