This really seems like a rich-getting-richer sort of deal.<p>It recommends Sindre Sorhus, who already gets over $10K/month via Github Sponsors [0].<p>If you're interested in making this sort of funding viable, it would be better to give your money to someone else, maybe to allow them to do it full-time or part-time?<p>Github itself also likes recommending already popular people.<p>[0]: <a href="https://sindresorhus.com/thanks" rel="nofollow">https://sindresorhus.com/thanks</a>
I would like to nominate Kovid Goyal, the author of Calibre[1] and Kitty[2], to this list. I don't know if he accepts sponsorship (and/or donations) - I've not seen anything of that sort on his websites - but I'll be eternally grateful for the wonderful stuff he's created!<p>1. <a href="https://calibre-ebook.com/" rel="nofollow">https://calibre-ebook.com/</a><p>2. <a href="https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/" rel="nofollow">https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/</a><p>Edit: formatting
GitHub Sponsors is great but there is still not enough people and companies willing to spend money to support free and open projects.<p>It's a lot easier to get them to give you free services worth thousands of dollars than donate 20$ per month.<p>Another problem is that the people building these projects are often developers who focus on the technology and completely ignore the marketing side of things. Or simply have no idea how to do marketing. Which makes it finding sponsors almost impossible.<p>Our project is a good example of that, I've been trying to fix the marketing issue for years and I'm still struggling <a href="https://github.com/jsDelivr" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jsDelivr</a><p>If anyone has any ideas how to make it more attractive to companies to support us please let me know, I would really appreciate it.
I personally sponsor:<p>Hector Martin: <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/marcan" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sponsors/marcan</a> Apple M1 silicon RE & Linux port<p>Ryan C. Gordon: <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/icculus" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sponsors/icculus</a> SDL lib maintainer<p>They make awesome work and look like decent human beings.
I would like to nominate XhmikosR[0], maintainer of Bootstrap. At the time of this writing he has 4 sponsors.<p>We were co-maintainers of BootstrapCDN and even though we recently archived & split our Open Collective earnings, I know he barely gets by.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/XhmikosR" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sponsors/XhmikosR</a>
Personally, I would much prefer we move over to source-available options that would allow people to charge commerical companies generating x amount of money a fee while providing free of charge for everyone else.<p>The whole idea that I as a private person need to sponsor someone else to do open source work so I can use their code at my paid job to do something for my for-profit employer seems outragous to me and a sign that out ecosystem is corrupt. Companies get rich while we pay out.
I'd like to throw in PhotoPrism[1], a web-based photo management tool. It's already moving forward steadily, having recently added a first version of facial recognition. The author wants to make it his full time job, but isn't quite there yet funding-wise.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism</a>
I tried getting donations on my GitHub repos (this was before Sponsors was announced). I got just one sponsor for about $1/month, which got cancelled after some months due to payment gateway changes. In hindsight, I didn't do a good job of asking for donation and my repos were on programming tutorials rather than open source software.<p>This pushed me towards adapting my tutorials to ebooks and self publishing. I promoted the books as pay-what-you-want for a few days after completing each book. This method of donation worked much better for me [0]<p>I feel free software could also adapt similar approach during installation/download in addition to setting up Sponsors.<p>[0] <a href="https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/" rel="nofollow">https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/</a>
Recently wanted to back up my CD collection and came upon Aaru, which supports an impressive amount of formats: <a href="https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru</a><p>The main developer is currently getting $100 a month on Patreon.
Submitted for the approval of the midnight society: I'd like to propose the currently underappreciated and undersupported developer of Qutebrowser - a minimal browser with our best interests in mind that isn't another chrome clone.<p><a href="https://github.com/sponsors/The-Compiler/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sponsors/The-Compiler/</a>
If you like Guitars, Machine Learning and FOSS, consider checking out GuitarML<p><a href="http://github.com/guitarml" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/guitarml</a><p>patreon: <a href="https://patreon.com/guitarml" rel="nofollow">https://patreon.com/guitarml</a><p>(disclosure: i'm a contributor)
Drilling down this list helped me to find <a href="https://notable.app" rel="nofollow">https://notable.app</a> by @fabiospampinato<p>It looks like a beautifully simple Markdown Notes Desktop App (Win/Mac/Linux). Have just been playing with it to import plain .txt files lying around on my Desktop. Has a simple out-of-the-way UI for creating markdown pages, organize active ones in tags, favorites or pin to top. Saves as plain .md files in 1 folder. Zen, floating & translucent modes. Looks like a TODO.txt notepad.exe replacement that might stick.
I nominate Synfig, which is a 2D vector animation tool. This is the most mature opensource tool in its category, but it still needs a lot of work to be able to compete with the commercial offering.<p><a href="https://www.synfig.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.synfig.org/</a><p><a href="https://www.synfig.org/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://www.synfig.org/donate/</a>
Somewhat related: if you're using Common Lisp, and SBCL in particular, please consider sponsoring Stas Boukarev, who is an important SBCL contributor
<a href="https://www.patreon.com/stassats" rel="nofollow">https://www.patreon.com/stassats</a>
JS is here to stay regardless of the sponsorships, but lispers are few and far between ;)
I also recommend sponsoring Matt Holt for his work on Caddy and several other very useful and high quality open source repos. He's very under sponsored for having built a server that a lot of companies use.<p><a href="https://github.com/sponsors/mholt" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sponsors/mholt</a>
If you look at recent case of switch to Ks from lisp, it is not the money but the community formation that is the key. No doubt it is nit either or. But more money may not be helpful if people just copy cat. Money ok as open source is not free source. But money is not the key.
I do not want to hijack this thread or promote myself, but maybe you could suggest something.<p>I realized I was working up to 50% on open source projects, and I wanted to accept sponsoring, but I moved away from github (which is surely a terrible idea for an open source guy, but I had my "stallman moment").<p>I do work mostly on gitlab and my own gitea instance.<p>What I did is setup stripe, with donate button on my blog but it is not very friendly and there is no social effect.<p>Do you know an alternative to github sponsor that allow source to be scattered around?