
Why We're Supporting Gittip - cliftonmckinney
http://workforpie.posterous.com/why-were-supporting-gittip-12292
======
aaron-lebo
disclaimer: I say this having my own somewhat "competing" site in the oss
crowdfunding area, though it is new and frankly unused. I'll give out the link
if anyone is interested, but it seems poor form to do so directly in this
comment.

I like the gist of gittip: giving hackers a way to write open source code
while still making a living. That is ideal to me, and crowdfunding works for
oss because oss has a return on investment for everyone.

I just have a hard time seeing how gittip will break an initial interest
plateau. Traditional crowdfunding has worked for a few projects because there
is an exact "you are getting this output for this input". With gittip it is
much less obvious. I can donate an amount each week to a person, but there's
nothing attached as to how that should be used for either side. The giver
might expect a certain result, but the recipient doesn't know what that is or
why they are receiving it.

Not to mention there is the issue where of what if a receiver wants to take a
month off? The people who are giving do so because they expect something in
return, and either the receiver is tied to that nebulous expectation of
production, or they can take a break and risk losing whatever funding they
received before and the resulting need to build that up again.

I just don't see how that can scale beyond a small, very interested audience.
I feel we need the hard goals which say "if you give me this, I'll give you
this". These goals give more concrete deadlines and expectations and probably
are more likely to drive results.

But hey, anything in this area is encouraging and it will be interesting to
see where gittip goes.

~~~
whit537
"The people who are giving do so because they expect something in return."

I believe they don't. Gift tips have no strings attached on either side. It's
like employment at will, where either party is free to call it off at any
time.

"[E]ither the receiver is tied to that nebulous expectation of production, or
they can take a break and risk losing whatever funding they received before
and the resulting need to build that up again."

I think it's a matter of telling your story openly and transparently. If
people see me working productively for a year and then I blog about how I'm
burned out and plan to take a break for a month, I would expect my funders to
understand and not totally bail on me. I mean, I could set up visits around
the country and have a nice vacation and still keep the story rolling. If I'm
finding my living on Gittip I have to have a relationship with my anonymous
funders and trust them. The Internet lets us have a relationship with the
anonymous crowd.

Gittip wants to make it easier for receivers to tell their story. See:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/133>

This is really WFP's thread, but I'm interested in seeing your site.

~~~
aaron-lebo
I believe you when you and others say they don't expect specific results and
no-strings attached, I just feel like it is human nature that when we give
something of value, particularly money, we expect something in return. That's
because money is inherently tied up into the idea that you get something of
value for it. I'm not sure you can really break that. Perhaps it is a non-
issue in practice.

The site is <http://www.kodefund.com>. It is somewhat of a Kickstarter only
for open source projects, and you can also do a "reverse" project which helps
you to get both funding and someone else to work on your idea, whether a
library or bug fix or whatever. I've tried to further distill some of the
ideas here: <http://www.kodefund.com/about/>. I agree that it is someone
else's thread, so that is the last time I'll link it here.

I do like your open dev model. It is interesting to see problems so quickly
turn into issues that anyone can work on.

~~~
whit537
(I'm getting a DNS error?)

~~~
aaron-lebo
Strange.

I've had users sign-up, I've had someone say it works on the Google DNS, but
you aren't the first with DNS errors. I'm hosting it on gandi's DNS, I wonder
what I'm not doing right.

~~~
bdash
I think this is because an A record query for www.kodefund.com returns
multiple CNAME records, which is not compliant with the DNS specification:

    
    
        mrowe@vega:~$ dig A www.kodefund.com @a.dns.gandi.net
        
        ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> A www.kodefund.com @a.dns.gandi.net
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53562
        ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
        ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
        
        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;www.kodefund.com.		IN	A
        
        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        www.kodefund.com.	10800	IN	CNAME	intense-ocean-3642.herokuapp.com.
        www.kodefund.com.	10800	IN	CNAME	mie-9107.herokussl.com.
        
        ;; Query time: 125 msec
        ;; SERVER: 173.246.97.2#53(173.246.97.2)
        ;; WHEN: Sun Jul 29 16:47:59 2012
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 110
        

If I perform the same query via my system resolver rather than directly
against the gandi.net DNS servers then I simply receive no result:

    
    
        mrowe@vega:~$ dig A www.kodefund.com
        
        ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> A www.kodefund.com
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 36608
        ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
        
        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;www.kodefund.com.		IN	A
        
        ;; Query time: 1306 msec
        ;; SERVER: 192.168.1.254#53(192.168.1.254)
        ;; WHEN: Sun Jul 29 16:48:58 2012
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 34
        
    

This is presumably because one of the intermediate resolver is being strict
about the presence of multiple CNAMEs in the result.

------
rgbrgb
Hey. Quick tip: I knew what gittip was in the first sentence. But what is Work
for Pie? There's no mention of that on the blog so I clicked the link. It
sounds a lot like github but you can sign in with github? Pretty confused.

~~~
cliftonmckinney
Ha! Good point. Wanted to take the emphasis off of us for a bit, but I
understand the confusion.

Work for Pie is a community for software developers--and especially for
developers who contribute to open source software. Joining gets you two
things: a portfolio, and a score. Portfolio puts the emphasis on open source
work, and score is based on _meaningful_ participation in dev-centric
communities (right now Github, Bitbucket, Stack Overflow, and Hacker News with
more coming).

In the future we'll be doing a couple things:

1) Making it easier for developers to connect with like-minded individuals

2) Making it easier for developers to discover great companies without the
pressure that comes from working with outside recruiters or the frustration
that comes from searching the job boards. We'll be sure to do a Show HN what
that stuff is ready.

Thanks for asking! Feedback is welcome and encouraged cliff (at)
workforpie.com

------
dinkumthinkum
I just don't see how anyone is going to get a sustainable, recurring income
out of Gittip. But give it a shot I guess.

~~~
aaron-lebo
That's another issue I see with the project. Since these are recurring
donations, you can never really count on them. I suppose you can't "count" on
keeping a job either, but if you are expecting $60,000 a year to keep your
lifestyle up and someone drops out donating for whatever reason, you are in
trouble. You can't depend on it the way you would job or an up-front donation.

I'm sounding too critical. I really do like what is being attempted here,
there just are hard barriers.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Not too critical and there is a world of difference between hope Joe
Benefactor keeps shelling out his $100 a week (and then depending on 20 of
them) and having pay check like the rest of the world.

