It's a common misconception that people can't make a living from developing free open source code, but GitHub thinks differently. Now, businesses can support open source developers as part of a huge update that's coming to the coding platform.

How Companies Can Use GitHub to Sponsor Developers

All this new information comes fresh from Universe 2020, with a huge roundup featured on the GitHub blog.

First up is the company sponsorship feature. Donating to people on GitHub is nothing new, as the service already gives individuals a way to do that via GitHub Sponsors.

What the update does introduce is the ability for a company to donate to a developer instead of as an individual:

Today, we’re launching GitHub Sponsors for companies, enabling organizations to invest in the open source developers and projects that they depend on via their existing billing arrangements. Starting today, investing in open source is as easy as just adding it to your GitHub bill! Sponsors supports payment via credit card or PayPal, and you can join the waitlist to get updates about other payment options coming soon.

There's potential here for companies to get its name out into the public eye while also supporting the developers that help it flourish. The company gets its name in the spotlight on the project, and the developer gets a huge bag of cash; seems like a win-win.

From saving open-source developers to saving people's eyeballs, GitHub is also getting an official dark mode. You can either manually enable it through your settings, or tell it to monitor what your system is set to.

GitHub also plans to speed things up by automatically merging pull requests. It doesn't do it if you don't want it to, but you can opt into it and let GitHub do its thing.

There are plenty more features on the horizon, such as discussions on all public depositories, a workflow visualization, and a dependency review. Be sure to check out all the details if these sound like something you'd like to use.

Getting More From GitHub

From helping open-source developers to making the website easier on the eyes, the new GitHub update has something for everyone. Be sure to keep your eyes on GitHub as these updates roll out for public use.

If you haven't been keeping up with GitHub much these days, you're missing out. For instance, did you know you can use it to host a website?

Image Credit: Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com