4 ms·

You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme. Good that you stopped doing that.

by pdx 15y ago

bergie 15y ago
Flattr has been a very promising way for open source developers to receive donations. But this pyramid scheme aspect has been rather off-putting. Now that it has been removed it may be time to look again into Flattr :-)
- jackolas 15y ago
  I'd love to see github integration (like the existing "donate") edit: looks like they removed the donate feature.
  - bergie 15y ago
    Agreed. Flattr would be a great button to have right next to Watch and Fork
  - kmfrk 15y ago
    Knowing how great the GitHub people are at innovating their service, I'm sure they'll be open to suggestions like these.
sp332 15y ago
The amounts don't have to be equal. You just had to show that you were participating (with about $5/mo.) before they would send you strangers' money :)
kmfrk 15y ago
This is pretty harmless for a pyramid scheme, though: https://flattr.com/support/charity https://flattr.com/support/charity. :)
gloob 15y ago
You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme. I'm having a hard time thinking of a single B2B company that isn't a pyramid scheme, by that definition. Pretty much everyone spends money in order to make money. Easy example: before I can build and sell my widgets, I need to buy the parts for them.
- idonthack 15y ago
  capitalism is apparently the biggest pyramid scheme ever
- awj 15y ago
  Well, sure, but you can make almost any statement sound ridiculous when you abuse word meaning to pull it that far out of the original context. Being required to put money into Flattr before other people could give you money sounds a bit shady. It would be like the postal service refusing to deliver your mail unless you send a few letters every month.
  - ugh 15y ago
    Hm, so what if Flattr charged you a $5 fee instead? They just want you to use it yourself, I can see nothing wrong with that.
    - awj 15y ago
      There isn't anything wrong with asking people to use it themselves, but then it also isn't quite the "online tip jar" that many people want to see it as. Maybe that's the point, but I honestly have been confused as to why the process with Flattr is so complicated. What I want is a "great blog post, kid, here's a quarter" button. Flattr feels like it's mostly there except I have to keep track of who I've Flattr'd each month to make sure I'm handing out the amounts I wanted to. It could be that in the end this is "the better way", but for the need I feel this mechanism is kind of off-putting.
      - 15y ago

You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme. Good that you stopped doing that.

by pdx 15y ago

You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme. Good that you stopped doing that.

bergie 15y ago

Flattr has been a very promising way for open source developers to receive donations. But this pyramid scheme aspect has been rather off-putting. Now that it has been removed it may be time to look again into Flattr :-)

jackolas 15y ago
I'd love to see github integration (like the existing "donate") edit: looks like they removed the donate feature.
- bergie 15y ago
  Agreed. Flattr would be a great button to have right next to Watch and Fork
- kmfrk 15y ago
  Knowing how great the GitHub people are at innovating their service, I'm sure they'll be open to suggestions like these.

sp332 15y ago

The amounts don't have to be equal. You just had to show that you were participating (with about $5/mo.) before they would send you strangers' money :)

kmfrk 15y ago

This is pretty harmless for a pyramid scheme, though: https://flattr.com/support/charity https://flattr.com/support/charity. :)

gloob 15y ago

You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme. I'm having a hard time thinking of a single B2B company that isn't a pyramid scheme, by that definition. Pretty much everyone spends money in order to make money. Easy example: before I can build and sell my widgets, I need to buy the parts for them.

idonthack 15y ago
capitalism is apparently the biggest pyramid scheme ever
awj 15y ago
Well, sure, but you can make almost any statement sound ridiculous when you abuse word meaning to pull it that far out of the original context. Being required to put money into Flattr before other people could give you money sounds a bit shady. It would be like the postal service refusing to deliver your mail unless you send a few letters every month.
- ugh 15y ago
  Hm, so what if Flattr charged you a $5 fee instead? They just want you to use it yourself, I can see nothing wrong with that.
  - awj 15y ago
    There isn't anything wrong with asking people to use it themselves, but then it also isn't quite the "online tip jar" that many people want to see it as. Maybe that's the point, but I honestly have been confused as to why the process with Flattr is so complicated. What I want is a "great blog post, kid, here's a quarter" button. Flattr feels like it's mostly there except I have to keep track of who I've Flattr'd each month to make sure I'm handing out the amounts I wanted to. It could be that in the end this is "the better way", but for the need I feel this mechanism is kind of off-putting.
    - 15y ago