rileymat2 9 hours ago

The problem is if I was going to do that with the open source projects I use, it is more like a penny a month * 1000 projects.

  • bobmcnamara 7 hours ago

    $.01/user/month would be quite a bit here

    • einsteinx2 7 hours ago

      Subtract the standard ~3 cent transaction fee and he’d end up owing money instead. That seems to always be the catch with micropayment ideas.

      • __turbobrew__ 7 hours ago

        Sounds like we need an open source index fund where you can make one payment that goes into a pool of money which is invested into the top 1000 open source projects.

        • krior 2 hours ago

          What are the top 1000 oben source projects?

      • janandonly 6 hours ago

        Sounds like the above 2 ideas should be combined. Lightning payments are more or less free, and an index or tracker that looks at your bash history could make it possible to spread 5$ per month over all projects that you use.

      • aftbit 6 hours ago

        It almost seems like someone ought to be able to build some kind of digital currency with low transaction fees and no centralized payment processor that could power microtransactions. I wonder why nobody has done that yet.

  • ycombinatrix 7 hours ago

    payment processors: "how about no"

    • karamanolev 7 hours ago

      Why? If every person participating is giving $10-$20 per month to tens or hundreds of projects and then once distributed, this equates to $x00 or $x000/project/month, why would the payment processors mind. Of course, it's all in theory.

      • ycombinatrix 7 hours ago

        they charge a minimum fee per transaction. from Accursed Farms' donation page (https://www.accursedfarms.com/donations/)

        "Paypal keeps $0.30 + 2.9% of every donation, so please keep anything less than $0.32 as they have enough money already."

        i think Cash App has the lowest fees i've seen at like $0.01 which would still be too much.

        not saying it is impossible - but likely not viable directly with the current payment providers.

  • squigz 7 hours ago

    This is why I feel like a missing piece of Patreon/Kofi/whatever is the ability to say "Here's $x; divide it automagically amongst the creators I'm currently following"

    Sure, I think a lot of those donations would amount to a few pennies or so at once, but I feel like a lot more people would be willing to support creators if they didn't have to constantly choose which to support.

    • robertlagrant 7 hours ago

      I would love it if something like Github would accept donations from a repo and parcel it out to the repo's dependencies somehow. It would sadly make Github even stickier, but it would be a great feature.

ak009 7 hours ago

wouldn't https://github.com/sponsors/sudo-project achieve the same thing in this case?

  • jandrese 6 hours ago

    That's great, I wish he had mentioned it.

    • gregw2 4 hours ago

      True, but it sounds like he's more looking for "a" sponsor, not crowdfunding which he already has tried.

      That might be why he hasn't mentioned it.

RhysU 4 hours ago

I would kick him $20. Anyone know how?