Why I want to see Gittip succeed | Hacker News Reader

Why I want to see Gittip succeed

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70 pointswhit53741 comments

It's a feel-good idea, but I don't like it for the following reason:

Developer A works on Project X. Everyone loves Project X, it becomes very popular, and consequently, Developer A receives a bunch of Gittips to continue work on it. Say this amount is nothing to sneeze at...$250/week or something.

Developer B thinks Project X is good, but it could be really great. Developer B really loves to make great software, and he doesn't care about being paid for his open source contributions, so he decides to fork it into Project Y. Project Y has significant improvements and changes, so that if it could be compared objectively, it would be better than Project X across the board.

Developer A sees will see Project Y as a competitor and a threat to his tips. Now he has a financial incentive to discourage the adoption of Project Y. He doesn't want his tips to disappear, so why would he bring attention to something better? Some changes and improvements could be ported from Project Y to Project X, but if the overall direction of Y is different, there would be no way to reconcile the disparity. Project Y would continue to gain adopters, and Project X would lose them.

TLDR; Financial incentive to discourage competing OS projects is bad for everyone.

I've seen this happen before on OS projects when there wasn't money involved (only pride and reputation), so I think this problem would be intensified by cash. It would be cool if this never happens though.

I think people would notice what Developer A is doing, and stop tipping him.

Financial incentive is good, the developer is encouraged to continue maintaining and supporting the project and make it even better, listen to users, pull in useful features from popular forks, fix bugs, etc. The way to have the most popular open source project is to have the best one.

Gittip does not allow the giver to identify himself. This isn't exactly "patronage", IMO, it is like dropping a few coins in a street performer's hat on the way to work. That's more like "charity", except worse--you cannot deduct it on your taxes.

BTW, I like gittip. I got an account the other day (https://www.gittip.com/cjdrake/). Just not sure about the definition of "success" here. Probably a few people could make a nice side-income from donations, but we're going to have to keep our day jobs :).

I think the system can still work with a few extra bucks each month. At least, is a way of showing people working on open software that someone is caring about what they are doing, which could make them keep doing it.

But yes, I agree that the possibility of leaving day jobs is very small... Also, long-tail economy can develop, with top 10 getting a lot and the rest of people getting a lot less...

This isn't exactly "patronage", IMO, it is like dropping a few coins in a street performer's hat on the way to work.

It's much stronger than that. It's like dropping a few coins in a street performer's hat on the way to work, and making a commitment to drop the same number of coins in that person's hat every day.

It's even stronger, though. It's like handing a $10 bill (or more) to a trusted person standing next to the street performer, knowing that person will drop the same amount of money in the performer's hat every day. And further, you make a commitment to renew that $10 whenever necessary.

Gittip is removing the friction from making small, recurring donations. That is a powerful model, and if it continues to grow, a not insignificant number of people will be drawing a reliable, meaningful income from their open source work.

I agree with your points. Perhaps my use of "drop a few coins" sounds a little more dismissive than I was intending.

Artistic patronage is when a rich guys pays you a salary to produce art. When Michaelangelo worked for the pope, his "day job" was to build the pope's tomb :).

Gittip allows people to tip artists, and it does this very well. Can it truly be extended to patronage?

Yes, Gittip is crowd-sourced patronage. In another context I've said that Gittip will be born when the first person announces that they're depending on it for their livelihood:

http://ryandeussing.com/blog/2012/09/24/chad-whitacre-gittip...

Personally, I think we'll get there in a year or two.

I like gittip, but it really needs international payouts. I don't see much point collecting these tips for 1st world programmers, who probably don't need them that much. For developers in 3rd world countries, even small monthly tips could make a huge difference.

Just because someone is a first world programmer doesn't mean tipping them couldn't make a huge difference. If someone is doing something that makes the world better for the rest of us, and tipping them means they can spend even more time on that, then we all win.

Look at https://www.gittip.com/freakboy3742/ . $500/week gets him one full day dedicated to Django dev.

That's nice, but $500/week might get you two full-time programmers in India. Cost of living is a huge factor in determining programmer salary.

Find me two Russell Keith-Magees that will work for $250/week and you have a valid argument.

We're not debating that. We're debating whether or not gittip should support international payments, and the point is that small amounts of money here are much more significant in countries like India.

There is no debate as to whether or not gittip should support international payments. It absolutely should and they're already trying to figure it out: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/126

I don't understand the point of mentioning the obvious economics of tips in third world countries. It doesn't matter where someone lives, if they're the best for the job then I'm going to tip them. Hopefully it helps them free up some time to work on amazing things.

It would be a lot more fun to converse with you if your attention spanned all the way back to the beginning of the conversation.

Hey, whoa, easy tigers! Yes, Gittip needs to solve the non-US payouts problem, and yes, Gittip can and should work for people in many different parts of the world with many different standards of living.

Bitcoin might serve this purpose well.

I added a +1 to:

https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/126

Are you kangasbros on this ticket?

https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/126

If not let's add your +1 there as well.

I agree that the issue w/ international payouts needs to be resolved; this is a known bug. But speaking as a "first world programmer" (https://www.gittip.com/jnoller/) the money from Gittip I have gotten has already made a huge difference for me.

For example; say I burn 40 hours a week working on PyCon or other community-related things. Ok, that's in addition to my day job, and time away from my family, and it's also hours I could spend working on side contracts from work that would pay me.

Instead, I have gittip; the funds of which have allowed me to pay some of a myriad of medical expenses (long story) and other debts that has relieved stress against my family and I and in turn make me, and my family, less stressed and concerned that the time I spend volunteering is not time misspent.

So, while yes: you are perfectly correct that 1$ in one country isn't equivalent to $1 in a "first world programmer's world", I can state that the 1$ I get from gittip helps my family and I a great deal - even if it's just $1, it's positive psychological reinforcement and stress relief.

So no, don't assume "they don't need them that much".

This is hard even when you aren't dealing with micropayment levels. There are not a lot of services that provide this kind of thing. ACH is a pain as well.

I really like the idea especially for things like blogs and so forth.

I love the picture of the kid reading that you used but I have some reservations about what you use it for.

I think it might be somewhat dangerous to crowdfund or tip for Open Source projects. There's some research in behavioral economics that suggests mixing social norms and market norms is not a good idea.

In essence someone is more likely to help you if you offer them nothing than if you offer them 1$ because if you offer nothing the social norms and "help your neighbor" kicks in whereas if you offer them 1$ they apply market standards and think something like "WTF only 1$...GTFO"

I think anonymous tips might actually not show this effect not sure if there is any research in that regard.

Maybe tipping non-monetary stuff would be better. I.e. keep a counter and once the money to buy item X is reached the guy being tipped gets that. Developer conferences, hardware and so forth are obvious candidates.

[A good pop-book on the topic I liked is "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely...he also has a TED Talk on this iirc]

I love the picture of the kid reading that you used but I have some reservations about what you use it for.

I didn't use that picture lightly. That is my son, and I am pretty interested in the different ways he will be able to consider supporting himself. I believe that Gittip has the potential to support people's livelihoods. I don't know how many people it will support, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[edit] That said, it was a fun picture to set up last year. :)

> I think anonymous tips might actually not show this effect.

Yeah, seems to be working that way so far.

I love this because the founder gets compensated the same way users do.

OP here, nice to see Gittip get positive attention every week.

I am really looking forward to seeing non-programmers on the leaderboard. That is nothing against programmers; it would just be a clear sign that the Gittip model has generalized to more than just os work.

Chad, are you aware of anyone receiving tips who is not involved in programming? I looked through the long list of people who have signed up, but most have zero tips so far. It might be interesting to post a table that lists user, tagline, and current funding level. I thought I saw a list by funding level once, but I can't seem to find it right now.

We just started adding Twitter support two weeks ago, so we're just getting started with non-programmers. Here's a few early adopters I'm aware of:

https://www.gittip.com/joshuasven/

https://www.gittip.com/eriiicam/

https://www.gittip.com/umemusic/

Maybe this is the page you saw?

https://www.gittip.com/about/goals.html

Seriously, how does gittip get upvoted consistently to the front page all the time? And.. nevermind I just answered my own question, he tweets the link to the HN article. I have to start doing that with my own projects as well..

Anyways, it's been a neat idea, but at this point I'd say pivot.

Many projects grow organically, day to day, but Gittip's funding cycle naturally brings it to people's attention each week. It makes me think about whether I can identify natural check-in points for my own projects.

Yeah, the weekly rhythm has been a serendipitous boon to Gittip's growth. Definitely something to consider when building something.

There's also the possibility that people are interested in it. ;^)

Why should I pivot?

I didn't get that either. Gittip is clearly growing, it is clearly interesting to a variety of people, and it is clearly wrestling with difficult but important concepts.

So how is this different from Flattr (http://flattr.com/), apart from recurring instead of one-time payments?

Start here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239247

The update is that I hung out with Flattr's bizdev, @gaiapunk, at #xoxofest, and we had a great time. I love the spirit and vision behind Flattr. IMO their hands are tied because they're a traditional pound-of-flesh business. Gittip is funded on Gittip.

That was very clarifying, thanks!

:^)

Flattr is neat, but it seems more geared towards content. I sometimes see a project page with a Flattr button and that just looks stupid. I think you need a lot of Flattr'able content. Like blog-posts for example.

For open source projects, maybe one solution could be to have a flattr button on each git push, or each small release..

Does Gittip also earn interest on money that sits in it's accounts waiting to be tipped out?

No. If anyone does, it'd be Balanced, our payment processor. Here's the Gittip ticket about this:

https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/279

I love this because it's from an educator, not a programmer.

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