January 14, 2026
One buck, many yucks
GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month
GitHub’s $1 tip jar idea splits the internet: pay devs or watch a mass exit
TLDR: A tech blogger wants GitHub to add $1 per user to fund open source based on what companies use. Comments split: some predict a mass exit, others say Microsoft should pay for Copilot, and many fear spam and gaming.
Greg Technology pitched a spicy fix: have GitHub add $1 per user per month and pour it into an “Open Source Fund,” paid out to the building‑block projects your company uses (the stuff listed in package files). It’s opt‑out, Spotify‑ish, and proudly half‑baked—he asked the internet to poke holes. Think of it like a universal tip jar for the code that keeps everything running. He even joked about a magical badge or letting orgs flaunt profile CSS as a flex.
The replies lit up. One camp threatened to walk—“98% would leave,” snapped rglullis. Another flipped the script: with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot (AI that suggests code) learning from public projects, jmclnx fired back, “they should pay us 5 USD per month.” porise side‑eyed Big Tech, recalling paying $1 for WhatsApp and warning we’re drifting toward eight companies running everything. Mechanics got messy: aaronblohowiak pushed counting every nested dependency so you don’t reward throwaway wrappers, while QuadmasterXLII dreaded “devastating” dependency spam. Jokes flew about “Spotify for code” and the badge flex; skeptics called it a tax, fans called it a tip. Verdict: a full‑blown open source vs Big Tech soap opera over one tiny dollar.
Key Points
- •Proposal: GitHub would charge organizations an extra $1 per user per month to fund open source.
- •Funds would be held in escrow and distributed based on dependency mentions in package.json and requirements.txt.
- •The distribution model is compared to Spotify’s usage-based revenue allocation, acknowledging imperfections.
- •Program would be opt-out, with possible participation badges or profile styling for organizations.
- •Open questions include covering widely used components like Linux and parsing Dockerfile FROM commands to broaden coverage.