创业与商业calebporzio.com
我刚在 GitHub Sponsors 上年入10万美元：我是怎么做到的
I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors
2020 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
文章讲述作者如何在 GitHub Sponsors 上做到每年 10 万美元收入，并分享自己的具体做法。评论指出，这类收入往往混合了付费视频、订阅等回报，并非纯粹捐赠，同时还涉及“赞助”与“销售”的边界以及各国税务合规问题。
为什么经久不衰：它不只展示收入数字，还暴露了开源赞助常混合捐赠、订阅和销售的现实，以及背后的法律税务边界，因此多年后仍值得读。
HN 评论精选
少数高收入开发者常把赞助平台当通用支付渠道，捐赠与销售界限模糊。
我看越多 Sponsors、Patreon 上个体开发者的案例，越常看到一种模式：绝大多数开发者赚不到多少钱；少数赚到钱的异常值，其实把平台当成通用支付处理器——他们收捐赠，但也卖东西，两者界限并不清楚。平台把这些付款包装成“捐赠/赞助/资助”，避免商业气息破坏项目氛围；但现实中很多钱是买产品、服务、访问权等。有人确实只是小额捐赠、不在乎回报；有人明确购买回报；也有人或公司介于两者之间，借回报让付款能报销。很难从异常值推出普遍结论，但这说明在买卖双方都模糊“给开发者付钱”的概念，有一种奇怪的价值。
kemitchell查看英文原文
The more individual developer stories I look into on Sponsors or Patreon or wherever, the more I see a recurring pattern. The vast majority of developers don't make any significant money. The outliers that do use the platform as a general-purpose payment processor. They take donations, but they also sell things. The line between isn't terribly clear. The platforms help style all the payments as "donations" or "sponsorships" or "patronage". That avoids harshing the project vibe with overtly commercial overtones that turn off the financially immature and preternaturally entitled. But in reality, they're often really payments for products, services, access, and so on. Some people do simply donate, usually small dollars, and don't receive or care about "perks". Others buy the perks on offer specifically, as a simple exchange. Somewhere in between, people and companies may be inspired by donation-like feelings, but use the benefits to get their payments approved and expensed. It's hard to draw any broad conclusion from outliers. But it all points to there being strange value in muddying the concept of paying developers with a lot of ambiguity, on both the buy side and the sell side. It's like one of those statues that looks like one thing from one angle, and something completely different from another.
开源包是商品，培训视频等互补品才是利润来源。
Joel Spolsky 在 2002 年的《Strategy Letter V》里很好地解释了这件事：Caleb 并没有发现让人为可免费下载的开源软件付费的秘诀；他先做出一个商品（开源包），等它流行后，再从互补产品（培训视频）上获利。人们通常仍不愿为可免费下载的软件付钱，但如果你愿意做咨询、制作培训视频等其他工作，就能赚到足够多的钱持续下去。
phodge查看英文原文
Joel Spolsky does a good job of explaining what's actually happening here in his old "Strategy Letter V" from 2002 [1]. Caleb hasn't discovered some secret means of convincing people to pay for OSS they can download for free. What he's done is create a commodity (the open source package) and then once it's popular, make a tidy profit off its complimentary product (training videos). Unfortunately it's still true that people generally won't pay for software they can download for free, but if you're willing to dip into some other types of work (e.g. consulting, creating training videos) then you can make more than enough profit top keep going indefinitely. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
带回报的赞助在欧洲可能构成商业交易，涉及跨境税务合规。
提醒一下：如果你住在欧洲并希望合乎税务部门要求，Caleb 的做法在你的国家很可能需要额外步骤，否则可能违法。因为一旦你为赞助提供回报（比如额外视频），它就从捐赠变成了商业交易，会产生税务影响；而且你需要知道赞助者住在哪个国家，才能按正确税率开票。我上次查看时 GitHub 并不会自动处理这些，所以你得自己跟踪一堆复杂事项。
pbowyer查看英文原文
Your reminder that if you live in Europe and want to stay on the right side of your tax authority then what Caleb did is likely breaking the law in your country without some extra steps. Why? If you offer incentives in return for sponsorship (e.g. extra videos) this turns it from a donation to a business transaction. That has tax implications - and you need to know which country the people sponsoring you live in to bill the right tax. When I last checked GitHub wasn't doing this automatically (https://twitter.com/rafaelcodes/status/1448987494553473024) so it adds a bunch of complexity for you to keep track of.
芬兰法律严格限制个人收无回报捐赠，作者的低档赞助在当地可能非法。
读到这些让我对芬兰法律感到难过。作者最低档（7 美元、无回报）在芬兰会违法。我们有《Money Collection Act》：为捐赠（即没有回报的付款）筹款需要许可证，而许可证要花钱、不发给个人、只发给非营利活动。所以在软件项目上看到捐款/赞助按钮、钱给芬兰个人，是违法的（除非拿到许可证，极不可能）；带回报的 Patreon/赞助属于灰色地带。唯一明确合法的是卖实际东西，但那样很快要成立企业。我自己维护免费项目，为了服务器费用不得不成立个体企业并卖东西；即使有人想捐赠，我也不能合法收。
Ndymium查看英文原文
Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here. We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities. So this means that if you see a donation/sponsorship button on a software project where the money goes to a Finnish person, it is illegal (unless they have obtained a permit, which is highly unlikely). If you see a patreon/sponsorship with rewards, it's a grey area. The only clearly legal way is by selling actual things, and of course then you quickly need to set up a business. I host a free project myself and I've had to set up a business (sole proprietorship) and sell things in order to get money for server costs. Even though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally.
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