9 ms·

The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

156 points by kenny_r 12y ago

wdewind 12y ago
TLDR; there are two problems with tip4commit: 1. The obvious, that they are collecting funds on behalf of other people's work and then keeping them when the funds go 'unclaimed' 2. Even if you do want to claim it, they don't make it easy, and for someone in a complicated tax country (like the author, Austria) there is almost no way he could accept the money without incurring some kind of risk. So basically when they are keeping money that goes unclaimed it's very problematic because they don't make the money easy to claim in the first place. Obvious incentives issues. Point 2 is what this article is about.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  I'm not sure it is. I'm not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it's opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant. The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different using Bitcoin isn't obvious. You can declare tips as income, no problem. The real cause of his discomfort is revealed later in the post: Personally I believe that Bitcoin is a terrible currency ... If you have a completely broken piece of country then I can imagine that you are suspicious of regulation and this sort of thing, but for me regulation is what keeps my world running and working. Also, Bitcoin for me feels like a cult. The vocal people in the community seem like they don't actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their "investment" makes a profit So he has a generalised feeling that Bitcoin is bad because it's popular and has vocal fans, and that regulation is good yet also complicated, so anything which seems simple must be unregulated and therefore bad. I do not consider myself particularly libertarian, though I do use and work on Bitcoin. Regardless, this doesn't seem like a great set of arguments. Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don't seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    > The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation That's not what he said. He said that he doesn't want to deal with a system for accepting tips if the cost to him of the system (not just in money but in time and effort) is greater than the benefit. He mentioned two tipping systems (gratipay and bountysource) that, to him, don't have this problem.
  - the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
    > author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. JFTR: "accepting tips" for software is something that is not at all straightforward. The way bountysource and others get around that is through invoices once a large enough amount has accumulated. I have no idea how that works in other countries. Gratipay/bountysource solve this problem, no bitcoin service I have seen does. > Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don't seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin. I think you misunderstand something there: I am pointing out why Bitcoin is something that does not solve problems for me and I doubt I am the only one. The premise of tip4commit is that it helps Open Source projects. It's not just not helping me, it's making my life more complicated. In fact, right now, pretty much anything that has bitcoin involved makes it harder for me.
    - mike_hearn 12y ago
      Could you explain why accepting tips is so complicated? What specific law means you cannot do it? Let me put this another way. If your friends give you money for your birthday, do you give it back to them and tell them you can't accept their gift because of tax and regulation? I doubt it! You may well declare the gifts on your tax return if it's big enough to bother with, but if Austria makes it hard to accept cash gifts of small amounts then something is seriously wrong with Austrian law and this is not something to be defended.
      - geofft 12y ago
        Even supposing something was seriously wrong with Austrian law, it's a little presumptuous to expect everyone affected to try to fight that. Maybe they're already under careful watch by the national tax agency after getting audited because of some honest mistake the past year. Maybe they're under probation under a law you and I would call unjust, but triggering further law-enforcement attention lands them in jail regardless of whether they were justified. (This scenario happens a lot in America, incidentally.) If someone says "I want to stay out of this", that should be their right.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  I don't have any use for tip4commit, personally, and couldn't care less if it succeeds either way. I did read the GitHub site, though, and your case 1) is incorrect. They return the money if it isn't claimed.
  - japhyr 12y ago
    Are you sure about that? They said they return it to "the project", but that in no way guarantees that the money will go to any developer. The tip4commit people are clearly putting growth of their product above everything else, and that's generously assuming honorable intentions on their part. I couldn't see any clear strategy for getting money back to the original donors if a developer or project does not end up claiming the donation.
- tzs 12y ago
  In addition to tax issues, I'd also worry at least a bit about whether or not accepting money for your software might affect warranty disclaimers. I would not be surprised if in some jurisdictions it is harder for a commercial project to disclaim warranties, and for accepting money to cause a project to be classified as commercial.
geofft 12y ago
I think what strikes me as the large-scale problem here is that some people are baffled by the concept that not wanting money might be a rational decision. As a completely different example of the same decision being rational, let's remember when Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market) because dealing with Canadian sales tax law was too much overhead. Even if the path to accepting money legally is clear and well-documented, it still might not be worth it. Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby. There is a worldview that seems to me to be prevalent in the cryptocurrency community (I don't know which direction causation runs, but there's certainly a bit of correlation) that everyone wants micropayments and microtips -- cf. the tip bots on Reddit. It's not uncommon to see the tipbots get downvoted, and the tippers to be completely confused why someone might think it unwanted or off-topic. http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_other_subreddits/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_...
- privong 12y ago
  > Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby. I am having trouble finding a good link, but I believe this effect is well documented in several areas – where compensating someone for an activity winds up with them being less likely to do it.
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    Dan Ariely talks quite well about the subject of social norms vs financial norms and how just assuming you can move an activity from one to the other is very ignorant. http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-cost-of-social-norms/ http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%... If some "pay for open source work" scheme got github level popular it would completely destroy open source for a long time. Right now there is more work being done than the community could pay for. But at the same time, it's handy to use bribes to get some necessary but boring stuff done.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- geofft 12y ago
  The bad stuff is irrelevant, but by the same argument, so is the good stuff. This isn't really about Bitcoin as a whole; it's about a specific assumption in the community (everyone wants to be tipped, people who are worried about taxes are misinformed and/or holding up an unjust system) that manifested in a specific use case. It wouldn't be really accurate to TL;DR a Linux kernel CVE as "somebody introduced a bug in prctl - big deal. Linux can be used for a lot of good stuff." (Nor "bad stuff".)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
atmosx 12y ago
I envy this guy for living in a country where you can say things like that: The reason I bring this up is because our taxes are very high, but I get something for that money. It might not be the perfect system and there are lots of things about it that make me furious, but I do not see a reason why I would want to stop paying taxes. That must be one heck of a feeling. Gives me hope for the future.
- chippidysan 12y ago
  That quote makes it clear he really doesn't understand where his tax money goes.
  - ubernostrum 12y ago
    So what sorts of horrible, unbelievably terrible things do you think are being done with his tax money that would cause him to reject the tax rate if only he knew?
- Nursie 12y ago
  It's not that unusual is it? I hate the politics of my country (the UK) but it's not like I think stopping paying taxes would be a good idea. They cover roads, a social safety net, the nhs and so much else. And I'm not exactly left wing.
muyuu 12y ago
Sorry Armin/Mr Ronacher/Mitsuhiko but your "Bitcoin is Wild West" rant is unwarranted. Your problem has little to do with Bitcoin and all to do with the fact that a bunch of guys signed you up to their payment service without your consent.
- joshfinnie 12y ago
  I agree except for the fact that his concern with tip4commit is that it wouldn't exist if bitcoin wasn't available. The fact that bitcoin is what is making tip4commit to run without much regulation is Armin's main point.
  - zanny 12y ago
    And what would he do about an international tip service that is not incorporated in Austria that pestered him like this? The jurisdiction of almost any country besides the US in terms of what happens online is almost nil. I don't see the recourse an Austrian would take against an online tip service in China or South Africa that spams them with tip notifications.
    - cbsmith 12y ago
      Actually, in most first world countries you'd have a hell of a time doing this for very long or on much of a scale without the authorities catching up with you. Sure, services in other countries could still maybe get up and running, but they'll have a harder time finding donors.
  - muyuu 12y ago
    Hardly a justification for his rant. Here's some other things without which it wouldn't have been possible: - the internet - computers - life on planet Earth
    - sentenza 12y ago
      Why do people keep referring to his post as a rant? I'm from Germany, which has a taxation system very similar to that of Austria and to me this seems a rather level-headed assessment of the situation. It irks me that many Bitcoin advocates continue to pretend that the rules don't apply to them. Assets are assets. You can't wiggle out of the tax code by doing some crypto on a computer. And BTW: if you are in Germany and hold large amounts of Bitcoin, talk to your Steuerberater _right_ _now_. The Finanzamt isn't stupid.
Animats 12y ago
Well, actually you can ignore Bitcoin.
unclesaamm 12y ago
A recap of some important facts about tip4commit that weren't clear to me when this all started: 1) That they collect a 1% service fee on donations. 2) That they donate 1% of a project's pool for any given committer, which leads to this exponential decay where they never quite have 0 balance for any given project. If enough donors use tip4commit, that is potentially a lot of bitcoin pennies that is just sloshing around their server.
- benologist 12y ago
  3) unwanted / rejected / opted-out donations will be returned to the 'project pool' instead of the donor, it's unclear what happens in cases when a project has no participating developers (default), is itself opted out, or has all opted-out developers 4) donors are not informed that the projects they're supporting may not receive or accept donations this way 5) donors are actively lied to, see: https://tip4commit.com/github/django/django https://tip4commit.com/github/django/django and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545377 has a django rep trying to opt them out of the program, there is no ambiguity whether they like, let alone want to or will receive donations this way
- exDM69 12y ago
  > If enough donors use tip4commit, that is potentially a lot of bitcoin pennies that is just sloshing around their server. I recall reading that they have 55 BTC "sloshing around their server" at the moment (no easy way of checking this on their website but seems reasonable looking at the top projects' funds). By todays exchange rate, that's 18k USD, which is being handled with very little actual transparency. It is a genuine risk that the people behind this project will run away with 18k$ worth of BTC (or claim they were hacked). I don't like this idea very much and I certainly would not like my projects to be up there.
baddox 12y ago
> The problem was on one hand something I did not opt into (and there not being a way to opt out of) this tipping system and that it's a completely unregulated space that can cause me troubles I could have avoided otherwise. While I have no qualm about his desire to avoid tip4commit, I find the mention of "unregulated space" peculiar. It seems that he is worried, and probably prudently so, about the fact that this space is highly regulated, not that it is unregulated.
- cbsmith 12y ago
  It's a matter of perspective. The bitcoin world is highly unregulated, and much like the black market, you cannot pull it from that space without bringing all the chaos, disorder and risk that comes with that. For a lot of people (and arguably for almost everyone), the benefits of the regulated world are terribly desirable.
freework 12y ago
I don't understand this whole controversy. The the amount of money donate to you is so small (like under a dollar over the course of a year) then you don't need to declare it on any tax forms. If a random person on the street gives you a quarter, you on't need to report that on taxes, nor do you have to report a 0.00017 BTC donation. On the other hand, if the donation is big (say in the thousands USD), I can see why someone could decide to not accept the donation because they don't wan to report it on their taxes. An easy solution to this problem is to NOT TAKE THE DONATION. If you don't take the money, you don't have to report anything. The tip4commit site supposedly states if a developer doesn't accept a donation the money goes back to the 'project pool' where it will get donated to another developer on that project.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > The tip4commit site supposedly states if a developer doesn't accept a donation the money goes back to the 'project pool' where it will get donated to another developer on that project. So tip4commit is being dishonest -- if the project has said that none of their contributors will ever accept a tip it is dishonest to continue accepting contributions for that project.
- cbsmith 12y ago
  > The the amount of money donate to you is so small (like under a dollar over the course of a year) then you don't need to declare it on any tax forms. If a random person on the street gives you a quarter, you on't need to report that on taxes, nor do you have to report a 0.00017 BTC donation. The confidence in understanding the intricacies of tax law in the world's 196 different countries (many of which have intranational differences in the tax code) exceeds that of any tax attorney I've ever spoken with.
anton000 12y ago
"The vocal people in the community seem like they don't actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their "investment" makes a profit." Im into Bitcoin, and I agree with this view. Most specially the reddit based bitcoin community.
- zanny 12y ago
  And so what? You believe in the promise, and putting your money where your mouth is is one of the most powerful market forces. People are putting their money in BTC because they believe in it.
  - jamespo 12y ago
    And they are vocal about it because they want some people to get in under them in the pyramid.
firepacket 12y ago
This was a painful read. He says he "doesn't want to be educated about bitcoin" because "he's heard all the arguments", while at the same time claiming it's a "terrible currency (or not a currency at all)" without any further reasoning. This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications. Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing.
- cbsmith 12y ago
  > This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications. I think he very clearly understands all the applications. The point is that _for his case_ it doesn't provide any value, and he believes in a lot of cases its drawbacks outweigh its advantages (which is an entirely arguably point). > Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing. Again, I think you misread the article. It isn't that he is unwilling to learn something. He's learned a great deal and concluded that it makes his life more difficult. More importantly, he's pointed out a significant problem with it: there are a lot of things that can happen with Bitcoin that would otherwise be prevented and you'd want them to be prevented.
  - firepacket 12y ago
    > I think he very clearly understands all the applications. Really? And what are you basing that opinion off of exactly? The only applications he mentions in his post relate to taxes and credit card fees. If he had any understanding of the other uses like multiparty transactions, timestamping, identity management, voting, derivatives, and trustfree contracts, then he failed to say anything to convey that awareness in his writing. > Again, I think you misread the article. It isn't that he is unwilling to learn something. He's learned a great deal and concluded that it makes his life more difficult. I didn't misread anything. Rather, he miswrote by conflating his opinions of a single bitcoin service with the entire underlying protocol.
alexruf 12y ago
Since I am from Germany and our banking and tax system is quite similar to the Austrian, I totally agree with Armin in each single point! Maybe not exactly what Armin described as a solution - but did you already check Flattr (https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/)? This also might work for supporting OpenSource projects.
mangecoeur 12y ago
It's nice to see someone who isn't on a hype-high over Bitcoin for a change. I still don't see why people think that a new unregulated currency would be somehow free of all the problems and abuses that prompted all the regulation of existing currencies in the first place - y'know, tax, fraud, customer protection, money laundering, market rigging, etc etc...

156 points by kenny_r 12y ago

TLDR; there are two problems with tip4commit: 1. The obvious, that they are collecting funds on behalf of other people's work and then keeping them when the funds go 'unclaimed' 2. Even if you do want to claim it, they don't make it easy, and for someone in a complicated tax country (like the author, Austria) there is almost no way he could accept the money without incurring some kind of risk. So basically when they are keeping money that goes unclaimed it's very problematic because they don't make the money easy to claim in the first place. Obvious incentives issues. Point 2 is what this article is about.

mike_hearn 12y ago
I'm not sure it is. I'm not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it's opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant. The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different using Bitcoin isn't obvious. You can declare tips as income, no problem. The real cause of his discomfort is revealed later in the post: Personally I believe that Bitcoin is a terrible currency ... If you have a completely broken piece of country then I can imagine that you are suspicious of regulation and this sort of thing, but for me regulation is what keeps my world running and working. Also, Bitcoin for me feels like a cult. The vocal people in the community seem like they don't actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their "investment" makes a profit So he has a generalised feeling that Bitcoin is bad because it's popular and has vocal fans, and that regulation is good yet also complicated, so anything which seems simple must be unregulated and therefore bad. I do not consider myself particularly libertarian, though I do use and work on Bitcoin. Regardless, this doesn't seem like a great set of arguments. Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don't seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin.
- pdonis 12y ago
  > The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation That's not what he said. He said that he doesn't want to deal with a system for accepting tips if the cost to him of the system (not just in money but in time and effort) is greater than the benefit. He mentioned two tipping systems (gratipay and bountysource) that, to him, don't have this problem.
- the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
  > author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. JFTR: "accepting tips" for software is something that is not at all straightforward. The way bountysource and others get around that is through invoices once a large enough amount has accumulated. I have no idea how that works in other countries. Gratipay/bountysource solve this problem, no bitcoin service I have seen does. > Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don't seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin. I think you misunderstand something there: I am pointing out why Bitcoin is something that does not solve problems for me and I doubt I am the only one. The premise of tip4commit is that it helps Open Source projects. It's not just not helping me, it's making my life more complicated. In fact, right now, pretty much anything that has bitcoin involved makes it harder for me.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    Could you explain why accepting tips is so complicated? What specific law means you cannot do it? Let me put this another way. If your friends give you money for your birthday, do you give it back to them and tell them you can't accept their gift because of tax and regulation? I doubt it! You may well declare the gifts on your tax return if it's big enough to bother with, but if Austria makes it hard to accept cash gifts of small amounts then something is seriously wrong with Austrian law and this is not something to be defended.
    - geofft 12y ago
      Even supposing something was seriously wrong with Austrian law, it's a little presumptuous to expect everyone affected to try to fight that. Maybe they're already under careful watch by the national tax agency after getting audited because of some honest mistake the past year. Maybe they're under probation under a law you and I would call unjust, but triggering further law-enforcement attention lands them in jail regardless of whether they were justified. (This scenario happens a lot in America, incidentally.) If someone says "I want to stay out of this", that should be their right.
lnanek2 12y ago
I don't have any use for tip4commit, personally, and couldn't care less if it succeeds either way. I did read the GitHub site, though, and your case 1) is incorrect. They return the money if it isn't claimed.
- japhyr 12y ago
  Are you sure about that? They said they return it to "the project", but that in no way guarantees that the money will go to any developer. The tip4commit people are clearly putting growth of their product above everything else, and that's generously assuming honorable intentions on their part. I couldn't see any clear strategy for getting money back to the original donors if a developer or project does not end up claiming the donation.
tzs 12y ago
In addition to tax issues, I'd also worry at least a bit about whether or not accepting money for your software might affect warranty disclaimers. I would not be surprised if in some jurisdictions it is harder for a commercial project to disclaim warranties, and for accepting money to cause a project to be classified as commercial.

geofft 12y ago

I think what strikes me as the large-scale problem here is that some people are baffled by the concept that not wanting money might be a rational decision. As a completely different example of the same decision being rational, let's remember when Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market) because dealing with Canadian sales tax law was too much overhead. Even if the path to accepting money legally is clear and well-documented, it still might not be worth it. Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby. There is a worldview that seems to me to be prevalent in the cryptocurrency community (I don't know which direction causation runs, but there's certainly a bit of correlation) that everyone wants micropayments and microtips -- cf. the tip bots on Reddit. It's not uncommon to see the tipbots get downvoted, and the tippers to be completely confused why someone might think it unwanted or off-topic. http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_other_subreddits/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_...

privong 12y ago
> Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby. I am having trouble finding a good link, but I believe this effect is well documented in several areas – where compensating someone for an activity winds up with them being less likely to do it.
- freshhawk 12y ago
  Dan Ariely talks quite well about the subject of social norms vs financial norms and how just assuming you can move an activity from one to the other is very ignorant. http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-cost-of-social-norms/ http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%... If some "pay for open source work" scheme got github level popular it would completely destroy open source for a long time. Right now there is more work being done than the community could pay for. But at the same time, it's handy to use bribes to get some necessary but boring stuff done.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

geofft 12y ago
The bad stuff is irrelevant, but by the same argument, so is the good stuff. This isn't really about Bitcoin as a whole; it's about a specific assumption in the community (everyone wants to be tipped, people who are worried about taxes are misinformed and/or holding up an unjust system) that manifested in a specific use case. It wouldn't be really accurate to TL;DR a Linux kernel CVE as "somebody introduced a bug in prctl - big deal. Linux can be used for a lot of good stuff." (Nor "bad stuff".)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

atmosx 12y ago

I envy this guy for living in a country where you can say things like that: The reason I bring this up is because our taxes are very high, but I get something for that money. It might not be the perfect system and there are lots of things about it that make me furious, but I do not see a reason why I would want to stop paying taxes. That must be one heck of a feeling. Gives me hope for the future.

chippidysan 12y ago
That quote makes it clear he really doesn't understand where his tax money goes.
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  So what sorts of horrible, unbelievably terrible things do you think are being done with his tax money that would cause him to reject the tax rate if only he knew?
Nursie 12y ago
It's not that unusual is it? I hate the politics of my country (the UK) but it's not like I think stopping paying taxes would be a good idea. They cover roads, a social safety net, the nhs and so much else. And I'm not exactly left wing.

muyuu 12y ago

Sorry Armin/Mr Ronacher/Mitsuhiko but your "Bitcoin is Wild West" rant is unwarranted. Your problem has little to do with Bitcoin and all to do with the fact that a bunch of guys signed you up to their payment service without your consent.

joshfinnie 12y ago
I agree except for the fact that his concern with tip4commit is that it wouldn't exist if bitcoin wasn't available. The fact that bitcoin is what is making tip4commit to run without much regulation is Armin's main point.
- zanny 12y ago
  And what would he do about an international tip service that is not incorporated in Austria that pestered him like this? The jurisdiction of almost any country besides the US in terms of what happens online is almost nil. I don't see the recourse an Austrian would take against an online tip service in China or South Africa that spams them with tip notifications.
  - cbsmith 12y ago
    Actually, in most first world countries you'd have a hell of a time doing this for very long or on much of a scale without the authorities catching up with you. Sure, services in other countries could still maybe get up and running, but they'll have a harder time finding donors.
- muyuu 12y ago
  Hardly a justification for his rant. Here's some other things without which it wouldn't have been possible: - the internet - computers - life on planet Earth
  - sentenza 12y ago
    Why do people keep referring to his post as a rant? I'm from Germany, which has a taxation system very similar to that of Austria and to me this seems a rather level-headed assessment of the situation. It irks me that many Bitcoin advocates continue to pretend that the rules don't apply to them. Assets are assets. You can't wiggle out of the tax code by doing some crypto on a computer. And BTW: if you are in Germany and hold large amounts of Bitcoin, talk to your Steuerberater _right_ _now_. The Finanzamt isn't stupid.

Animats 12y ago

Well, actually you can ignore Bitcoin.

unclesaamm 12y ago

A recap of some important facts about tip4commit that weren't clear to me when this all started: 1) That they collect a 1% service fee on donations. 2) That they donate 1% of a project's pool for any given committer, which leads to this exponential decay where they never quite have 0 balance for any given project. If enough donors use tip4commit, that is potentially a lot of bitcoin pennies that is just sloshing around their server.

benologist 12y ago
3) unwanted / rejected / opted-out donations will be returned to the 'project pool' instead of the donor, it's unclear what happens in cases when a project has no participating developers (default), is itself opted out, or has all opted-out developers 4) donors are not informed that the projects they're supporting may not receive or accept donations this way 5) donors are actively lied to, see: https://tip4commit.com/github/django/django https://tip4commit.com/github/django/django and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545377 has a django rep trying to opt them out of the program, there is no ambiguity whether they like, let alone want to or will receive donations this way
exDM69 12y ago
> If enough donors use tip4commit, that is potentially a lot of bitcoin pennies that is just sloshing around their server. I recall reading that they have 55 BTC "sloshing around their server" at the moment (no easy way of checking this on their website but seems reasonable looking at the top projects' funds). By todays exchange rate, that's 18k USD, which is being handled with very little actual transparency. It is a genuine risk that the people behind this project will run away with 18k$ worth of BTC (or claim they were hacked). I don't like this idea very much and I certainly would not like my projects to be up there.

baddox 12y ago

> The problem was on one hand something I did not opt into (and there not being a way to opt out of) this tipping system and that it's a completely unregulated space that can cause me troubles I could have avoided otherwise. While I have no qualm about his desire to avoid tip4commit, I find the mention of "unregulated space" peculiar. It seems that he is worried, and probably prudently so, about the fact that this space is highly regulated, not that it is unregulated.

cbsmith 12y ago
It's a matter of perspective. The bitcoin world is highly unregulated, and much like the black market, you cannot pull it from that space without bringing all the chaos, disorder and risk that comes with that. For a lot of people (and arguably for almost everyone), the benefits of the regulated world are terribly desirable.

freework 12y ago

I don't understand this whole controversy. The the amount of money donate to you is so small (like under a dollar over the course of a year) then you don't need to declare it on any tax forms. If a random person on the street gives you a quarter, you on't need to report that on taxes, nor do you have to report a 0.00017 BTC donation. On the other hand, if the donation is big (say in the thousands USD), I can see why someone could decide to not accept the donation because they don't wan to report it on their taxes. An easy solution to this problem is to NOT TAKE THE DONATION. If you don't take the money, you don't have to report anything. The tip4commit site supposedly states if a developer doesn't accept a donation the money goes back to the 'project pool' where it will get donated to another developer on that project.

DanBC 12y ago
> The tip4commit site supposedly states if a developer doesn't accept a donation the money goes back to the 'project pool' where it will get donated to another developer on that project. So tip4commit is being dishonest -- if the project has said that none of their contributors will ever accept a tip it is dishonest to continue accepting contributions for that project.
cbsmith 12y ago
> The the amount of money donate to you is so small (like under a dollar over the course of a year) then you don't need to declare it on any tax forms. If a random person on the street gives you a quarter, you on't need to report that on taxes, nor do you have to report a 0.00017 BTC donation. The confidence in understanding the intricacies of tax law in the world's 196 different countries (many of which have intranational differences in the tax code) exceeds that of any tax attorney I've ever spoken with.

anton000 12y ago

"The vocal people in the community seem like they don't actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their "investment" makes a profit." Im into Bitcoin, and I agree with this view. Most specially the reddit based bitcoin community.

zanny 12y ago
And so what? You believe in the promise, and putting your money where your mouth is is one of the most powerful market forces. People are putting their money in BTC because they believe in it.
- jamespo 12y ago
  And they are vocal about it because they want some people to get in under them in the pyramid.

firepacket 12y ago

This was a painful read. He says he "doesn't want to be educated about bitcoin" because "he's heard all the arguments", while at the same time claiming it's a "terrible currency (or not a currency at all)" without any further reasoning. This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications. Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing.

cbsmith 12y ago
> This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications. I think he very clearly understands all the applications. The point is that _for his case_ it doesn't provide any value, and he believes in a lot of cases its drawbacks outweigh its advantages (which is an entirely arguably point). > Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing. Again, I think you misread the article. It isn't that he is unwilling to learn something. He's learned a great deal and concluded that it makes his life more difficult. More importantly, he's pointed out a significant problem with it: there are a lot of things that can happen with Bitcoin that would otherwise be prevented and you'd want them to be prevented.
- firepacket 12y ago
  > I think he very clearly understands all the applications. Really? And what are you basing that opinion off of exactly? The only applications he mentions in his post relate to taxes and credit card fees. If he had any understanding of the other uses like multiparty transactions, timestamping, identity management, voting, derivatives, and trustfree contracts, then he failed to say anything to convey that awareness in his writing. > Again, I think you misread the article. It isn't that he is unwilling to learn something. He's learned a great deal and concluded that it makes his life more difficult. I didn't misread anything. Rather, he miswrote by conflating his opinions of a single bitcoin service with the entire underlying protocol.

alexruf 12y ago

Since I am from Germany and our banking and tax system is quite similar to the Austrian, I totally agree with Armin in each single point! Maybe not exactly what Armin described as a solution - but did you already check Flattr (https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/)? This also might work for supporting OpenSource projects.

mangecoeur 12y ago

It's nice to see someone who isn't on a hype-high over Bitcoin for a change. I still don't see why people think that a new unregulated currency would be somehow free of all the problems and abuses that prompted all the regulation of existing currencies in the first place - y'know, tax, fraud, customer protection, money laundering, market rigging, etc etc...