GitHub launches sponsored code repositories

GitHub launches sponsored code repositories

Specializing in open source code repositories, the GitHub platform now offers a feature for developers to sponsor directories. Financial support from partners is just beginning.

If open source doesn’t automatically mean free – far from it – it can also rhyme with sponsorship.

The famous source code repository GitHub, now part of the Microsoft group, has indeed taken its Sponsors feature up a notch. Until now, it gave users the possibility to support others and added the ability for organizations to create and receive sponsorships. Now the company is taking it a step further with the launch of sponsor-only repositories, a feature for developers to interact more effectively with sponsors.

Specifically, developers and companies will now be able to attach a private repository to each of their sponsorship levels. This will allow sponsors to access the repository. Note that these invitations are automatically managed by GitHub and therefore require no manual processing.

The features offered are varied and include Sponsorware (access to projects for your sponsors only), Discussions (communicate with sponsors via messages and report issues) and Early Access (preview code before it is open source). In addition, the platform has added support for custom sponsorship amounts. “You now have more control and can set a minimum custom amount for your referrals in your tier settings.

Also transaction exports will now give you the location and VAT information that many of you need for sales tax calculations,” GitHib says. “You can now write a custom message that will display for each new referrer after creating their referral. This is a great way to welcome your new sponsors and give them more information about how you manage your sponsored projects.”

Pushing the sponsorship slider even further

GithHub also now gives the ability to add metadata to the URLs of a sponsored page to see what brings in new sponsors. For example, the user can include specific metadata in a URL used when tweeting about development work in progress. It is also proposed to display the metadata collected in the transaction export.

GitHub doesn’t plan to stop there: “The next chapter of GitHub Sponsors will open the door for more companies to support the open source projects they depend on. We’re partnering with more companies every week to enhance our beta program,” the platform says. “We’ve also heard that it’s difficult to find projects to sponsor, which affects both sponsors and maintainers.

Stay tuned for future work to improve the discovery experience on GitHub, making it easier for the community to explore dependencies and decide who to support, and helping maintainers who use sponsors grow their audience, community and overall funding.”