What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoin is more like cultural revolution. It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach, but surely the Bitcoin revolutionists like to place themselves above the rest, and don't see themselves as a part of the "old" world (legal, financial system etc.).
For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]".
I don't think the second part of your comment is correct and the fact that this situation about tip4commit and discussions around it makes it to seam correct forces me to dislike it [tip4commit] even more. I mean, there isn't really "two armies" fighting each other: "old world" vs "bitcoin-ish world" with completely polar ideologies, there's no black and white. So when someone on one side is doing some ridiculous nonsense it doesn't make the other side automatically "the right one" and vice versa. Even not being part of Bitcoin community I personally think there's quite real need in "cultural revolution" of some sort, because what you are calling the "old world" isn't really "old" one as you surely understand yourself: it's quite significant part of the only world we are living in, and it is as full with nonsense as the "new, revolutionary" one.
I mean, there truly is quite a lot things that one can disagree with about the "old" world, maybe even somewhat forcefully, in "Gandhi's way" rather than "Kant's way". So when somebody associated with the "new" world behaves stupid he causes much more harm for the supporters of all kind of "cultural revolutions", because makes them look like a bunch of idiots no matter how different from each other their actual beliefs and reasoning may be.
I do feel some sort of kinship here with the Bitcoin attitude, but it's worth remembering that readability pulled an (arguably worse) version of this stunt in the past few years, and were called out as scumbags for it. No Bitcoin in that story.
>It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach
A currency only works if people use it. A good way to support bitcoin is to expand adoption. It seems to me that the creators of tip4commit have blinders on and only view the project through bitcoin colored glasses.
The issue as I see it is that the bitcoin movement mirrors the technology's decentralized nature. There is a general optimism and push towards adoption, but no real methods or direction towards that goal. It's a rather organic, evolving system. Things that have helped adoption have been repeated and things that cause a backlash are squashed and learned from. The latter is what I would say is happening here.
The non-sketchy version of this would only accept tips for repos that had a bitcoin address committed to a well-known location in their repo. And it would send the tips directly to that address. No possibility of scamming, and opt-in by its nature.
Or maybe it's just a cool hackathon project using Bitcoin and the Github APIs...
Seriously, what is the big deal with this? The developers are more than able to simply ignore the donations. Anyone who wasted time complaining in that Github thread could have clicked "mark as spam" in a fraction of the time and been done with it.
I think you were probably referring to my comment - and for what it's worth, I'm thinking you're absolutely correct about it being a cultural difference.
The Bitcoin community is made up of predominately radical libertarians; I say that with the utmost respect, as I consider myself part of that very group. The culture is very different from that of the Python community - and one of those ways is that it is often acceptable to alienate a portion of your potential userbase.
I do not normally rant, but tip4commit and its ilk are some of the most infuriating people in the world to deal with, since they're opting other people's projects into something that has all sorts of legal/taxation consequences and think that "we have no way to remove you once you get opted in" is an acceptable answer.
I'd push complaints further up to GitHub, since I'm sure something in the way this works violates their ToS, but ultimately that wouldn't do anything except cause them to self-host their code and keep running the "service".
How can there be taxation consequences unless you act to set up a bitcoin address and accept the offered tip? If you've done all that, I think it's clear you know what you're doing. If you don't do that, then the money (apparently?) returns to the project you committed to, from whence it came.
The only way there could be tax is if you receive the money, and that can only happen by you deliberately becoming involved.
Set aside the legal/tax questions since it just brings out the armchair lawyers.
It is simply not cool to use a project's name to collect money from its fans without their permission. And without any promise that the money will make it to the intended recipient. And certainly without any indication of what happens to the money that doesn't make it to the recipient.
Maybe contacting their hosting provider could be an additional way to approach the problem, since, from what I can tell, the messages they send to contributors are spam.
This is the OSS crowd-funding/tipping equivalent of GetSatisfaction and UserVoice. Both started as service-desk/bug-tracking platforms that included the software of completely unaffiliated companies but have morphed into customer engagement platforms as SaaS.
Those projects are in the public domain. If there are purposes that you don't want your project to be used for then forbid it in the license. When you put your contact information in the public domain and then complain about being notified when somebody has given you money, I feel like you're complaining just for the sake of complaining. Set up filter rules or don't put your contact information on the internet.
If I was denied the chance to receive a donation for a contribution I made to an open source project essentially because the "project owner" doesn't agree then I'd be very annoyed.
I'm confused to why this project is a good idea. It seems like they are collecting funds on behalf of a third party without that third parties consent and then distributing those funds, again without third parties knowledge or consent.
As much as the project seems to have good intentions, insisting that It's BitCoin, BitCoin is different doesn't mean your product is actually exempt from rules and law. Or that Bitcoin is all that different.
There is no reason someone couldn't build a similar project using traditional currency. But then they would run afoul of the many laws designed to protect depositors, investors, and the financial system writ-large. As someone remarks in TFA, holding the amount of currency on ones balance sheets this project would, if successful, is a terrible idea. It's ripe for fraud and abuse. There is a reason services like Gittip assist in transferring fund, and act as the debiter and depositor.
This whole thing is emblematic of the problems with Bitcoin culture, which seems to think it doesn't have to follow any of the rules. Sorry lads, if Bitcoin is currency, you have to behave like banks and investment firms if you are going to act like banks and investment firms.
I think that the project is a bad idea because you can't impersonate me and take donations in my name without my consent, no matter which currency is being used.
> What happens to unclaimed tips (if recipient doesn't sign in and specify his/her bitcoin address)?
Funds that are not claimed during 30 days get returned back to the project.
Presumably "the project" in the answer refers to tip4commit? If so, isn't tip4commit committing fraud by advertising that tips go to the intended recipient, when in fact, if the recipient does not participate, they go into tip4commit's coffers?
(Or is "the project" a mistake and should read "the donor"?)
Please send donations for the Django project directly to me. Once the donations accumulate to more than $3000, I will email the Django developers, requesting that they come get the donations.
<whisper>And if the Django project doesn't come get the donations within 30 days, we don't tell you what happens to the donations. What happens to the money, if its not claimed, may (or may not) go against the wishes of yourself or the Django developers (that we're collecting money on behalf of, without permission). Also, sending these donations exposes the developers to serious legal consequences.</whisper>
A few things I found about tip4commit by searching through reddit:
- 4 months ago Bitcoin Core was happy to raise 1.8BTC in two days using tip4commit [0], but today's comment [1] signals they are not happy with tip4commit, because it encourages submitting large number of small commits
- an IT World article about 40% donations being unclaimed [2] (1.384BTC)
- "we discovered a security breach" [3]
- OpenBazaar, a fork of Dark Market, a market for drugs, encourages to make donations using tip4commit [4]
- "Tip4Coin donations look like they are stolen" [5]
Unfortunately it looks like a typical Bitcoin project - naivety of the authors, in terms of technical and legal matters, plus douchebag attitude (ignoring others, even if they are owners of things they profit from), plus shady entities benefiting from them.
First, I want to apologize. We have received a lot of negative feedback suddenly and I can assure you that we take it seriously.
I temporary disabled ALL the email notifications (even though I don't think they were a real problem) and added a warning that we are not affiliated with project owners. When my teammate is online he will probably also some of the other issues.
Perhaps some people just misunderstand the project and hate it.
Also I think that it is normal that developers try to understand the motivation of users and ask questions in order to find a better solution, please don't take it as offence or reluctance to change.
We are going to resolve every issue or close the project.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but tip4commit is a poisonous project that does more harm than good. You should shut the whole thing down.
Providing monetary incentives gamifies the development process, which is not a good thing. It has been shown that providing monetary incentives below a threshold decreases both the quality and quantity of contributions. For more information about this I suggest reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.
Tip4commit was started for the bitcoin project. I'm a bitcoin developer. We don't like tip4commit. What results in practice is that we end up with ill-formed, poorly thought out, excessively large, trivial, time wasting pull requests to review, which takes time away from beneficial development.
Your service is not helping open source software. It is hurting it. You are paying people to provide distractions which slow down development. Please stop.
The point of your service as it stands right now is that people give you money in exchange for a promise to make it reach other people, who have no idea that you are collecting it on their behalf. If you can not reach them, this money remains with you (as the "donation pool" is under your control). You are very likely to run into legal trouble beause of this, sooner rather than later, so IMHO it is in your best interest to stop the service in its current form.
You have to work with the community rather than against it. If there are maintainers out there that really want this, collaborate with them and grow from there.
The objection is you're committing fraud. You're soliciting 'donations' for a third party (everyone committing to a project) without their consent. Unbeknownst to the donaters you're then keeping these 'donations' because the third-party has no interest in taking them. This is pretty shaky ground to be on, and it only takes one person to decide to take legal action against you.
You could have avoided the entire controversy by taking the entirely reasonable step of honoring the initial request to be opted out.
I think sticking with opt-out is ok since it will be the difference in having a million projects or 3 projects. But, it means you have to be more considerate of the project owners requests. Thinking that the emails "weren't that bad" is more evidence that you aren't listening very well.
I don't know if this happens often but I would like to take a moment and point out that after hearing a strong negative reaponse, It's nice to see that the developer is willing to work through the problems with the community to change his/her project to a better state.
These "funding" schemes keep popping up in different contexts. Journalism attracted a bunch of these schemes 5 to 10 years ago. Consider what Mike Krahulik said about Kachingle:
"you can't just start collecting money for me without some kind of deal."
Kachingle was an extreme case, gathering "donations" for sites like Wikipedia, Google News, and also small sites like Mike Krahulik's. Using this approach on Github is just a new variation on an old scam. As someone else said in that same thread:
"that is the weirdest creepiest business model ever."
I really don't understand the hate and anger that seems to be being directed at the developer, in particular the constant stream of assertions that the project is a scam, fraudulent, and created with the intent of cashing out with everyone's donations after pretending to be 'hacked'. It seems like this sort of accusation is more likely to be a cause for legal action _by_ @arsenische rather than the flimsy pretexts for legal action _against_ them. The developer seems to have created this during a hackathon as a fun little project demonstrating what can be achieved using the GitHub APIs and Bitcoin; I'm quite impressed at the end result, to be honest. I don't have any real need for the service, since my employer pays for me to work on open source projects anyway, but if I was wanting to raise beer money from a side-project I don't see any reason not to consider it. As for the opt-in mechanism, it looks like they have resolved most of the issues, and many of the complainants have never interacted with the project until reading about it here - the number of complaints about SPAM and assertions of illegality are amazing, all from people who have never received an email from tip4commit. These days it seems laughable to complain about unsolicited email - perhaps it was a problem in the days of USENET when messages cost real money to deliver over expensive leased lines and dial-up connections, but today with filtering and cheap bandwidth it makes no sense...
tip4commit is one of a number of services which, without asking for permission or notifying you, opt your projects into a BitCoin-based crowdfunding system. Even if your project doesn't want it, even if your project has its own donation/support system you'd like to send people to.
Historically they spammed committers of force-opted-in repositories with an email on every commit to tell them what their new BTC donation balance was after the commit. And they insist that once a repository has been added to their system, they do not have the ability to remove it.
This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of, and the best they'll offer is to stop sending you an email every time you make a commit.
We (meaning the Django project) went a few rounds with them a while back and ultimately had to resort to threatening spam complaints against their ISP just to get the damn emails turned off. We still have been unable to get removed from the list of projects they "helpfully" collect donations for:
The link in this thread is another major developer also attempting to get his repositories removed from their "service", and being stonewalled just as we were.
If minimum donation was say $5 and it notified you one time when you had $25, I do see the people who this would bother being edge cases.
The tax thing is a good point, but I think it would be entirely reasonable and ethical to simply ignore any donations you got if you didn't want them, and not declare them. Perhaps Tip4Commit could auto forward any unclaimed tips to a charity if they are not claimed in a month.
Email spam is another good point, but if it was simply reduced to a one time email when you had accumulated $25 USD I don't see it as unreasonable.
If they implemented the above I'd probably defend them. Right now not so much perhaps, micro cents of tips and lots of emails are understandably pretty annoying.
They will accept donations on behalf of a YouTube channel (or Instagram, Soundcloud, etc.) whether the content creator opted in or not and release the fund when the creator claims his/her donations.
4 project currently listed under popcorn time.
Great, he just painted an extra bulls-eye on their heads beause now they're making money with the project. Food for lawyers.
The Django project has done their complaint the right way. They asked to be removed, voiced the reason why and then have threatened to open a complaint to the email provider, Mandril, for unsolicited email, i.e. spam. See here: https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111
This is probably the tactic that people should use for sites that do email mining and unsolicited emails. Good for them.
could someone explain the problem me? I'm not 100% on this service, and I'm not sure I follow the issues here (are they skimming from donations? Is that the problem? Most charities do...)
he says tip4commit is profiting off their project, but, it seems like they're just storing the money till the dev claims it, if he wants it.
Alternatively, what if I were to hypothetically state the following?:
I will give the dev who contributes a pull requests that fixes
this issue: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/issues/1092
10 dollars.
Have I commited an unfair act? Have I violated mitsuhiko in some way? Is the dev that claims this 10 dollars immoral? is mitsuhiko harmed?
I am honestly assuming I'm missing the intricacies here. Could someone explain?
Some countries have strict rules about soliciting or collecting donations.
People in those countries want to avoid the small possibility of legal trouble. They want to opt out of the project.
The project refuses to allow any form of optout.
This means that some people in some countries may have to sepnd time (and this money) talking to police and explaining what's going on.
Dumping this time + cost burden on someone else when they have specifically asked to avoid it is sub-optimal.
As an example of a group who were interviewed by police and who had to explain that their local group was not soliciting donations - the US parent group was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543640
There was another problem which has since been fixed. The project would send out an email when a tip had been donated, even when it was a tiny donation and even if the receiver was not able to withdraw that tip. This is unsolicited and probably bulk and thus meets the treshold for spam.
Finally it's not really clear what happens to the money. Say you're involved in $OpenSourceProject. Now imagine I donate a few US cents (but in bitcoin) to GhotiFish for a commit you made to $OpenSourceProject and you never collect it. This thread uas clarified that the money goes into a pool for $OpenSourceProject. But what if they never collect it?
Tl:dr get permission from people before you use their name or project-names in your stuff.
[+] [-] art2|11 years ago|reply
For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]".
[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...
[+] [-] mbesto|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krick|11 years ago|reply
I mean, there truly is quite a lot things that one can disagree with about the "old" world, maybe even somewhat forcefully, in "Gandhi's way" rather than "Kant's way". So when somebody associated with the "new" world behaves stupid he causes much more harm for the supporters of all kind of "cultural revolutions", because makes them look like a bunch of idiots no matter how different from each other their actual beliefs and reasoning may be.
[+] [-] hyperpape|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|11 years ago|reply
A currency only works if people use it. A good way to support bitcoin is to expand adoption. It seems to me that the creators of tip4commit have blinders on and only view the project through bitcoin colored glasses.
The issue as I see it is that the bitcoin movement mirrors the technology's decentralized nature. There is a general optimism and push towards adoption, but no real methods or direction towards that goal. It's a rather organic, evolving system. Things that have helped adoption have been repeated and things that cause a backlash are squashed and learned from. The latter is what I would say is happening here.
[+] [-] jchrisa|11 years ago|reply
Is there already something like this?
[+] [-] marcell|11 years ago|reply
Not true (anymore?). The top 3 comments are now:
- "I think [mitsuhiko] complaint is 120% fair..."
- "It seems like tip4commit is trying to ram a Bitcoin service down peoples throats..."
- "This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It's people being jerks..."
[+] [-] wyager|11 years ago|reply
Seriously, what is the big deal with this? The developers are more than able to simply ignore the donations. Anyone who wasted time complaining in that Github thread could have clicked "mark as spam" in a fraction of the time and been done with it.
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|11 years ago|reply
The Bitcoin community is made up of predominately radical libertarians; I say that with the utmost respect, as I consider myself part of that very group. The culture is very different from that of the Python community - and one of those ways is that it is often acceptable to alienate a portion of your potential userbase.
[+] [-] sfall|11 years ago|reply
and that comment agrees with mitsuhiko
[+] [-] ubernostrum|11 years ago|reply
I'd push complaints further up to GitHub, since I'm sure something in the way this works violates their ToS, but ultimately that wouldn't do anything except cause them to self-host their code and keep running the "service".
[+] [-] randallsquared|11 years ago|reply
The only way there could be tax is if you receive the money, and that can only happen by you deliberately becoming involved.
[+] [-] eli|11 years ago|reply
It is simply not cool to use a project's name to collect money from its fans without their permission. And without any promise that the money will make it to the intended recipient. And certainly without any indication of what happens to the money that doesn't make it to the recipient.
[+] [-] demetris|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Cakez0r|11 years ago|reply
If I was denied the chance to receive a donation for a contribution I made to an open source project essentially because the "project owner" doesn't agree then I'd be very annoyed.
[+] [-] gerbal|11 years ago|reply
As much as the project seems to have good intentions, insisting that It's BitCoin, BitCoin is different doesn't mean your product is actually exempt from rules and law. Or that Bitcoin is all that different.
There is no reason someone couldn't build a similar project using traditional currency. But then they would run afoul of the many laws designed to protect depositors, investors, and the financial system writ-large. As someone remarks in TFA, holding the amount of currency on ones balance sheets this project would, if successful, is a terrible idea. It's ripe for fraud and abuse. There is a reason services like Gittip assist in transferring fund, and act as the debiter and depositor.
This whole thing is emblematic of the problems with Bitcoin culture, which seems to think it doesn't have to follow any of the rules. Sorry lads, if Bitcoin is currency, you have to behave like banks and investment firms if you are going to act like banks and investment firms.
[+] [-] eordano|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|11 years ago|reply
To me it just looks like a badly implemented concept that happens to use Bitcoin. I'm not seeing any Bitcoin exceptionalism here.
[+] [-] colanderman|11 years ago|reply
(Or is "the project" a mistake and should read "the donor"?)
[+] [-] sjs382|11 years ago|reply
<whisper>And if the Django project doesn't come get the donations within 30 days, we don't tell you what happens to the donations. What happens to the money, if its not claimed, may (or may not) go against the wishes of yourself or the Django developers (that we're collecting money on behalf of, without permission). Also, sending these donations exposes the developers to serious legal consequences.</whisper>
[+] [-] roganartu|11 years ago|reply
https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#tip4commit.com
Don't sign in or register or you may have more to worry about than undesired tax liabilities.
EDIT: It's fixed now.
[+] [-] twa927|11 years ago|reply
- 4 months ago Bitcoin Core was happy to raise 1.8BTC in two days using tip4commit [0], but today's comment [1] signals they are not happy with tip4commit, because it encourages submitting large number of small commits
- an IT World article about 40% donations being unclaimed [2] (1.384BTC)
- "we discovered a security breach" [3]
- OpenBazaar, a fork of Dark Market, a market for drugs, encourages to make donations using tip4commit [4]
- "Tip4Coin donations look like they are stolen" [5]
Unfortunately it looks like a typical Bitcoin project - naivety of the authors, in terms of technical and legal matters, plus douchebag attitude (ignoring others, even if they are owners of things they profit from), plus shady entities benefiting from them.
[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2993ja/good_news_ev...
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kzlsh/tip4commit_s...
[2] http://www.itworld.com/article/2693360/cloud-computing/linus...
[3] http://imgur.com/Qd6EPZ7
[4] http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/27bdlo/its_c...
[5] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20bvau/tip4coin_don...
[+] [-] arsenische|11 years ago|reply
I temporary disabled ALL the email notifications (even though I don't think they were a real problem) and added a warning that we are not affiliated with project owners. When my teammate is online he will probably also some of the other issues.
I see a lot of misinformation about tip4commit and our intentions. I can't quickly respond to everybody, but I'll try to keep basic answers here: https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/wiki/FAQ
Perhaps some people just misunderstand the project and hate it.
Also I think that it is normal that developers try to understand the motivation of users and ask questions in order to find a better solution, please don't take it as offence or reluctance to change.
We are going to resolve every issue or close the project.
Btw, if you think this project shouldn't exist - welcome to https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/157 - that could be the easiest solution for all of us.
If you believe the project can be improved - welcome to leave your feedback on the desired improvements, such as https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/152 and https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/154
or others.
Thanks for reading this and please accept apologies if we offended you (never wanted to).
[+] [-] maaku|11 years ago|reply
Providing monetary incentives gamifies the development process, which is not a good thing. It has been shown that providing monetary incentives below a threshold decreases both the quality and quantity of contributions. For more information about this I suggest reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.
Tip4commit was started for the bitcoin project. I'm a bitcoin developer. We don't like tip4commit. What results in practice is that we end up with ill-formed, poorly thought out, excessively large, trivial, time wasting pull requests to review, which takes time away from beneficial development.
Your service is not helping open source software. It is hurting it. You are paying people to provide distractions which slow down development. Please stop.
[+] [-] sjs382|11 years ago|reply
The project should be opt-in or shouldn't exist at all.
[+] [-] felipeerias|11 years ago|reply
You have to work with the community rather than against it. If there are maintainers out there that really want this, collaborate with them and grow from there.
[+] [-] vitriol83|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|11 years ago|reply
I think sticking with opt-out is ok since it will be the difference in having a million projects or 3 projects. But, it means you have to be more considerate of the project owners requests. Thinking that the emails "weren't that bad" is more evidence that you aren't listening very well.
[+] [-] benologist|11 years ago|reply
"We are not affiliated with most of the projects, their owners may be unaware of or actively against using tip4commit."
Opt-in or opt-out would allow everybody using your service to win which is much nicer and more sustainable than lying to donors and developers.
[+] [-] kancer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msiemens|11 years ago|reply
> This project has been disabled. It doesn't accept donation and it will not distribute tips.
> Reason: Project author request: https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/110
On the other hand, Tip4Comment has only this notice [2]:
> Project maintainers have decided not to notify new contributors about tips and they probably don't like this way of funding.
[1]: http://prime4commit.com/projects/129
[2]: https://tip4commit.com/github/mitsuhiko/flask
[+] [-] lkrubner|11 years ago|reply
"you can't just start collecting money for me without some kind of deal."
http://webcomictweets.com/detail/tweet/138771362931163136
Kachingle was an extreme case, gathering "donations" for sites like Wikipedia, Google News, and also small sites like Mike Krahulik's. Using this approach on Github is just a new variation on an old scam. As someone else said in that same thread:
"that is the weirdest creepiest business model ever."
[+] [-] jarcane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randallsquared|11 years ago|reply
/s
[+] [-] hokkos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnnnni|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grkvlt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubernostrum|11 years ago|reply
Historically they spammed committers of force-opted-in repositories with an email on every commit to tell them what their new BTC donation balance was after the commit. And they insist that once a repository has been added to their system, they do not have the ability to remove it.
This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of, and the best they'll offer is to stop sending you an email every time you make a commit.
We (meaning the Django project) went a few rounds with them a while back and ultimately had to resort to threatening spam complaints against their ISP just to get the damn emails turned off. We still have been unable to get removed from the list of projects they "helpfully" collect donations for:
https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111
The link in this thread is another major developer also attempting to get his repositories removed from their "service", and being stonewalled just as we were.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TomGullen|11 years ago|reply
The tax thing is a good point, but I think it would be entirely reasonable and ethical to simply ignore any donations you got if you didn't want them, and not declare them. Perhaps Tip4Commit could auto forward any unclaimed tips to a charity if they are not claimed in a month.
Email spam is another good point, but if it was simply reduced to a one time email when you had accumulated $25 USD I don't see it as unreasonable.
If they implemented the above I'd probably defend them. Right now not so much perhaps, micro cents of tips and lots of emails are understandably pretty annoying.
[+] [-] brador|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linohh|11 years ago|reply
Having a balance on this site, even if it's zero, can have severe implications for the maintainer(s).
[+] [-] bhc|11 years ago|reply
They will accept donations on behalf of a YouTube channel (or Instagram, Soundcloud, etc.) whether the content creator opted in or not and release the fund when the creator claims his/her donations.
[+] [-] SchizoDuckie|11 years ago|reply
4 project currently listed under popcorn time. Great, he just painted an extra bulls-eye on their heads beause now they're making money with the project. Food for lawyers.
[+] [-] wheaties|11 years ago|reply
This is probably the tactic that people should use for sites that do email mining and unsolicited emails. Good for them.
[+] [-] GhotiFish|11 years ago|reply
he says tip4commit is profiting off their project, but, it seems like they're just storing the money till the dev claims it, if he wants it.
Alternatively, what if I were to hypothetically state the following?:
Have I commited an unfair act? Have I violated mitsuhiko in some way? Is the dev that claims this 10 dollars immoral? is mitsuhiko harmed?I am honestly assuming I'm missing the intricacies here. Could someone explain?
[+] [-] DanBC|11 years ago|reply
People in those countries want to avoid the small possibility of legal trouble. They want to opt out of the project.
The project refuses to allow any form of optout.
This means that some people in some countries may have to sepnd time (and this money) talking to police and explaining what's going on.
Dumping this time + cost burden on someone else when they have specifically asked to avoid it is sub-optimal.
As an example of a group who were interviewed by police and who had to explain that their local group was not soliciting donations - the US parent group was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543640
There was another problem which has since been fixed. The project would send out an email when a tip had been donated, even when it was a tiny donation and even if the receiver was not able to withdraw that tip. This is unsolicited and probably bulk and thus meets the treshold for spam.
Finally it's not really clear what happens to the money. Say you're involved in $OpenSourceProject. Now imagine I donate a few US cents (but in bitcoin) to GhotiFish for a commit you made to $OpenSourceProject and you never collect it. This thread uas clarified that the money goes into a pool for $OpenSourceProject. But what if they never collect it?
Tl:dr get permission from people before you use their name or project-names in your stuff.