Controlling GitHub Sponsors Influence

The other day I started sponsoring tuplui based on prior work together in Discord and of course open-source projects. They're a stellar dev doing exceptional work, especially around easy-to-implement infra like Python. 💜 They tweeted about it and thanked me in Discord, where I enthusiastically replied via DM.

If the Discord callout happened in a public channel, I would've happily praised them there. But there was something about the X post that sorta irked me and stopped me from immediately replying in support of them. Namely, the post included a link to their GH sponsors page, as it does by default via the share button.

I want to clarify that I still ponder extensively the centralization risk inherent in the Microsoft (payment) platform (via Stripe). At the drop of a hat, they have unilateral power to extract more than the CC fees, as is in place today for Institutional sponsorships. I just hope they can see the immense value open-source contributors bring in the long-term career prospecting technology preferences of centralized organizational technology planning.¹

Self-Directed Work

Anyway point being, I never want my sponsorships/PRCY endorsement to get used as a directive for what to work on. I appreciate that Sponsors have no way to reach out to Sponsees, outside of any public communication channels. I truly believe in the individuals' ability to direct their own labor in certain technical fields, at least.

This does not get furthered when someone says "I pay you XYZ/mo so you need to work on this thing." Indeed, that's the opposite of hand-raising collective/community/permissionless social contracts. There's a fine line I think because if you are giving someone money then they have a chance of harping on your words a little more than might be ideal.

But honestly, that's just a guess with no experience to back it up, and indeed it might be based more on the present reality that people who give/donate/sponsor others are generally wealthy enough to afford the free time/income/updates associated with those payments. Perhaps when the bar decreases for fiscal support, there will be less expectations placed on Sponsee perspectives, fostering independent self-sovereignty. It's quite the process to convince people that your money comes with no strings attached just because you like what they're doing in the present cases I'm dealing with where e.g. tuplui has recently gained significant community influence/power/recognition in SCF.