🎯 North Star: All-in-one funding & monetization platform

[birkjernstrom]

Polar North Star v1.0

• An all-in-one funding & monetization platform for developers to get paid coding on their passions.
• Supporting them and their upstreams from the first donation to IPO.
• No ceiling & free to cherry pick.
• We'll handle the boilerplate (billing, receipts, customer accounts) & headaches (sales tax, VAT - merchant of record) so developers can focus on building.

Effectively a better Lemon Squeezy / Paddle for open source- and indie developers - built open source.

Product

• REST API & SDK. Our core product supporting all channels & integrations + future white labeling (long-term)
  • REST API (REST API Convention proposal #3237). We already have an API, but want to improve it further.
  • OAuth #2642
  • Webhooks #2641
  • Incredible API docs #3245
• Channels
  • ✅ GitHub. Embeds + funding.yaml support linking too 👇🏼
  • ✅ Polar page. Starting point before expanding 👇🏼
  • Starter Kits & Seamless integrations. NextJS, Nuxt, Electron, Swift.. Built for different monetization tactics, e.g courses, sponsorware, digital downloads, books etc. SDKs and starters kits to integrate Polar on your site/service.
    • NextJS Starter Kit #3246
• Polar Identity & Auth. Developers don’t need to manage VAT/Sales Tax or do Auth/Order/Receipt management. Just integrate “Polar Login” or license validation. Customers have access to their orders, receipts etc via our customer portal.
• Checkout
  • Hosted & Embeddable Overlay Checkout #3248 (redirect)
  • Embeddable checkout (overlay) on your site/service
  • 1% OSS Program #3247. Offer developers to specify Polar developers/initiatives to automatically donate x% to.
• Funding/Monetization Mechanisms
  • ✅ Donations
  • ✅ Issue Funding & Rewards
  • ✅ Subscriptions
  • Products (Pay once) #2638 (In Progress)
  • Invoicing & Custom Agreements
• Built-in product & subscription benefits
  • ✅ Early/premium newsletter access
  • ✅ Discord
  • ✅ Newsletter ads (integrate in README/sites too)
  • ✅ Private GitHub Repo(s)
  • File downloads #2636
  • License keys
  • Private packages
  • Custom agreements & SLAs

Misc

• Website 2.0 #2647
• Decouple Polar & GitHub Organizations #3249. Ability to setup Polar without mapping it 1:1 with a GitHub Organization. Enabling standalone offerings & future integrations with other platforms, e.g GitLab & more.

Milestone v0.8: Standalone Integrations & Hosted Downloads

Revamped API & SDKs for seamless standalone integrations. Expand with products & hosted downloads and more intuitive dashboard. Offer benefits/products with 1% OSS Program using an epic starter kit to get going in minutes.

Checkout issues with the milestone for an up-to-date list. Just capturing the main building blocks here

• API v2
  • REST API Convention proposal #3237
  • OAuth #2642
  • Webhooks #2641
  • Incredible API docs #3245
• NextJS Starter Kit #3246
• Login with Polar #3244
• 1% OSS Program #3247
• Hosted & Embeddable Overlay Checkout #3248
• Products (Pay once) #2638
• File downloads #2636
• Website 2.0 #2647