Viewed through this lens, Sponsors can be understood as a first, important stepping stone towards company sponsorships, which seem inevitable for GitHub given the presence of Organization accounts. ​ Their eyes light up when they talk about specific developers. If I ask why, I tend to hear a few common responses: 1) they’re learning a specific skill, and watching that person is helpful, or 2) they’re experienced developers who just love being able to see how “the best” do it. ​ it struck me the other day that open source is a sort of “high-latency streaming”. ​ the relationship between a prominent GitHub developer and their audience, and a prominent Twitch streamer and their audience, is similar: they gain followers because people enjoy watching them do something in public. ​ an additional set of motivations, which is, “I want to watch and learn from you”. A graphic artist or a blogger who’s funded on Patreon doesn’t quite have that same relationship to their audience. In those cases, I think their output – the artifacts they create – takes center stage. ​ there are probably others who just love watching the person who makes it. ​ With companies, open source developers are selling a product. With individuals, they’re selling themselves.

“Twitter can still be great for spreading ideas, but it’s not a particularly good home for them.”

“One streamer I spoke to who spent three months without an audience, MaverickRPDM, says that they kept live streaming games with zero viewers because they saw it as a form of self-improvement. “Streaming has made me more interesting, more quick witted, more outgoing and extroverted,” MaverickRPDM says. “It has helped make me feel more comfortable being myself, and by virtue of that has made me be more myself, more often, even outside of the stream.””