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> And why is there a max tip amount?

To maintain "no strings attached." No one person or entity should unduly influence donees.

You're artificially limiting the maximum here. The range of contributions for e.g. a game will be different from B2B software, because the values derived are completely different. There doesn't seem to be a good reason to enforce a global limit.

If someone is willing to pay a large amount of money to influence a programmer, they'll be willing to manually negotiate / transfer it (rather than doing it through gittip).

I think all that is needed is a link that says... want to tip more? then donate directly to programmer by mailing him. This will remind the donor that he probably could give more... see how many people opt for this and figure out the nature of the donations.

That way, the service remains simple and manageable and won't end up being a money laundering operation for some terrorist.

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