Gittip - Set up recurring tips to people who do great work.
gittip.com
gittip.com
The mission statement gives examples of how this is a great idea for musicians, coffee shop owners, and other generally smart people ("genius grants for the rest of us"). On the other hand: the name, the required GitHub authentication, and the list of suggested tippees all strongly imply that this is solely for programmers. This says to me that the grand plan is to start out by focusing on programers (which makes sense, since it's a group of people who are on the whole really good at recognizing and rewarding people and projects that make their jobs easier), and to eventually expand from there.
The problem with this is that 'Gittip' is an incredibly technically-focused name; it makes perfect sense in context of tipping your favorite GitHub contributors, but not so much when your average non-engineer Joe wants to give money to the guy who makes his coffee every morning.
I think you're right. It's a good domain name and "regular" people won't pick up on the reference and won't really care regardless.
In my book, not exactly. It's more like the mildest possible term of abuse. You could generally get away with calling someone a git to their face and in front of their grandmother. Assuming they'd done something tricksy or cheeky or grumpy.
He has no idea what git and github are, so the name gittip to him is just a nice, symmetrical name that has "tip" in it and evocations of "gift."
Go figure.
Look at the way that "bit" and "wiki" have evolved beyond BitTorrent and the WikiWikiWeb. I console myself by hoping that with gittip, the same is maybe happening to "git."
The main thing I'd worry about is people mis-hearing the name and trying to go to either gettip.com or gifttip.com, but it's very likely that I'm giving people too little credit. That wouldn't be a problem if 'git' enters the non-technical zeitgeist, but that's admittedly a pretty big 'if'.
That's about as good of feedback as you can ask for.
1. People perform poorly, creative and intellectually, when there is a reward at stake, specially if it is cash. This is proved by multiple studies.
2. Small cash compensations will shift the focus from the main reason people enjoy to code and contribute. Worst, if the amount of cash reward is inferior to the true value of the work they do (and it will be), people will feel undervalued and loose motivation. Either pay them well, or not pay at all.
3. It will be a constant remainder they should be making real money instead of making tips on github.
4. The system benefits developers by popularity instead of quality. Besides popular developers are those who need it the least.
5. Popularity and profit will poison the minds of the young Jedi's while coding thus decreasing overall code quality, creativity and productivity.
1. Gittips aren't a paycheck, they are a no-strings-attached gift.
2. Small cash compensations will free people up to contribute to society on their own terms rather than wasting their time surfing Facebook in a cubicle.
3. It might be a reminder that their society values the contributions they make based on their passions and interests and not on their utility to a corporation.
4. Popular developers know who is doing the grunt work and deserves more recognition. They can call out such people via Twitter, etc. In the future I can imagine upgrading Gittip to allow high earners to distribute higher amounts per person per week.
5. Young Jedis will be incentivized to add true value to society as adjudicated by the wise crowd, rather than answering to a monolithic corporation as their societal proxy.
So, there is no problem to solve, just potential to poison one of the biggest qualities.
The only argument which makes sense at the light of this, is number 4, and that is an interesting problem. Distribution of wealth.
Tips are small so there's no strings attached. That's different than with other uses of money.
http://krisstraub.com/2011/11/20/kachingle-and-the-transgres...
I see a few differences with Kachinga:
- With Gittip, recipients receive the full face value of their tips. The donor is responsible for credit card fees.
- The fees are minimal: $0.10 + 3.9%. Right now I'm using Samurai for payments, and they charge me $0.10 + 2.3%. My margins are thin.
- My margins are not going to be "my" margins. If this gets traction, we're going to organize it as a cooperative, not a corporation. The plan is for everyone who tips through the site to be a member of the cooperative, the purpose of which will be for the escrow of gifts to individuals.
- Gittip tipjars are tied to people, not companies or websites (you can currently send tips to Github organization accounts, but that's ticketed to fix: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/4). I can imagine changing that but for now it's designed for people, natural persons.
I imagined money accumulating over time until it was significant. Then finding out about it would be like getting a call that you won a genius grant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Fellows_Program
I could see this as a possible compromise if opt-out turns out to really suck as bad as with Kachinga.
Also, would it be appropriate to have a widget? Includes stuff like:
-"Hey. Here is how you can support this work"
-Gittip Overview Link
-Github handle
-Public income numbers
Or is that too "gimme"? Is this meant to be more of a "for hackers by hackers" thing? Or more mainstream?
Widget: Heck yeah! Wanna write one? :-)
Intended to be mainstream, starting w/ Github. But Guido isn't on Github, only Google+. :-(
Perhaps it is just a potential FAQ situation: "If I get some 'gittips' what are my tax responsibilities?"
b) Yes, it's trivial to stop. And because tips are anonymous, there's no social awkwardness to stopping a tip.
Great idea, I hope it really takes off.