> I also don't think the existence of small players that get displaced by a big player means that the small players were destined to become big players. It's worth considering that LiberaPay and OpenCollective would never have gotten somewhere great. Perhaps they would always have been doomed to be small and essentially irrelevant.
I think the difference between small and big players depends also on what their goals are. If the goals of (first Gratipay and then) Liberapay are to fund cool people and cool work, it doesn't matter how much of the funding space they take up as long as they're paying the bills and surviving. If the goal of GitHub is to make $$$ on fees, then yeah, they're going to feel like every other platform is a threat to that goal.
IMHO, there is much more space for different multiple funding platforms than people realize.