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Comment by 90s_dev | Hacker News Reader

Short version: I want to work on 90s.dev, but have no time to. I could do it for $25/hour, using GitHub Sponsors as a way for everyone to chip in a little towards its development. Just an idea.

The vision of 90s.dev is to be a retro os environment entirely in the web, that's suitable for making all the apps you'd need to make a game, from code editors to sprite editors to animation tools to debuggers. And it's decentralized too, so the apps don't have to be built in, you can import them from anywhere on the web, as long as the app speaks the 90s.dev API. This would recreate a retro development environment similar to what many of us grew up with in the 90s.

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Please take this as some unsolicited friendly advice, but I don't think you'll be able to live off this project with that funding model. GitHub sponsors is more like a tip jar than a paycheck.

This project is rather niche and your description of it is somewhat confusing. Maybe you could use the open source framework you've created to produce a paid game or app that would be easier to monetize.

Oh sorry, I kind of skipped over introducing what the project is, mainly because when I wrote this, the intended audience was the people who showed support on the previous Show HN thread. But here's a better explanation of the project's purpose, the one I posted via Show HN two months ago: https://90s.dev/blog/finally-releasing-90s-dev.html

I do agree that this is a new way of using GitHub Sponsors. And I do agree that it might entirely not work out the way I'm thinking. But to my knowledge, this way of using GH Sponsors hasn't been tried before, so it's worth at least trying it once I think. Besides, there was significant interest in this project, which is what made me think of trying this at all, otherwise I would not have. Thanks for the feedback.

You could also try BuyMeACoffee and LiberaPay, or even Patreon, or all of them.

I suppose this is the same thing, just, using GitHub Sponsors, no? Are there significant differences?

I have not used GitHub Sponsors so I cannot tell, but GitHub Sponsors may be more accessible to developers. So you should probably use whichever is more accessible to others, less friction = better. That said, having more options is probably better either way, I assume.

> the intended audience was the people who showed support on the previous Show HN thread

Your previous Show HN had 113 comments. That's a nice accomplishment but even if 100% of those commenters paid $25/month you aren't going to get to the equivalent of $25/hour.

> there was significant interest in this project

Are you referring to the Show HN? Was there significant interest in paying?

I don't mind not getting full time payment. That's not the goal of this. The goal is to try an experimental method of funding open source projects, something we have all been thinking about for a while. This is just one variation. If it doesn't pan out to full time employment, then fine, that's expected. I'd be surprised if it did.

[Edit to clarify] I'm not trying to pressure or guilt anyone into donating for personal reasons. My only goal in this post is to propose a way to experiment with open source funding. Other details are just me answering unrelated questions.

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