

I Believe in Gittip - jordanmessina
http://blog.gittip.com/post/27072581481/i-believe-in-gittip

======
radarsat1
Please make it accept bitcoin. No, seriously.

If you convert the bitcoins to cash automatically on reception I don't see any
issues with people's confidence in the currency -- it just transparently
becomes a payment vector for real dollars that automatically get exchanged via
mtgox or whatever.

I really look forward to the day when I can just toss a few bitcoins towards
programmers or musicians on the internet. Right now, signing up my credit card
for every website I want to interact with is just not going to happen, and
Paypal isn't an option for me either.

I wish services like bandcamp and things like bug bounties and the like
allowed me to just throw some coins their way, but instead there's this whole
complicated credit system with one or more third parties to deal with, and
it's annoying. I hate typing my CC number into every damn website I want to
make a microtransaction with.

Personally I don't know or care whether bitcoin will _transform world
economics_ the way some people predict, but I _do_ think it's a pretty
convenient way to deal with internet transactions, even if it's just used as a
temporary medium for real currency. This kind of thing, in all honesty, is its
"killer app."

~~~
whit537
I'm not opposed to accepting bitcoin if it's transparent as you describe. As
krasin mentions the recurring thing is a sticking point. Here's the ticket:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/14>

~~~
radarsat1
Thanks. Some pretty interesting discussion on that bug actually. Although I
think it wouldn't be too hard to rig up yourself, I have to agree with the guy
who suggests just hooking up with a 3rd-party bitcoin payment processor--it
might make things easier and more similar to handling other currencies.

------
kiba
About doing what you really want and getting an income: sometime they don't
mix well.

Right now, I am just building projects on whatever I felt like doing. Some are
no doubt, useful to everybody else. However, the rest may be just be
interesting only to me or solve a problem that is unique only to me.

Do I know where I will get my money? No clues. However, it been a blast for
me, personally. I learn a few tech such as meteor.js and how to develop chrome
extensions, although I really want greybeard knowledge(algorithms, debugging,
and other core skills), not the latest fad.

~~~
whit537
Yeah, it's about making the world better on your terms. I think the crowd can
be a better proxy of value to society than the corporation.

~~~
kiba
You will still need to market yourself to the crowd and find work that you
like but that the crowd will fund.

Some passions, no doubt, will not be rewarded.

~~~
whit537
Very, very true.

------
reedlaw
I applaud his courage, but leaving a job for $115.73 per week seems a bit
risky. Maybe if this concept was combined with something like Kickstarter it
would be more effective. E.g. you create an open-source project and pledge to
continue development on it as long as your Gittip payments stay above a
certain threshold.

~~~
nollidge
> In the mean time, I will be looking for about 50 hours a month of contract
> work to stay afloat

------
chubot
I like the idea of Gittip, and I have definitely thought about the problem of
how society can encourage things that benefit it (i.e. open source software).

I had a bad experience with Gittip though. I tried to tip you. It said sign in
with github, so I did. Then I go back. I tried to tip you again, and it said
there was an error. Then I clicked "back with a credit card". And it says I
need to sign in with github to add a credit card. But it already says I'm
signed in as my user name in the upper right corner. So something is wrong.

Also I think it would be better to allow one-time payments too. I just wanted
to try your system but I wasn't committed to making a recurring payment. I was
going to cancel it after I tried it. I would have been fine with a one-time
payment.

~~~
whit537
On the one-time payments issue, see:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/113>

The short story is that Gittip is targeted at funders, and the current wisdom
is that one-off payments would erode confidence in the stability of one's
funding stream. Yes, you can do what you were planning to do, pay for a week
and then cancel, but Gittip doesn't want to optimize for that, I don't think.

~~~
aarlo
Why are you targeting for "funders" (I think you mean the people getting
paid)?

In general, getting the money into systems is the hard part. If money is
there, people will come - easy! Getting people to give money - whether to a
company or for donations - that's hard!

Also, frankly, this is a nice proposition from the POV of the "funders". You
seem to have built it for yourself. But, the value for the donors? Sounds like
a tough sell.

So making donors happy is most important. Without them you're toast. With them
you can AT LEAST support yourself, if nothing else :)

~~~
whit537
The value for donors is "the feeling of participation in someone else's story"
(quote from Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley[0]). It's up to recipients to tell
a compelling story with their life. That's what's going to get money into the
system. Tell me a story!

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-
po...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-power-and-
the-peril-of-our-crowdfunded-future/259304/)

------
rlpb
How does this compare with Flattr? It may be slightly different, but is it
sufficiently different?

~~~
whit537
Flattr is for content. Gittip is for people.

Flattr is optimized for making tippers feel good. Gittip is optimized for
making tippees a living.

Flattr takes a 10% cut. Gittip is drinking its own whiskey.

~~~
rlpb
Thanks. I understood all of this from the website. Can you be more specific?

> Flattr is for content. Gittip is for people.

> Flattr is optimized for making tippers feel good. Gittip is optimized for
> making tippees a living.

What is stopping me from using Flattr for myself? Am I stopped from putting a
Flattr thing on my own general personal home page? Am I going to get more
money from Gittip over Flattr, and why? Rather than telling me what Gittip is
aimed at, can you tell me specifically _what_ Gittip is doing better here?
Anything tangible?

~~~
whit537
I don't believe anything is stopping you from using Flattr.

I don't believe you are stopped from putting Flattr on your home page.

I don't have enough data to say whether you're going to get more money from
Gittip over Flattr. I don't have data for Flattr because they're not
transparent about who makes a living on their site. I'd love to see data if
you have it; I've only been able to find a few anecdotes:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://tim.geekheim....](http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://tim.geekheim.de/2012/05/01/zwei-
jahre-flattr/)

[http://www.quora.com/Flattr/Have-any-bloggers-used-Flattr-
to...](http://www.quora.com/Flattr/Have-any-bloggers-used-Flattr-to-pull-
income-in)

I don't have data for Gittip because it's only a month old. That said, Gittip
is much more transparent than Flattr. On the Flattr homepage
(<http://flattr.com/>) I see one piece of data: "Flattr clicks so far:
1,055,458." That doesn't tell me anything about who's making a living on
Flattr. A little digging uncovers this Toplist:

<http://flattr.com/catalog/everything/toplist>

There I see that the top ... 30(?) projects have received between 919 and
5,184 "flattrs." When I click on the top project, WikiLeaks' Afghanistan War
Diaries, I'm told it has "10 145 flattrs received from 4169 people." I'm not
sure how this relates to the 5,184 flattrs mentioned on the Toplist. Whether
it's 5,184 or 10,145, I'm not able to find a conversion rate to a real
currency, such as euros or dollars. From reading the About page and the FAQ,
it sounds like there's actually an inverse correlation, since more flattrs
mean each recipient receives a smaller slice of each budget. Moreover, I don't
know how many individual people and which ones are behind a project. Are those
5k or 10k flattrs shared amongst 10 people or two? Who are these people? How
much do they _want_ to receive?

Gittip is more transparent about who's giving and receiving what, and why.
Sure, the design isn't very fancy compared to Flattr. But there's data right
front and center on the homepage, and it's in a real currency, dollars. When I
click through to an account, I see a statement about what that person is doing
to improve the world, and their personal funding goal. I can compare their
goal with their current level of funding.

Personally, I'm not interested in playing games with fake currency. Let's move
real money for real.

You glossed over the fact that I'm drinking my own whiskey, which I see as a
crucial difference. I actually find it a little distasteful that Flattr takes
a 10% cut. If the Flattr developers believe in Flattr, why don't they make
their living using Flattr? TipTheWeb strikes me as a more self-consistent
implementation of the "one-off tips for content" idea, in that they represent
themselves as being a non-profit "supported by Tips from our users":

<http://tiptheweb.org/>

But, of course, Gittip is not about one-off tips for content. Gittip is about
sustaining people who are telling a compelling story with their life. Tell me
a story!

~~~
VoxPelli
As a former Flattr developer my impression is that Flattr's lack of focus on
hard numbers is due to one of its core values when it was founded - that all
flattrs are equal and should be treated as such - that a flattr doesn't just
represent the number of euros given but more so represents the act of giving
in itself and that that's what important about it and that the actual size of
the donation is secondary as that is dependent on so many factors like the
givers personal economical status and such.

As long as people feel comfortable with what they are giving away and
recievers feel comfortable with what they are recieving then how much each
individual is giving is pretty irrelevant.

Flattr would never reveal any numbers about their users' economy as Flattr
very much values, respects and sees the importance in their users' privacy.
It's of course always lovely to see users share stories about how they are
using Flattr in different ways, but the telling of such stories should be up
to the users – Flattr should stay out of that business and instead focus
solely on just making such stories possible.

Regarding fees, I think the Pinboard blog makes a great case for why they
should exist: <http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/> Apart
from that I also think that micropayment services are a bit like what Steve
Jobs described Dropbox as: "a feature, not a product" Features are embedded
into products and are not something you pay for separately. Flattr isn't the
goal – it's the means to realize the goals – it's the goals, the "products",
that people want and it's they that will be flattred and it's they that should
be flattred.

------
bryanp
He's proven his belief in the product by taking a stand. This is already more
than most could hope to do. For that I offer my applause. If this isn't a next
big thing, it at least offers a life changing mindset. For that I offer my
thanks.

~~~
whit537
:^)

------
Kliment
So what are the restrictions on getting money out?

That's a major concern to me. You say you handle them manually, but do you
have restrictions on how much money can be paid out, what country the
recipient may be resident in, etc?

~~~
whit537
Here's the ticket for implementing automatic payouts:

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

Balanced Payments is contributing code for integrating with their service. I'm
hoping to have this rolled out in the next week or two. Balanced can only
underwrite payees in the US. Hopefully we'll start seeing support for Canada,
UK, and Europe in 2013.

Gittip itself has no a priori restrictions. You can withdraw your full balance
less processing fees at any time. If we can't find a way to get you your money
automatically then I'll write you a check and put it in the mail. Or PayPal
it. Or whatever.

------
wildmXranat
So Gittip is a recurring donation platform for Github authors ?

~~~
kingkilr
Pretty much, yes.

~~~
whit537
I want to expand it beyond GitHub, but yes.

~~~
zalew
+1 on expanding. making github-only tools when they could as well work in a
more generic way is a bit ridiculous.

~~~
whit537
Hey, cut me some slack! This is only a month old and I had to start somewhere.
Here's the ticket for opening up:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/80>

~~~
zalew
chill, it was more of a friendly pat on the back than a slap in the face. you
made a good decision to generalize it so soon, kudos.

~~~
whit537
:^)

------
rpwilcox
Eating your own dogfood: an excellent idea :)

~~~
whit537
Can it be drinking my own whiskey instead?

I guess if I want it to be that I'd better make some whiskey. Hmm ... ;-)

~~~
_ak
my previous managers always talked about "drinking your own champagne"...

~~~
hoprocker
He's probably not putting a cork in it.

------
austinlyons
can you use dwolla to reduce your costs?

<http://developers.dwolla.com/bd/why>

