For non-ubiquitous languages (everything other than English), part of the difficulty of learning is not just the basic learning, it's retaining what you've learned; it might be difficult to practice it unless you're on the country that speaks it. Of I'm in the middle of Tennessee, probably don't have a lot of opportunity to prescribe my Japanese. That's where Duolingo shines, in my opinion: as a learning companion.
This is interesting, but it raises questions, mainly: if a project is abandoned and you've still given it a star, does it continue to send money to it? Will it cause people to un-star projects?
I could see having some kind of "tip amount" per project that gets taken from a pool would make a lot of sense, but not as stars.
I jumped right into that, didn't it? Goes to show my ignorance about the world of basket-weaving and its aficionados, and what I consider to be "niche". I'll need to adjust my examples in the future...
I think that whole article is a pretty shallow take, accusing Patreon of things that are not Patreon's fault (and I say this as someone who thinks Patreon is shady).
Yes, people who make some stuff that takes a lot of time and effort might not get a lot of money on Patreon. But you know what? They're doing what everybody else is doing.
I feel that nowadays everything want to think of themselves as "creators". They'll create a few photos, some drawings, put it out there, and expect to get paid.
Maybe it's just my 3rd-world-country upbringing, but I think that's a BS expectation. Real world living is tougher than that; the online public is already drowning in "creative" content, and producing more of the same is not going to give you an income.
Some of these people might be pretty talented, but that's not enough. If you're simply doing what everybody is doing and bringing nothing of actual value to your sponsors, there's not much you'll get back. Spending 16 hours a day doing basket weaving and posting it on YouTube is not worth much.
This is a similar picture of what happens on Twitch, or Instagram. Everybody thinks they can be a successful streamer, or an influencer. The reality is, just a tiny percentage of people make money doing that, either by sheer luck, some almighty external influence, or because of a niche interest they seem to fill. This is not Twitch, or Instagram's fault either.
I applaud GitHub because this is a way for people to almost passively support developers they want to. I know there's plenty of devs whom I've benefitted from their work. I'd loved to have a way to support them, even if just a little bit.
I don't think most devs would expect to become professional-code-warriors-for-sponsors. That's the wrong rabbit to _chase_. But having a bit of an extra income for a beer or tea or two on some OS project they work on is nice.