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Gittip at Khan Academy

warp 13y ago
This is a nice gesture, but I do get the impression that the amount being donated to each developer is way too small for many developers to even bother signing up for gittip.
- gketuma 13y ago
  if everyone using those products gave this small amount, you will be amazed how it will quickly rack up.
- clone1018 13y ago
  This is just the beginning, Gittip is still young, it has room to grow.
- avenger123 13y ago
  Money is money. It all adds up.
- jeresig 13y ago
  Depends on the developer, but in the case of jashkenas we're trying to give him $15.50/week, which is $806 per year - certainly nothing to sneeze at! That's almost a new Macbook Air! Or, if he's so inclined, a large yearly donation to the charity of his choice. There is definitely a snowball effect though. Once I signed up for Gittip people started to give me tiny amounts (like $0.25/week). It built up-and-up over time and now I'm getting a non-trivial amount of money per week, which is awesome! It's helping to pay for all of my hosting costs and then some.
  - olalonde 13y ago
    This kind of supports parent's point. If the creator of CoffeeScript, Backbone.js and Underscore.js only gets 806$/year, us unknown developers will probably get the equivalent of a cup of coffee per year. That being said, I do hope Gittip becomes more popular.
    - spicyj 13y ago
      Hundreds (thousands?) of companies use jashkenas's work -- if each gave anywhere ~$1k/year then it'd easily pay for a full-time salary for him. Less prolific developers will obviously receive less, but still a significant amount, especially if many companies pitch in.
    - jeresig 13y ago
      That's true - although that should be an incentive to write and release good Open Source code! Even if a single person gives you $0.25/week (the minimum amount) you'll get $13/year. We're attempting to give most developers at least $1/week - and I should emphasize that this is only from Khan Academy. Just because we're giving this amount it doesn't mean that these devs won't get money from other sources. I, personally, receive donations from a couple dozen users on Gittip with a wide variety of amounts (most being in the $0.25 range). It's very defeatist to give up before even trying ("only" a cup of coffee). Why not aspire to more?
      - ronaldx 13y ago
        This message is very confusing for me. I'm happy that you're finding personal benefit from Gittip. If it allows or helps you to keep providing great work to the community, that's excellent for everyone. However, the numbers you quote are not good. $13 is an amount that a Bangladeshi garment worker earns in a week or so. It's nobody's aspirational goal to earn that in a year. It may be the case (in the wider population) that such disproportionately small rewards actually discourage contributions compared to volunteerism, as it provides a (very bad) point of reference to compare the value of open source work to paid commercial work.
        whit537 13y ago
        Imagine if we got some Bangledeshi garment workers on Gittip.
        jeresig 13y ago
        Naturally - but there are extremes and it's still the very beginning. There are definitely people earning very little (arguably EVERYONE is earning very little - even the top people are receiving just over minimum wage in the U.S.). Up until now there hasn't been a tool to have this consistent weekly donation for Open Source contributors. But given the growth that we're seeing on Gittip I hope that we can get to the point where people are seriously considering quitting their jobs to work on Open Source full time. It's doubtful that this will affect me now -- but I would've killed to have had this back in like 2004-2006. The old reality (people giving money to Open Source projects /developers sporadically) was bad. The new reality (consistently giving small amounts of money via Gittip) is better. The future (large amounts of money, equivalent to a paid job, in a consistent manner) will be even better. I'm pushing Gittip because I see it as the best way to bring that future about. It'll take a lot of work but it needs to happen - for the benefit of all Open Source developers.
jmduke 13y ago
An abridged list of organizations using Kenneth Reitz's python requests package: Her Majesty’s Government, Amazon, Google, Twilio, Mozilla, Heroku, PayPal, NPR, Obama for America, Transifex, Native Instruments, The Washington Post, Twitter, SoundCloud, Kippt, Readability, and Federal US Institutions. People generate millions of dollars of value through open source software. It's only fair that the people making that software are incentivized to keep doing so.
- daenz 13y ago
  > It's only fair that the people making that software are incentivized to keep doing so. Give me a break. The incentives that coaxed popular open source authors to create their projects in the first place is still there. If people feel compelled to give money for something that was designed to be free, that's great. But I've yet to see anything that suggests that people will stop making OSS if they aren't given $50 a week.
  - shurcooL 13y ago
    It's not about them not working on OSS if they don't get money for it. It's about them being able to work on OSS 30+ hours a week instead of 8 hrs a week if you (and many others) give 'em a few bucks a week.
- jlarocco 13y ago
  I really hate the implication that end users are obligated to pay or "tip" open source developers. How can a software developer be butthurt that he didn't make money off his product when it's his own fault for giving it away for free? Every organization you listed would have gladly paid money for the requests package, had the author not chosen to give it away for free. Just like they paid for MS Office, Windows, Photoshop, Oracle, and countless other software products. It's almost embarrassing that there are software developers so clueless that they'd give their product away and then whine about how they need money and deserve to get paid. Not that I'm implying that's happening here. It's so silly that open source advocates will demonize Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, ... for making money off their software, then turn around and whine that they're not making money. Who's fault is that? Nobody forced them to opt out of the economic system. I release a lot of my code as open source under a very permissive license. It's perfectly clear to me that anybody can take my code and use it to make a ton of money and not owe me a dime. If I weren't okay with that, I wouldn't release the code.
Lerc 13y ago
The granting employees the $5 tip a week idea is pretty good. There are a lot of businesses out there that see the value of open source but don't currently fund development. There are certainly companies out there where the reason for not funding is more logistical than financial. Giving employees the ability to send money to where they see it can do the most good would be a great way to target worthy projects. With sufficient freedom, I can see groups of employees organise themselves to coordinate development of features that are specifically important to their work.
- ianterrell 13y ago
  This seems like something Gittip.com could offer as a feature: employees can log in and pick who to contribute to, and the company account they're associated with automatically makes the payment. Reduce that logistical hurdle to a signup. :)
  - whit537 13y ago
    Andy Weissman from USV suggested that on a skype call we had. Unfortunately that was before I started doing open calls so I can't link to it. :-/ Ticketed: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1153 https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1153
    - krichman 13y ago
      > doing open calls I like gittip and your philosophy. I think you've convinced me to sign up.
Jd 13y ago
I think there are a few things that are awesome about the Gittip model and a few things that are flawed: Awesome things (1) fills a huge need (2) we should be in the habit of giving back (3) promotes long-term thinking Bad things (1) dependent on CC processing (2) weekly only (3) A bit too much Github lockin.
- jareau 13y ago
  what payment method besides CC would you like to see? Bitcoin? ACH?
  - Jd 13y ago
    Since you ask, I happen to run my own asset-backed digital currency w/ an open REST API. See profile.
    - anonymoushn 13y ago
      I found the web site and block a little light on details. As in, there were none at all. It's not clear what benefit the Evergreen digital currency has over any other currency. Is it centralized? What does "secure" mean? What is it backed by?
    - singlow 13y ago
      Nice looking site - except for the text/background contrast. Very pretty and I enjoyed the video. Evergreen looks like a polished app experience. However, like the previous commenter, I too am curious about what the assets are and what kind of security measures it takes.
      - Jd 13y ago
        At the moment we are sorting through some legal issues, but we plan to make this transparent very soon.
whit537 13y ago
I can't think of a better reply (from Gittip's point of view) to yesterday's "Money and Open Source": https://medium.com/open-source-life/d44a1953749c https://medium.com/open-source-life/d44a1953749c. Thank you, jeresig and Khan Academy, for the huge vote of confidence, investing in open-source via Gittip! :D
jashkenas 13y ago
I've long felt conflicted about accepting tips through Gittip, but John's nice argumentation here persuaded me to give it a try. On the one hand, working on open source software (especially many years after the original projects have shipped, and you've moved on to other things) is really about the love -- a hobbyist's satisfaction of polishing a well-honed tool. But on the other hand, when so many successful businesses are able to use that open-source tool to great effect, it can create a bit of a financial dissonance. I'm not sure if I'll keep the account open for very long -- for one thing, if I end up back at the NYT towards the end of the year, I'll probably have to close it -- but until then, let's see how it goes. Maybe it'll feel good in a kind of dirty-capitalist-but-gift-economy kinda way.
- shmageggy 13y ago
  Does NYT have a policy about taking on outside work or accepting money from outside sources? If NYT means New York Times, is this something to do with journalistic integrity? I liked the author's suggestion about donating unwanted tips to charity or turning them back around into tips.
  - jashkenas 13y ago
    Yes. When you're working in the newsroom, you generally need to steer clear of accepting any gifts, free services, or free products. It really matters when it's from a company that the Times has covered, or might write about in the future -- but that's a pretty wide net, and most startup employees would arguably fall into that category. The Khan Academy's sponsored donation program certainly would. Here's the actual language: Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. (Exceptions may be made for trinkets of nominal value, say, $25 or less, such as a mug or a cap with a company logo.) Gifts should be returned with a polite explanation. From this little gem of a handbook: http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf ... it's the Times' internal ethics rulebook specifically aiming at the conundrums of journalism -- but I think that quite a lot of it applies to ethical business practices in general.
gazarsgo 13y ago
I had an excellent exchange with Chad recently on twitter (and then Github Issues) where we went through a transient GitHub OAuth issue that Github ended up acknowledging via email as being an error on their side. I feel much more confident in him and the gittip service where initially I felt some hesitation and doubt about the trustworthiness of the service.
- whit537 13y ago
  :D
tarr11 13y ago
Influence is worth more than git tips in the OSS marketplace. I can make more in an hour from an employer then I can in an entire year on gittip. I'd rather have "star" or "follower" - those are things that can be meaningful in my career. That said, I wonder if this model makes sense in countries where these dollar amounts have a more meaningful impact on your life.
pbiggar 13y ago
I don't want to be critical of what is a small step in the right direction, but it does feel like such a very small donation. $5/week is, well, nothing. A developer at Khan probably earns $2000/week, and has an over cost to Khan of probably $2500/week at least. I bring this up because I feel that if gittip optimizes towards that, then people will follow their lead. The right amount for a company with a wage bill of $3m/yr (back of the envelope based on figures in the article) to give back to OSS cannot be $6k/yr. So one step in the right direction, and thanks Khan for doing that, and I'd love to see the next step being companies donating about 10x that each.
- patio11 13y ago
  I think the core challenge is convincing OSS developers to redirect their attention from asking for donations -- which empirically are not sufficient to sustain OSS developers -- to selling things which larger enterprises can buy. As a (hypothetical) team lead at BigCo, it isn't within my discretion to award $500 to an OSS project, but I can put a $500 training course or software license on my purchasing card on my own authority. As a (no-so-hypothetical) business owner, it is highly unlikely that I'll ever donate $10,000 to a computer programmer, but I can trivially write that check -- and expense it -- for e.g. a support contract for a technology core to my business.
8ig8 13y ago
Idea... Let's come up with some semi-standard language to include in contacts for client projects to request an optional fee to pass along to open-source projects used. Something like, "we recommend 1% of the development budget be allocated for contribution to open-source projects (blah, blah, blah)." It's easy to expense fees for software licenses, but there is no mechanism for open-source contributions. There should be.
pytrin 13y ago
I would like to offer a contrarian view. Gittip is a nice initiative, in the "thank you for developing this project" kind of way - but I doubt anyone believes they can (or will be able to) pay the rent with donations paid through it. I wrote a post on this subject a couple of months ago, title "Open-source can't live on donations alone" [1]. I also don't subscribe to the notion that open-source should only be about the love - if companies like MySQL and Red Hat can make it into a huge business, and with the immense value open-source provides to the software industry, open-source developers should be treated as first-class citizens, not relegated to volunteer work late at nights, while doing their real job during the day. Of course I'm biased, since I'm the founder of a company who's making that change happen. We started Binpress [2] to help developers build profitable businesses like MySQL and Red Hat around their open-source code. We do it by providing them with a platform for adding a commercial layer over their open-source code (whether it's self hosted or on GitHub, etc.), through commercial licensing and by providing customization, integration and support services. We are a distribution marketplace, similar to the appstore or Steam but for open-source code products. We already have many developers making silicon-valley salaries working exclusively on their open-source projects - and we're just getting started. We've been bootstrapped (and profitable) for 2 years but are now closing our seed (after going through the 500startup program). If any of this makes sense to you, you are welcome to reach out to me at eran@binpress.com (I'm Eran, the CTO and co-founder). [1] http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-live-on-donations-alone/ http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-l... [2] http://www.binpress.com http://www.binpress.com
Pavan_ 13y ago
Nice initiative...
stuartmemo 13y ago
Is Gittip any different than Flattr? Other than being explicitly linked to Open Source?
AndrewDucker 13y ago
Can someone explain to me why Gittip is called that? I've never looked into it before because I assumed it was related to Git/Github and was thus some complex Git-related method of moving money around.
- dowskitest 13y ago
  Here's whit537 explaining the name at PyCon 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iv7B7D9iIRI#t=76s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iv7...

warp 13y ago

This is a nice gesture, but I do get the impression that the amount being donated to each developer is way too small for many developers to even bother signing up for gittip.

gketuma 13y ago
if everyone using those products gave this small amount, you will be amazed how it will quickly rack up.
clone1018 13y ago
This is just the beginning, Gittip is still young, it has room to grow.
avenger123 13y ago
Money is money. It all adds up.
jeresig 13y ago
Depends on the developer, but in the case of jashkenas we're trying to give him $15.50/week, which is $806 per year - certainly nothing to sneeze at! That's almost a new Macbook Air! Or, if he's so inclined, a large yearly donation to the charity of his choice. There is definitely a snowball effect though. Once I signed up for Gittip people started to give me tiny amounts (like $0.25/week). It built up-and-up over time and now I'm getting a non-trivial amount of money per week, which is awesome! It's helping to pay for all of my hosting costs and then some.
- olalonde 13y ago
  This kind of supports parent's point. If the creator of CoffeeScript, Backbone.js and Underscore.js only gets 806$/year, us unknown developers will probably get the equivalent of a cup of coffee per year. That being said, I do hope Gittip becomes more popular.
  - spicyj 13y ago
    Hundreds (thousands?) of companies use jashkenas's work -- if each gave anywhere ~$1k/year then it'd easily pay for a full-time salary for him. Less prolific developers will obviously receive less, but still a significant amount, especially if many companies pitch in.
  - jeresig 13y ago
    That's true - although that should be an incentive to write and release good Open Source code! Even if a single person gives you $0.25/week (the minimum amount) you'll get $13/year. We're attempting to give most developers at least $1/week - and I should emphasize that this is only from Khan Academy. Just because we're giving this amount it doesn't mean that these devs won't get money from other sources. I, personally, receive donations from a couple dozen users on Gittip with a wide variety of amounts (most being in the $0.25 range). It's very defeatist to give up before even trying ("only" a cup of coffee). Why not aspire to more?
    - ronaldx 13y ago
      This message is very confusing for me. I'm happy that you're finding personal benefit from Gittip. If it allows or helps you to keep providing great work to the community, that's excellent for everyone. However, the numbers you quote are not good. $13 is an amount that a Bangladeshi garment worker earns in a week or so. It's nobody's aspirational goal to earn that in a year. It may be the case (in the wider population) that such disproportionately small rewards actually discourage contributions compared to volunteerism, as it provides a (very bad) point of reference to compare the value of open source work to paid commercial work.
      - whit537 13y ago
        Imagine if we got some Bangledeshi garment workers on Gittip.
      - jeresig 13y ago
        Naturally - but there are extremes and it's still the very beginning. There are definitely people earning very little (arguably EVERYONE is earning very little - even the top people are receiving just over minimum wage in the U.S.). Up until now there hasn't been a tool to have this consistent weekly donation for Open Source contributors. But given the growth that we're seeing on Gittip I hope that we can get to the point where people are seriously considering quitting their jobs to work on Open Source full time. It's doubtful that this will affect me now -- but I would've killed to have had this back in like 2004-2006. The old reality (people giving money to Open Source projects /developers sporadically) was bad. The new reality (consistently giving small amounts of money via Gittip) is better. The future (large amounts of money, equivalent to a paid job, in a consistent manner) will be even better. I'm pushing Gittip because I see it as the best way to bring that future about. It'll take a lot of work but it needs to happen - for the benefit of all Open Source developers.

jmduke 13y ago

An abridged list of organizations using Kenneth Reitz's python requests package: Her Majesty’s Government, Amazon, Google, Twilio, Mozilla, Heroku, PayPal, NPR, Obama for America, Transifex, Native Instruments, The Washington Post, Twitter, SoundCloud, Kippt, Readability, and Federal US Institutions. People generate millions of dollars of value through open source software. It's only fair that the people making that software are incentivized to keep doing so.

daenz 13y ago
> It's only fair that the people making that software are incentivized to keep doing so. Give me a break. The incentives that coaxed popular open source authors to create their projects in the first place is still there. If people feel compelled to give money for something that was designed to be free, that's great. But I've yet to see anything that suggests that people will stop making OSS if they aren't given $50 a week.
- shurcooL 13y ago
  It's not about them not working on OSS if they don't get money for it. It's about them being able to work on OSS 30+ hours a week instead of 8 hrs a week if you (and many others) give 'em a few bucks a week.
jlarocco 13y ago
I really hate the implication that end users are obligated to pay or "tip" open source developers. How can a software developer be butthurt that he didn't make money off his product when it's his own fault for giving it away for free? Every organization you listed would have gladly paid money for the requests package, had the author not chosen to give it away for free. Just like they paid for MS Office, Windows, Photoshop, Oracle, and countless other software products. It's almost embarrassing that there are software developers so clueless that they'd give their product away and then whine about how they need money and deserve to get paid. Not that I'm implying that's happening here. It's so silly that open source advocates will demonize Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, ... for making money off their software, then turn around and whine that they're not making money. Who's fault is that? Nobody forced them to opt out of the economic system. I release a lot of my code as open source under a very permissive license. It's perfectly clear to me that anybody can take my code and use it to make a ton of money and not owe me a dime. If I weren't okay with that, I wouldn't release the code.

Lerc 13y ago

The granting employees the $5 tip a week idea is pretty good. There are a lot of businesses out there that see the value of open source but don't currently fund development. There are certainly companies out there where the reason for not funding is more logistical than financial. Giving employees the ability to send money to where they see it can do the most good would be a great way to target worthy projects. With sufficient freedom, I can see groups of employees organise themselves to coordinate development of features that are specifically important to their work.

ianterrell 13y ago
This seems like something Gittip.com could offer as a feature: employees can log in and pick who to contribute to, and the company account they're associated with automatically makes the payment. Reduce that logistical hurdle to a signup. :)
- whit537 13y ago
  Andy Weissman from USV suggested that on a skype call we had. Unfortunately that was before I started doing open calls so I can't link to it. :-/ Ticketed: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1153 https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1153
  - krichman 13y ago
    > doing open calls I like gittip and your philosophy. I think you've convinced me to sign up.

Jd 13y ago

I think there are a few things that are awesome about the Gittip model and a few things that are flawed: Awesome things (1) fills a huge need (2) we should be in the habit of giving back (3) promotes long-term thinking Bad things (1) dependent on CC processing (2) weekly only (3) A bit too much Github lockin.

jareau 13y ago
what payment method besides CC would you like to see? Bitcoin? ACH?
- Jd 13y ago
  Since you ask, I happen to run my own asset-backed digital currency w/ an open REST API. See profile.
  - anonymoushn 13y ago
    I found the web site and block a little light on details. As in, there were none at all. It's not clear what benefit the Evergreen digital currency has over any other currency. Is it centralized? What does "secure" mean? What is it backed by?
  - singlow 13y ago
    Nice looking site - except for the text/background contrast. Very pretty and I enjoyed the video. Evergreen looks like a polished app experience. However, like the previous commenter, I too am curious about what the assets are and what kind of security measures it takes.
    - Jd 13y ago
      At the moment we are sorting through some legal issues, but we plan to make this transparent very soon.

whit537 13y ago

I can't think of a better reply (from Gittip's point of view) to yesterday's "Money and Open Source": https://medium.com/open-source-life/d44a1953749c https://medium.com/open-source-life/d44a1953749c. Thank you, jeresig and Khan Academy, for the huge vote of confidence, investing in open-source via Gittip! :D

jashkenas 13y ago

I've long felt conflicted about accepting tips through Gittip, but John's nice argumentation here persuaded me to give it a try. On the one hand, working on open source software (especially many years after the original projects have shipped, and you've moved on to other things) is really about the love -- a hobbyist's satisfaction of polishing a well-honed tool. But on the other hand, when so many successful businesses are able to use that open-source tool to great effect, it can create a bit of a financial dissonance. I'm not sure if I'll keep the account open for very long -- for one thing, if I end up back at the NYT towards the end of the year, I'll probably have to close it -- but until then, let's see how it goes. Maybe it'll feel good in a kind of dirty-capitalist-but-gift-economy kinda way.

shmageggy 13y ago
Does NYT have a policy about taking on outside work or accepting money from outside sources? If NYT means New York Times, is this something to do with journalistic integrity? I liked the author's suggestion about donating unwanted tips to charity or turning them back around into tips.
- jashkenas 13y ago
  Yes. When you're working in the newsroom, you generally need to steer clear of accepting any gifts, free services, or free products. It really matters when it's from a company that the Times has covered, or might write about in the future -- but that's a pretty wide net, and most startup employees would arguably fall into that category. The Khan Academy's sponsored donation program certainly would. Here's the actual language: Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. (Exceptions may be made for trinkets of nominal value, say, $25 or less, such as a mug or a cap with a company logo.) Gifts should be returned with a polite explanation. From this little gem of a handbook: http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf ... it's the Times' internal ethics rulebook specifically aiming at the conundrums of journalism -- but I think that quite a lot of it applies to ethical business practices in general.

gazarsgo 13y ago

I had an excellent exchange with Chad recently on twitter (and then Github Issues) where we went through a transient GitHub OAuth issue that Github ended up acknowledging via email as being an error on their side. I feel much more confident in him and the gittip service where initially I felt some hesitation and doubt about the trustworthiness of the service.

whit537 13y ago
:D

tarr11 13y ago

Influence is worth more than git tips in the OSS marketplace. I can make more in an hour from an employer then I can in an entire year on gittip. I'd rather have "star" or "follower" - those are things that can be meaningful in my career. That said, I wonder if this model makes sense in countries where these dollar amounts have a more meaningful impact on your life.

pbiggar 13y ago

I don't want to be critical of what is a small step in the right direction, but it does feel like such a very small donation. $5/week is, well, nothing. A developer at Khan probably earns $2000/week, and has an over cost to Khan of probably $2500/week at least. I bring this up because I feel that if gittip optimizes towards that, then people will follow their lead. The right amount for a company with a wage bill of $3m/yr (back of the envelope based on figures in the article) to give back to OSS cannot be $6k/yr. So one step in the right direction, and thanks Khan for doing that, and I'd love to see the next step being companies donating about 10x that each.

patio11 13y ago
I think the core challenge is convincing OSS developers to redirect their attention from asking for donations -- which empirically are not sufficient to sustain OSS developers -- to selling things which larger enterprises can buy. As a (hypothetical) team lead at BigCo, it isn't within my discretion to award $500 to an OSS project, but I can put a $500 training course or software license on my purchasing card on my own authority. As a (no-so-hypothetical) business owner, it is highly unlikely that I'll ever donate $10,000 to a computer programmer, but I can trivially write that check -- and expense it -- for e.g. a support contract for a technology core to my business.

8ig8 13y ago

Idea... Let's come up with some semi-standard language to include in contacts for client projects to request an optional fee to pass along to open-source projects used. Something like, "we recommend 1% of the development budget be allocated for contribution to open-source projects (blah, blah, blah)." It's easy to expense fees for software licenses, but there is no mechanism for open-source contributions. There should be.

pytrin 13y ago

I would like to offer a contrarian view. Gittip is a nice initiative, in the "thank you for developing this project" kind of way - but I doubt anyone believes they can (or will be able to) pay the rent with donations paid through it. I wrote a post on this subject a couple of months ago, title "Open-source can't live on donations alone" [1]. I also don't subscribe to the notion that open-source should only be about the love - if companies like MySQL and Red Hat can make it into a huge business, and with the immense value open-source provides to the software industry, open-source developers should be treated as first-class citizens, not relegated to volunteer work late at nights, while doing their real job during the day. Of course I'm biased, since I'm the founder of a company who's making that change happen. We started Binpress [2] to help developers build profitable businesses like MySQL and Red Hat around their open-source code. We do it by providing them with a platform for adding a commercial layer over their open-source code (whether it's self hosted or on GitHub, etc.), through commercial licensing and by providing customization, integration and support services. We are a distribution marketplace, similar to the appstore or Steam but for open-source code products. We already have many developers making silicon-valley salaries working exclusively on their open-source projects - and we're just getting started. We've been bootstrapped (and profitable) for 2 years but are now closing our seed (after going through the 500startup program). If any of this makes sense to you, you are welcome to reach out to me at eran@binpress.com (I'm Eran, the CTO and co-founder). [1] http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-live-on-donations-alone/ http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-l... [2] http://www.binpress.com http://www.binpress.com

Pavan_ 13y ago

Nice initiative...

stuartmemo 13y ago

Is Gittip any different than Flattr? Other than being explicitly linked to Open Source?

AndrewDucker 13y ago

Can someone explain to me why Gittip is called that? I've never looked into it before because I assumed it was related to Git/Github and was thus some complex Git-related method of moving money around.

dowskitest 13y ago
Here's whit537 explaining the name at PyCon 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iv7B7D9iIRI#t=76s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iv7...