
Gittip stats - whit537
https://www.gittip.com/about/stats.html
======
runako
First: I really like the idea of Gittip.com. Congratulations on getting this
far.

But I strongly object to the tip amounts. Without going into too much detail,
$0.25/week is not something I'd really consider a tip for a barista making my
coffee, my dry cleaner, or any of the other myriad service folks I interact
with on a regular basis. $0.25 will get you about 10 minutes of on-street
parking in many cities; it might take longer to get your coffee. I'd guess
that my attorney, physician, or my lawn guy would not consider $0.25/week a
genuine "thank you" gesture as much as "hey, I have this quarter in my
pocket." Personally, I think programmers are worth a lot more than most
programmers think they themselves are worth.

Every other day, there's a HN post about some clueless business guy looking
for technical co-founders. The HN community rages about how business people
always undervalue their technical contributions. And then here's a project
where programmers will tell you that a good project is worth $0.25/week. It
that's true, maybe the "clueless" business guys are right to devalue technical
work.

So while I really like your idea, I really do wish you'd reconsider the worth
of programmers who contribute to these projects. I'm trying to be as
constructive as possible here, because I think good things can come from what
you're doing if you don't advance the notion that good programming in any
meaningful quantity is worth $0.25.

~~~
subsection1h

        $0.25/week is not something I'd really consider a tip
    

Should weekly tips only be given to people whose work I use weekly? If so,
then yes, I agree that $0.25/week is not a good tip.

But what about the person whose Emacs config files I read at GitHub and found
somewhat informative? And what about the person whose personal wiki (e.g., Org
Mode files) I read at GitHub and found somewhat informative? Should I give
these people good one-time tips instead of small weekly tips? Maybe I should,
but I think I'd like to have the option to give them small weekly tips. Or is
there some reason I shouldn't have this option?

~~~
whit537
I'd like to see someone address this.

~~~
whit537
Preferably on the (newly updated) GitHub ticket:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180>

:-)

------
patio11
Taking a cut of a transaction is a hard business to be in. Taking a cut of a
microtransaction is an astronomically harder business to be in. Taking a cut
of a microtransaction that has no reason to exist is even harder than that.

I sympathize that devs want ways to get paid for developing software, but they
exist, and they start with _charging money for developing software_ and not
futzing about with sub-latte level payments. Since you cannot meaningfully
improve a dev's life with sub-latte payments, you will not successfully create
a business on top of them.

~~~
patrickyeon
I cannot disagree with you, and I'm not about to say "but this time it's
different, it's all about the long tail!" I just want to point out, I don't
think whit537 is in the business of taking cuts of transactions[0]. He's very
much dogfooding here[1], and I would hazard a guess that whether gittip
survives or not will depend on whether people like it enough to make it viable
for whit537 to pay himself.

0:
[https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/95#issuecom...](https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/95#issuecomment-6743996)

1: <https://www.gittip.com/whit537/>

~~~
whit537
Amen amen.

------
reginaldo
I know a guy working on a related idea. Instead of funding people, his system
works by funding issues. The link is <http://www.freedomsponsors.org>

The workflow, as I understand it, goes something like that:

1) There's an issue on a project you use that's getting no love.

2) You go to freedomsponsors register that you'd like some issue solved, so
much that you'd be willing to put your money where your mouth is. Also, you'll
probably want to put a link to freedomsponsors on the project's issue tracker.

3) When one or more people solve the issue, the sponsor pays them (if more
than one person has worked on the issue, the sponsor can distribute the money
in anyways).

~~~
esbwhat
so basically sort of a reverse kickstarter for open source. That's brilliant.
I love it.

I would sponsor someone fixing moving selections in gimp. I cannot figure out
how to do it. There has to be a more intuitive method.

~~~
reginaldo
I'll tell him to put a giant Sponsor button on every screen.

First you'll have to click the tiny "Login with google" button in the upper
right corner, then the "Sponsor new issue" button. Then you paste the link to
the original issue. After that, the site will guide you a little bit better.

~~~
esbwhat
is there a way to sign up for an account, or is that planned? I don't like
signing into things with google/whatever

~~~
tonylampada
We will add more ways to signup: facebook, twitter, yahoo and github, at
least.

I'm not a big fan of owning users' passwords, so unless people really really
ask for it, we probably won't add a "create login/pass" functionality. Also,
there is the concept of reputation - Sponsors that pay their offers as
promised will have good reputation. For reputation to mean something, we need
to know something about the user, and I believe linking with a social account
is our best option for that.

Anyway, talking about FreedomSponsors on GitTip's thread is probably not good
for MY reputation here on HackerNews (right? I don't really know, I just
signed up). So I'm gonna create a new topic and answer questions there...

Thanks for your insterest!

~~~
18pfsmt
What about using Mozilla's Persona (formally BrowserID), instead of those
commercial services you mentioned?

~~~
tonylampada
I didn't know about that untill now. I'll look more into it. But the main idea
behind the way accounts work on FS is that the user should have some sort of
online presence before he can sign up.

So if Mozilla's Persona doesn't offer a way for the user to publish some sort
of online profile, then we probably won't add it as a primary form of signing
up on FS. Linking an existing account to authenticate later is ok. But we do
want to make it more difficult to create completely "anonymous" profiles. At
least that's our thinking today anyway.

------
thaumaturgy
This is going to sound pretty lame, but I've been suffering from a severe case
of Signup Fatigue recently. My business has been doing pretty well so I'd be
OK with committing to a weekly debit to my business card, but I don't have a
GitHub account and Signup Fatigue is preventing me from setting one up just to
give money to people.

Am I being excessively whiny? Are there any plans to not require a GitHub
account to give people a little money?

Really neat effort, I hope it continues to take off.

~~~
fromhet
Why not Flattr?

~~~
atroche
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239336>

------
ricardobeat
Those 319 people (74%) are contributing only $79/month. If minimum
contribution was raised to US$1 it would generate more donations even if >60%
leave.

~~~
chrismdp
I'm kind in agreement about this. $0.25 a week really is tiny.

~~~
whit537
Hmmm ... for the record, here's the thinking that led to the current tip
structure:

[http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-
funding-...](http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-funding-
viable)

~~~
cemerick
FWIW, I'd love to see a $1.00 option added to the mix. 25¢ is too small, $3 is
too much, $1 is just right. :-)

~~~
mythz
Agreed, 25c is too small, min should be $1. Also I think the sweet spot is
between $1-6, IMO there should be multiple options in the middle here.

~~~
ricardobeat
Yeah, the current pricing jumps from $1 to $12 a month, $1 to $4 is $4-$24,
quite a gap. Honestly, I'd also prefer monthly contributions, thinking in week
increments is an american thing. Credit card statements and salaries come in
monthly for most of the world, I think.

------
pbiggar
All the people telling you to increase the price are right, and then some. So
some advice:

\- dont focus so much on the individual developers, focus more on getting
money in the system. You want to know how best to help an individual
developer? It's by having lots of users, and lots of money.

\- first way you can help do this is by having a minimum monthly charge. I pay
$150 a month on a database. I pay 4 digits worth of EC2 bills. I can afford a
$10 minimum.

\- 2nd way is to strongly focus on enterprise plans. For $1000 a month, you
get a big giant banner add on gittip, that everyone else sees every time they
add a tip or receive one, or play with their settings.

\- dont make people spend the whole thing - distribute the excess to the
developers that others have chosen, in proportion to how popular they are. Or
use it to highlight projects you like, or projects for people who contribute
money, or something like that.

Stop focussing on the low end - bump up that price, and who cares if it's too
expensive for some people. Giving $0.25 isn't charity - its actually costing
you money.

~~~
whit537
A +1 added to <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180>

> minimum monthly charge

Newly ticketed: <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/185>

> strongly focus on enterprise plans

Existing ticket: <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/106>

> distribute the excess

Similar existing ticket:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/93>

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the feedback. :-)

~~~
pbiggar
No problem. You're doing something cool, great job!

~~~
whit537
:-)

------
citricsquid
The stats page should have permalinks for each week so that if someone clicks
on this HN submission in 1 month they can see the intended stats, not the
latest.

~~~
whit537
Agreed. Just in case, here are some quick numbers so far, for the record:

Week 1: $24.80 / 12 people

Week 2: $4.24 / 7 *

Week 3: $30.08 / 19

Week 4: $110.64 / 44

Week 5: $379.56 / 71

Week 6: $615.66 / 98

Week 7: $600.99 / 110

As you can see, we slowed this past week, to be honest. Looking for advice on
getting back to ~doubling each week. :-)

* In week 2 our payment processor died. We were expecting $55 / 26. See also:

[http://blog.gittip.com/post/25565694263/how-not-to-get-
acqui...](http://blog.gittip.com/post/25565694263/how-not-to-get-acquired)

~~~
cemerick
_As you can see, we slowed this past week, to be honest. Looking for advice on
getting back to ~doubling each week. :-)_

I'm afraid you're probably going to be looking at a plateau until you can get
the payments thing straightened out permanently so that recipients can depend
on getting an ACH every Friday (or Monday, whatever). Closing that loop will
instantly motivate every open source hacker to put a "Help fund my work @
Gittip" button everywhere. Bummer the BalancedPayments option didn't pan out.

~~~
shawnee_
_Bummer the BalancedPayments option didn't pan out._

It's panning out; we're in the process of helping him with the integration.

Also, the "once a week" payout period is unique to Gittip's model (maybe
because Stripe requires a 7-day wait?). With Balanced, a marketplace can pay
out as frequently as it's earning: even daily. So that's an option Gittip can
consider in the future.

~~~
cemerick
Ah, sorry; last I saw, he was heading towards Braintree with a a 6-month
horizon for the various merchant account approvals, etc. I hope the current
path works out. :-)

~~~
whit537
Yes, new cards are going into Balanced as of this morning. Hoping to implement
payouts for people in the US in the next week or two:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/22>

------
kmfrk
This is really cool. I look forwarding to support people in the Django
community who make invaluable apps through this.

I would prefer if I could reward people for specific repos, though. Otherwise
people, myself included, will probably be clueless why I am receiving money,
and as a result it won't create an incentive to improve a particular product.

The text could read.

    
    
        Hey, I just met you,
        And this is crazy,
        But here's my money,
        So keep working on django-registration maybe.

~~~
emddudley
I like the fact that the donations are per individual, rather than per
project. It gives the recipients the freedom to explore other opportunities,
rather than tying them down to their one popular project.

~~~
kmfrk
I just want it there as an optional addition. People should totally be able to
donate to the general GitHub account.

------
veyron
What exactly are the economics of sub-dollar charges? I'd imagine the CC
charges exceed donation amount

~~~
a-priori
Gittip charges fees of $0.30 + 3.9%. They say that they use Balanced Payments,
which charges $0.30 + 2.9%, so Gittip is taking a 1% commission on all money
that enters the system.

For the sub-dollar charges, keep in mind that the fees are levied for the
_sum_ of your tips (assuming no one tips you). So if you only tip one person
$0.25 then it's highly inefficient, mostly a 'tip' for the credit card
companies.

At 1x$0.25 tips, this structure has an effective overhead of 124.9%; at 10
tips its overhead is 15.9%; at 100 tips, it's 5.1%; and at 1000 tips it's
4.0%.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
One solution would be for Gittip to implement something like an account
balance. Say I charge my Gittip Wallet with $25 seed money. My CC gets charged
$25 + $.30 + 3.9% ($26.07). I set up $1.75/week of tips to various people. My
Gittip Wallet gets dinged $1.75 per week for 14 weeks ($24.50). On week 15
when it comes time to give my $1.75, my Gittip Wallet is too low. So it gets
another $25 bump (my CC gets hit with another $26.07) and we're good to go for
a bit. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Make the auto-bump amount a user selection in case
someone is gifting $30 a week, they could auto-bump at say $100 a pop.

Edit: Also, if I understand correctly, if I am getting tips, that would also
go into the same wallet. So in theory the tips I receive would extend the
amount of time between auto-bumps. Or not at all if I'm getting more than I am
giving.

~~~
vonmoltke
That's exactly how the electronic tolling plans I am familiar with work, which
is what makes them cost effective.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
yes. In SF Bay Area we have FasTrak for bridge/road tolls. Clipper card for
public transit. For each, you keep some balance in your account that gets
depleted as used and is recharged as needed.

~~~
whit537
E-ZPass here in PA.

~~~
whit537
Ticket is: <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/167>.

------
debacle
This is good to hear. I'm cautiously optimistic about this project and hope we
see numbers grow a few orders of magnitude in the coming year.

~~~
whit537
:-)

------
md224
As the creator of FuckItJS, I have unfortunately fallen short of my
"$1,000,000.00 per week" goal

~~~
whit537
A little love, people! :-)

<https://www.gittip.com/mattdiamond/>

------
guscost
I suspect I'm not alone in saying this: If someone paid me, I'd be able to
contribute a lot more to open source projects. As it stands, I am inclined to
worry that sharing my source code will undermine my ability to make money
while writing it, and this might not be an ideal situation.

------
whit537
Gah! Title changing feels gross. :-(

Original: "After 7 weeks, 100+ people are funding open source devs $600/wk on
Gittip.com"

Problem: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013>

------
Killswitch
Awesome, I signed up, but how do I change my username? I don't want to use the
one supplied to me by logging in via Github.

~~~
whit537
Not supported atm, sorry. :-(

Ticketed: <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/181>

~~~
Killswitch
Chop chop! :P I'll keep an eye out. Thanks.

------
suyash
Thanks for this tool, I prefer this over Paypal donation! (thanks for all the
tips in advance :) <https://www.gittip.com/suyashjoshi/>

------
fromhet
Excuse me, but I don't understand why anyone would use this instead of flattr?
Sorry for sounding blatant, but havent they got this micro-donation thing
going quite well?

~~~
whit537
Here's my take: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239336>

------
ronnix
I like this, and I just signed up! Do you think tipping is something that
GitHub might want to add as a core feature of their web site?

~~~
whit537
Can't speak for GitHub, of course. They did try an experiment with Pledgie a
few years back, but that fizzled:

<https://github.com/blog/57-getting-paid-the-open-source-way/>

------
wildmXranat
Signed up for fun! I still don't see the tip buttons once I show a widget to a
viewer.

~~~
whit537
Hmmm ... example I can look at?

~~~
whit537
P.S. Started a ticket to track this:
<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/177>

------
gbrindisi
Do you support organizations?

~~~
whit537
Short answer: No.

Long answer: Trying to figure out the best way to do that. See:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/27>

~~~
mythz
I would also like to see Organization support. i.e. 1 payment destination to
fund the whole core team as they see fit.

~~~
whit537
I've added +2 to the ticket.

