Ask HN: Idea - Github for sharing revenue amongst contributors
So first you have an open source project which has revenue or revenue-potential. Maybe it's funded by investors (Meteor) or Kickstarter (Light Table), a purchasable product (Textmate), a Freemium service with a private branch hosting its premium IP, etc. Then you have the service I'm proposing: a web app which collects the revenue somehow - this needs to be thought out, but maybe interfaces with Kickstarter as an example, and the funds are escrowed to this service per project instead of the project owner. The service monitors the Github project's "Contributors" graph (eg, http://goo.gl/3Byjj) and uses Gittip to distribute funds based on percentage contribution. This includes commits by coders, designers, legal specialists (LICENSE), writers (README, gh-pages, documentation), etc.
It strikes me as something that could create dynamic, auto-pilot micro-companies; catalyze bootstrapped products; and better incentivize contribution to open source. It also enables coders to invest with their commits. "Meteor? Oh, I'd totally use that - I'll start committing to make sure it happens."
Anyway, what you guys think?