The idea of direct project sponsorship seemed very straightforward, until I considered it for my new PHP Serverless Project.

I took a good look at what developers are doing with GitHub Sponsors, since I will be using GitHub Sponsors. Some of the things that are generally accepted practice made me nervous. Here are my notes about it.

To sway potential sponsors to select higher monied sponsorship tiers, developers offer inducements.

A popular inducement is listing names and/or logos on a project's web pages. Another popular inducement is monthly one-on-one calls. I have seen help with installation of the sponsored software, and help with customization of the sponsored software.

My reaction to seeing these inducements was to ask the question: what exactly is sponsorship? Is sponsorship a gift? Or, is sponsorship a contract?

I scoured the GH Sponsors doc, and my internal dashboard, but to no avail. It seems to me that the definition of sponsorship remains with the developer.

Does offering consulting-ish inducements alter the nature of the sponsorship.

Do consulting-ish inducements turn a gift into a contract?

If consulting-ish inducements is, indeed, a contract for consulting engagement(s), then what are the parameters of these consulting arrangements?

The inducements that I see listed in higher monied sponsorship tiers seem to imply consulting engagements. But not completely! It is very murky.

I talk about this at length in one of my podcasts:

For my PHP Serverless Project, I am keeping the notion of sponsorship as a gift/donation explicitly clean and clear. There are no inducements whatsoever.