Patreon is starting to take off for open source, too, which is great. I set one up and it offsets a good deal of the infrastructure costs for my projects. Many FOSS Patreons have pretty low figures - please go looking for them and support your tools!
Let us be honest though, github is bad enough that so many free software projects are using a proprietary web service for project organization. Having the primary source of proceeds to keep the project afloat also on a proprietary web service is really, really dangerous.
It's a difficult problem for sure. I actually built an open source donation platform before I did a Patreon page [0]. Over the past 2 years, I've earned $1500 on it. I've always had an average of maybe $20-30/mo in recurring donations, plus anywhere from $0-$300/mo in one-offs (usually on the left of that scale). Until last month, I had been making $30/mo in recurring donations on the FOSS platform, and now I'm up to $50/mo.
I started the Patreon page two months ago and it was pushing $100/mo within a week, and without any noticable disruption to my FOSS donations - it effectively increases my donation flow 3x-4x. Patreon is a platform people already trust with their CC# and people are already supporting other creators on. Reducing the barrier of entry can get you way more money, which makes a big difference. Patreon also makes it clear that your support is meant to be recurring, which has a big impact on the long term viability of the income stream.
I still accept donations through the FOSS portal, and point people there first if they ask me directly how to donate. But it doesn't make sense to turn down Patreon, either.
Aside: I'm working on an open source git platform too, I feel you wrt GitHub.
I can echo this, my Patreon isn't for software, but I get more per month on Patreon than I was getting per year through donations with basically the same level of marketing.
I'm thinking of getting a team of friends to make a Patreon platform but tailor made for software devs/code projects/open source projects rather than creative content. As someone that's on hacker news and has a patreon but isn't for software, do you have any suggestions for someone like me that wanted to develop a patreon focused on software?
Me! It's an idea I've been thinking a lot lately. I have some ideas I would love to discuss if there are more people interestes in doing this.We can get in touch if you want.
Ya the idea itself would be so neat. In fact, a super meta way to do it is to have the campaign to build the platform be the first campaign on the MVP version of the platform itself! What better way to demonstrate your software patronage platform by using it to build said software patronage platform. I truly think a dedicated patreon for coders could really change the entire VC hypergrowth stress cycle that is Silicon Valley and instead usher in a new era.
Absolutely.
I thought about creating something similar to humble bundle, where you can pay as much as you want distributed as you want. Or creating a git tracker, a tool that tells you at the end of the month which packages and repos have you used /cloned more so it can distribute your monthly donation budget accordingly. The problem with this approach is that you are not giving any chance to all those people who are developing stuff on their own and you don't even know they exist (this happens constantly if you are using a linux distro).
I have many ideas I would be very happy to share. I'm on vacation right now, but I will write you back if you send me an email to my personal email. Check my HN personal description to get my email addresss.
Ya, that's not a bad way to execute on the idea, however it does not perform one of Patreon's chief functions that make it so successful: discovery of projects on one, unified platform. Essentially the main setup that Patreon has over all the "tip jar" or decentralized methods that have been tried but never reached critical mass is that the entire patronage ecosystem has a home on the web rather than simply living inside everyone's browser extension or something. That's why a dedicated site for software patronage could really take off because so many open source projects and software ideas are floating around with really just donations or VCs as the only funding mechanism in the valley.
A) Given the community supporting you as patrons, fully free/libre/open productions are the only ones that really deserve support. What justice is there for creators to retain All-Rights-Reserved monopoly when they are already getting paid up front? The works ought to all be free/libre/open.
B) Patreon itself ought to be fully free/libre/open and run democratically as a cooperative (too late now, VC business model etc)
Yes, every additional $ to FLO projects is a good thing. I don't think Patreon as a middle-man capturing $'s that would go to the projects anyway is good though. Hard to know what's the case often. The $'s are more a result of the project making a concerted effort to fundraise and would likely happen with the same concerted effort whether they use Patreon or another payment method.
Do you mean coders on patreon itself? Any links to coder patreons I can look at? Or do you mean a new startup that's patreon for open source/coders? It would be really interesting to build a patreon platform tailor made for coders if the market for it is not already taken by patreon.
I just opened it a couple of days ago, still have to polish the story and probably be more active on social media (I don't have Twitter, etc... I really despise Twitter but I kind of feel I am missing huge opportunities to get visibility...)
Oh very cool. That's actually really legit and some of them are great projects/talented people. Patreon is definitely not for entertainment or the arts itself, but it does sort of have that vibe and the software's intuitive usage is built around content patronage instead of software patronage (understandably so). I wonder if patreon model can be disrupted for coding/software projects or if it's already too big and enough coders are happy with the current way it is.
