Gittip at Khan Academy

#1

Post by digitalnalogika » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 9:30 PM UTC

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#2

Post by warp » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 9:55 PM UTC

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#3

Post by gketuma » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 9:59 PM UTC

warp wrote: post #2

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.

if everyone using those products gave this small amount, you will be amazed how it will quickly rack up.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#4

Post by clone1018 » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:00 PM UTC

warp wrote: post #2

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.

This is just the beginning, Gittip is still young, it has room to grow.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#5

Post by avenger123 » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:01 PM UTC

warp wrote: post #2

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.

Money is money. It all adds up.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#6

Post by jeresig » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:03 PM UTC

warp wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#7

Post by jmduke » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:06 PM UTC

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#8

Post by olalonde » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:09 PM UTC

jeresig wrote: post #6

warp wrote: post #2

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.

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 ti…

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#9

Post by Lerc » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:10 PM UTC

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#10

Post by Jd » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 10:11 PM UTC

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.