On one hand, it sounds great to receive donation for working on projects, and people can dream of having enough donation to quit their day jobs. On the other hand, even the people maintaining pretty popular projects do not receive much money. For example, the Babel maintainer is currently receiving $2,580 per month via Patreon, but I'm pretty sure one can easily make more money in a full time tech job.
Do you think Patreon or similar services (GitHub Sponsor) is helpful to you? Would receiving money contribution motivate you working on projects?
P.S. Feel free to put your donation links in the discussion ;)
Top comments (8)
Interesting question!
In my opinion, if you start accepting money for a side project it suddenly becomes and side job :(
That's a good point. There has been a trend of providing patron-only rewards, making it even more like a job than receiving donation.
I'm not sure if it is worth doing if you need to spend additional time to provide the benefits you have promised your Patrons. Particularly if it is time spent with individuals on Slack calls or one on one mentoring.
I also feel like there (sometimes) comes a sense of entitlement. My concern with the GitHub model is that OSS contributors will be bullied into rushing through features because a donor paid their $10.
A tricky environment for sure. :)
I wish, but underage :(
Oh, I didn't know there is an age restriction for Patreon. I wonder if it's due to some legal reason or not. It says you can workaround with a written permission from a parent or guardian though.
I'm going to wait it out a couple of weeks now, nearly there. The problem wasn't inherently the age restriction on just Patreon but also wherever the $$ would have been withdrawn (if any)
I think is not wrong to ask for money, if the tool is useful, online payments are a commodity now
Indeed OSS devs may still feel the pressure even if the supporters do not have such an intention. Would anonymous donation be a solution to this problem?