Access to private repo

[fkromer]

Does polar support access of supporters to private repositories already?

[frankie567]

Hey @fkromer 👋

Yes, that's what we call the GitHub Repository Access benefit ➡️ https://polar.sh/polarsource/posts/upsell-private-github-repositories 😄

[fkromer]

Nice! One question I had is if it‘s possible to allow funding of public issues for improving a private repo interested people do not necessarily have access to (e.g. cause they are no subscribers yet).

[frankie567]

Well, technically yes: if the issues are on a public repo, you can enable issue funding on them.

In practice, I would say... No 🙃 Since your supporters won't see the work actually done (since the repo is private), it may be hard for them to trust you and make a pledge. We even might have refund or dispute requests on our side 😅

I'll let our CEO @birkjernstrom add insights on this specific case.

[fkromer]

I agree, it's a rather uncommon use case. 😄

The "cost per collaborator issue" with gh organizations could make private repo access uninteresting for some people. A more interesting use case would not be related to private gh repos polar needs to manage access to:

• Provide a public repo for issue funding.
• Provide the "work done" public-ally somehow which does not require access to a private gh repo: python package via https://pypi.org, docker image via https://hub.docker.com, helm chart via https://artifacthub.io, ...

"Work done" is provided in public however as long as "work done providers" do not allow access management via polar (what the services apart from github I was thinking of so far do not do ATM).

[birkjernstrom]

Agree on all of the above. It's possible, but unlikely to be successful.

You don't have to pay for collaborators if it's a free organization or user account vs. paid organization. Of course, that's a bit impractical at times. It's why we call it out clearly in the benefit to ensure developers set the price to take this potential cost into consideration.

In addition, we're expanding to support file downloads soon and are planning private packages (PyPI, NPM etc) in the future as well. Combined with more ideas on how to expand/ease common ways to upsell value-adds that are native to your git/github workflow for the underlying library/product/service. Lots to build - fun times.

You can checkout our North Star for v1.0 that we're working towards here:
#3242