Tax? Perhaps not, but the OP was talking about tax and other legal consequences. These can vary wildly from country to country.
My local legislation requires applying for a permit before asking for donations. If a 3rd party would add my projects to this website, I could face criminal charges and the proof of burden would be on me.
Some project on github is not even remotely your biggest problem here.
It's extremely unlikely that I could get convicted because of it, very unlikely that they'd even start the case either. But it would at least mean significant paperwork and other nuisance.
It's not like I'd get sent to Siberia but yeah, my country is full of stupid laws. And so are many other countries.
Actually I do think the intent of this law is good and it's to protect individuals from scams. But the practice should be updated to better work with crowdfunding and other Internet fundraisers.
Here's a similar example from earlier this year, the local police demanded that local Wikimedia foundation chapter explain their fundraising campaign.
http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_police_examine_wikipedias_fund...
The local Wikimedia chapter had no part to play in it, were not charged in the end, but had to spend time and effort explaining that it's the California-based US entity asking for the donations.
The point is that, because there isn't a way to opt-out of the project, it is the responsibility of the tip4commit developers to do their due diligence and make sure they aren't putting anyone in hot waters with their project.
Not only have they not done that, they're also being indignant assholes about it.
If they changed it to opt-in, I would think the whole problem would go away.
edit: clarification
Some unfortunate medical issues put me on disability, which means living off of SSDI for a while. For various reasons the social security programs in this country are run with a focus on "stopping fraud" instead of "helping people", regardless of little shrinkage and waste actually exists.
A consequence of this is that you are required to be "in need" which is usually defined as not having more than like $30 in cash to your name. This includes all possible recoverable sources modulo a few enumerated items (such as one cheap car). As part of the application process, I had to liquidate stuff like the $70 i had in a "mandatory contribution" retirement account from a short-lived tech support job I had when I was an undergrad. Of course, as this was WAY before you were supposed to withdraw that money, it came with penalties that made that ~$70 worth only about $10. That was still considered "recoverable".
I have some stuff up on github. At the moment, none of it is very interesting or worthy of any tip. I suspect that for now the IRS/H&HS hasn't even heard of this kind of income. They certainly are not currently looking at potential income sources this new and unusual. That could change in time.
Regardless of the probably-low actual risk, I would be required to liquidate this kind of tip right now if any existed. Failure to do so could cause cancel my SSDI. That loss could even be retroactive back to the date the tip was sent.
I have no idea how this would play out in practice. It might not be as problematic as I described. What I do know is that social security moves by the whim of politicians and bureaucrats, making the entire topic very hard to predict. So yes, someone using my name in a fund-raiser can not only cause "tax issues", it also caries a (probably-)small but very real risk of removing my only source of income (aka "rent", "food").
No, these rules are not sane (or useful). Yes, this is a big problem, that is much larger than github. Unfortunately, the potential risk to anybody in a situation like mine is still very real.
I think that people who set Web services up really need to think about what territory the service is designed to operate in and which legal system(s) they have the time and resources to examine.
The rest of the folks in the thread and on the Github issue are exploring what those terms mean. I'm not seeing you provide much insight or rationale into your interpretations beyond a simple "No, we are not."
How are we failing to make clear the various suggestions for making your work actually useful instead of potentially harmful to the projects you claim to be trying to help?
But as much as I try to contort it, I can't see how you aren't accepting a contribution on someone's behalf.
"How does it work?
People donate bitcoins to projects. When someone's commit is accepted into the project repository, we automatically tip the author."
from here - https://tip4commit.com/
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Yes you are.