Add GitHub Sponsorship to tldr pages?

[owenvoke]

This is something that came up from a mention of the Sponsor button by @mebeim in Gitter: https://gitter.im/tldr-pages/tldr?at=5cf6cc683dcdab4003ed929d

This is part of the new GitHub Sponsors program, which is in beta.

At the moment, the GitHub Sponsors program probably isn't the best solution for tldr pages as it is more suited for individual sponsorships, and only supports up to 4 usernames per repository. Quite a few other projects are using OpenCollective as this works better for more people in an organisation. Although, GitHub mentions in their FAQ that:

GitHub is exploring ways to introduce sponsorships for teams of people that work on a single project.

To get started with adding sponsorship, we'd need to add a new YAML config in .github/FUNDING.yml. Currently it supports the following entries:

github: # Replace with up to 4 GitHub Sponsors-enabled usernames e.g., [user1, user2]
patreon: # Replace with a single Patreon username
open_collective: # Replace with a single Open Collective username
ko_fi: # Replace with a single Ko-fi username
tidelift: # Replace with a single Tidelift platform-name/package-name e.g., npm/babel
community_bridge: # Replace with a single Community Bridge project-name e.g., cloud-foundry
liberapay: # Replace with a single Liberapay username
issuehunt: # Replace with a single IssueHunt username
otechie: # Replace with a single Otechie username
custom: # Replace with a single custom sponsorship URL

[mebeim]

Like you already said, this does not look like the best solution for an organization like this one. One solution could be to list one of the org owners and let them "forward" the money to a community fund if we ever get anyone to sponsor the project. It would still be strange though.

Waiting for GitHub team sponsorship would probably be better, so if we decide we are interested, I think we should do what GitHub suggests:

GitHub is exploring ways to introduce sponsorships for teams of people that work on a single project. If you'd like to join our sponsored teams advisory panel, email opensource@github.com with the subject line [GitHub Sponsors] Interested in the Sponsored Teams Advisory Panel. Please include:

• The name of your project
• Information about your team
• Why you are interested in joining the advisory panel

[agnivade]

Personally, I don't want money out of this. If there is a way to forward the earnings to some charity, I am good with it.

[sbrl]

If we did decide to do something about this, OpenCollective looks interesting if GH's offering doesn't work out.

I'm sort of on the fence about it personally.

I'm not sure how much of a good fit it is for this kind of project - I think the main value to this project is in getting people to volunteer significant amounts on time into projects like those described on the wiki

[waldyrious]

If @ostera is OK with it, I'd like for the project to be able to collect funds to pay for the tldr.sh domain (including retroactive costs) which he's been generously offering us so far.

Other than that, I agree that it's best not to add money to the equation as remuneration for contributions (for now at least) since that messes up with the incentives, motivations and even our community's culture in ways we might not be prepared to handle.

So if we do set up such a funding scheme, I'd suggest paying for the domain out of it (and maybe other costs I'm overlooking?), and donating the rest to one or more charities that we as a community would decide on, as @agnivade suggests.

[owenvoke]

@waldyrious, I agree. The domain was the only thing I'd really thought about the money going towards (if we do add sponsorship).

since that messes up with the incentives, motivations and even our community's culture in ways we might not be prepared to handle.

My thoughts exactly. 👍

[agnivade]

Ah great idea, forgot about the domain.

[mebeim]

@waldyrious that's exactly what I was talking about when I said:

forward the money to a community fund

I.E. paying for hosting and other needed stuff. Totally agree with you guys.

[waldyrious]

At the moment, the GitHub Sponsors program probably isn't the best solution for tldr pages as it is more suited for individual sponsorships, and only supports up to 4 usernames per repository. Quite a few other projects are using OpenCollective as this works better for more people in an organisation. Although, GitHub mentions in their FAQ that:

GitHub is exploring ways to introduce sponsorships for teams of people that work on a single project.

Update: GitHub Sponsors has recently become available for projects/teams.

[sbrl]

Interesting, @waldyrious. Looks like they require teams to be setup as a non-profit entity. If, in theory, we were to go for it, we'd have to consider things like what country we'd register in, and what currency the bank account they require to be in. Sounds complicated.

[waldyrious]

Yeah @sbrl, if we want to set up directly via GitHub Sponsors we'd have to keep things a bit more formal. But we could just create a FUNDING.yml file as @pxgamer suggested in the opening comment, which shows the Sponsor button anyway, and in that case we can link it to any platform we choose. AFAIK Liberapay would be a good choice as the platform itself is open source, and setting up is quite hassle-free. So the main decision we have to make is whether we think it makes sense to set it up.

We have some costs already that would be great candidates to be covered this way:

• Registration for the tldr.sh domain
• Self-hosting a Weblate instance (as discussed in #3591)
• The server for tldr-bot

...and possibly other stuff I may be forgetting.

What do you guys think? Shall we give it a try?

[agnivade]

:+1: from me

[sbrl]

I'm ok with this. Liberapay looks like a good choice. We'd still need to make sure we somewhere that the money can go though - unless Liberapay sorts that you for you?

I'm in the UK, and I'm pretty sure that we'd need to register somehow as a non-profit or something to setup a bank account here in the name of tldr-pages. Not sure how it works.

Another question: What happens if we get more in donations that we expend in costs?

[ivanhercaz]

I'm ok with this. Liberapay looks like a good choice.

I haven't read the issue in deep, but about the quoted message I think Liberapay has a good model and I like it. I can't write a lot now (many notifications and work out of GitHub to do), but I wish to have a bit of time to discuss this proposal.

[waldyrious]

@sbrl with Liberapay the funds collected by an organization are withdrawable by individual members, with customizable proportions, all with a public record and easy backstops to allow preventing abuse by any single member. See for example the current setup for the opencompany organization: there are three members, only one of which has elected to receive funds (me, in this case), and the amount I chose is directly calculated to cover the costs I actually incur in, i.e. paying for the domain name. The rest remains as unclaimed leftover. It's quite simple, really :)

In any case, we can give it a try and later change to something else if for some reason we decide it doesn't work out.

[waldyrious]

Ok, so to get things started, I've created a Liberapay team for tldr pages, but someone who's a member of the organization needs to connect it via GitHub so we can proceed with the setup. Can one of you access that page? (You might need to create a Liberapay account for yourself first.)

[owenvoke]

I've tried accessing that link @waldyrious, however it returns Forbidden. 🤔

[mebeim]

@pxgamer same here :thinking: maybe you should invite us to the team @waldyrious? My username is the same as here on GitHub.

[waldyrious]

Hmm, sorry about that. I just sent you both an invite.

[mebeim]

@waldyrious hmm, ok I seem to have linked my account, but it's a bit confusing. It now looks like I am tldr pages 🤔 is everything fine or am I missing something?

[waldyrious]

Haha sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The page I linked to above was meant to set up the connection between the Liberapay team and the GitHub organization. I suppose you must have entered your own username in the text field (granted, it says "GitHub Username"), but instead you were supposed to enter the org name (tldr-pages). I disconnected your personal account from the team's profile; please try again.

@changaco, any ideas about how that placeholder text could be improved when editing profiles for a team rather than an individual username? I'd be happy to submit a PR if you point me in the right direction.

[agnivade]

lol .. now tldr-pages has @mebeim's thumbnail.

[mebeim]

@waldyrious oh damn that makes sese haha! Done, looks fine now.

[sbrl]

Nice one, @waldyrious! Could you send me an invite too?

That example opencompany does a good job at showing you how it works. That's a really neat solution to the issue!

[waldyrious]

I just sent you an invite, @sbrl. I'd have sent it earlier but you didn't have an account there yet ;)

I think we need to get @ostera there as well, since one of the costs we were hoping to cover with this are the domain registration ones.

[sbrl]

Thanks, accepted @waldyrious!

Yeah. If @ostera isn't comfortable with it, then we can always transfer tldr.sh out to someone else, I guess.

[leostera]

Hi! Joining in a little late but hopefully still on time to agree and express my support for this 🎉

Point me in the right direction and I’ll be happy to set things up on my end 🙏🏼

On Tue, 31 Dec 2019 at 19:05, Starbeamrainbowlabs notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks, accepted @waldyrious https://github.com/waldyrious!

Yeah. If @ostera https://github.com/ostera isn't comfortable with it, then we can always transfer tldr.sh out to someone else, I guess.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/issues/3102?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAGQRTV5FVG3ENT5V3UVJHTQ3OCX5A5CNFSM4HWS2SYKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEH4QIZI#issuecomment-569967717, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAGQRTT736SJYYGC3VU6WGTQ3OCX5ANCNFSM4HWS2SYA .

-- / Leandro

[waldyrious]

Nice to count you in @ostera! You just need to create an account at Liberapay and let us know your username there so we can add you to the team.

[leostera]

Perfect. I’ve set up an account with my same username (@ostera). Feel free to add me :)

On Thu, 2 Jan 2020 at 15:31, Waldir Pimenta notifications@github.com wrote:

Nice to count you in @ostera https://github.com/ostera! You just need to create an account at Liberapay and let us know your username there so we can add you to the team.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/issues/3102?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAGQRTW2UZTMK5BB4OKU6YLQ3X3FDA5CNFSM4HWS2SYKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEH6O55Q#issuecomment-570224374, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAGQRTWEKCEK2KJKGTGD6ETQ3X3FDANCNFSM4HWS2SYA .

-- / Leandro

[waldyrious]

Great! I've sent you an invitation. The next step is to set up the shares for each member of the team. Each person needs to set their own share of the funds we receive, since Liberapay's model has that configured individually by each tem rather than in a centralized fashion.

My suggestion, judging by what we've discussed so far, would be for those who currently are paying (or have concrete plans to pay) for specific services, like domain registration and server hosting, to specify a nominal take equivalent to that service's cost per week, and everyone else to set their nominal take to 0, rather than "auto" which is the default. But let me know if you think a different model would work better.

Once that's done, we can create a PR adding the .github/FUNDING.yml file as @pxgamer suggested above. I think the file should also specify the actual costs that donations will cover, and who's responsible for them, so that the amounts specified on Liberapay will make sense for backers. We can also add the same information in the Liberapay statement for the tldr-pages team.

[sbrl]

@agnivade, @mebeim, @pxgamer: I think you still need to change your share on liberapay from auto to a specific number.

@waldyrious: Sounds like a plan! I think that'll work nicely.

[owenvoke]

I've tried changing mine from auto to 0, and it doesn't seem to change. 🤔

[mebeim]

Same as @pxgamer :thinking:

[waldyrious]

@pxgamer @mebeim I think it may be the case that the change will only apply to the next payment cycle. Here's what I see in the interface:

The 0 take seems to be saved for both of you, but it's in blue and I'm not sure what that means. @changaco is that something a tooltip could be added for?

By the way, @sbrl — I thought you were paying for the server where tldr-bot is running. Is that not the case?

[mebeim]

@waldyrious ah, that's right, I'm a noob. Makes sense.

[waldyrious]

Nah, the interface is actually somewhat confusing. Fortunately it's open source so we can improve it :)

[sbrl]

Hey, we're almost there!

@agnivade: Could you set your take to 0 please?

@ostera: Looks like you haven't yet accepted the invite. Perhaps you could do so and set your take to 0 the weekly equivalent of what you're paying for the tldr.sh domain too please?

Edit: Update comment to @ostera

[agnivade]

Set to 0 now.

[sbrl]

I wonder if there's an alternative method we could get a hold of @ostera.

[leostera]

Hi! I've set my take to 940 SEK (99USD) which is what the domain costs per year. Let me know if I need to change the take to be a monthly fare of the yearly domain cost.

[sbrl]

Hey, @ostera - thanks! I've checked the docs though, and I'm pretty sure that the take needs to be per week, not per year. So 940 SEK ÷ 52 = 18.07 I think.

[leostera]

Done :)

[sbrl]

Awesome, thanks so much @ostera!

That means that I think we're ready to roll out Liberapay as our funding option in a FUNDING.yml file. Does anyone want to do the honours here and open a PR?

[mebeim]

@sbrl not familiar with the format, could you open that? Also does it require any additional setup?

[sbrl]

I don't think so, @mebeim. As soon as you have one on the master branch of a repo, it should show the funding button in the GH web interface.

Sure, I can open the PR.

[zlatanvasovic]

Shouldn't this be closed as we have done this?

[owenvoke]

Yes! Now that we have the funding YAML file. I'll close this. Thanks for reminding me @zdroid.