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Gittip at Khan Academy

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Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#31

Post by whit537 »

ronaldx wrote: post #22
jeresig wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, personal…

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 populatio…

Imagine if we got some Bangledeshi garment workers on Gittip.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#32

Post by jeresig »

ronaldx wrote: post #22
jeresig wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, personal…

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 populatio…

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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#33

Post by whit537 »

jashkenas wrote: post #30
mercuryrising wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an idea, but if you get a bunch of tips coming in, that'd be awesome if you tip them to projects that you use. You probably have a pretty good idea of what the cool things on the horizon might be.

That, and perhaps even better -- I have some tireless contributors to projects like Backbone who really deserve the thanks. For (one, good) example, @braddunbar is a shining paragon of helpful and polite open source contributions.

https://www.gittip.com/on/twitter/braddunbar/

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#34

Post by whit537 »

jashkenas wrote: post #27
jeresig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really happy that you've signed up! Amusingly I'm in a very similar boat to you. I'm fairly certain that almost all the money that I'm receiving on Gittip is due to my work on jQuery - which I haven't actively worked in quite a few years. One way in which Chad explained it to me, that resonated, was that Gittip can be better thought of as a "genius grant". People are giving you money not to support a specific thi…

Hah. I'm afraid that -- between being currently funemployed, having just had all of my worldly possessions (at least for this year) stolen out of the back of my car last week, and discovering that travel insurance doesn't really cover it very well ... I can certainly think of a few good uses for it ;) I'm afraid that I'm still "actively" working on everything (except for Ruby-Processing, which has been passed along),…

Geez, man. Wow. I'm sorry. :-(

I can't believe I'm asking this, but what would it take for you to work on open-source full time instead of going back to NYT in the winter? Is that something you would even want?

What would it take to keep you funemployed forever?

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#35

Post by jashkenas »

whit537 wrote: post #34
jashkenas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. I'm afraid that -- between being currently funemployed, having just had all of my worldly possessions (at least for this year) stolen out of the back of my car last week, and discovering that travel insurance doesn't really cover it very well ... I can certainly think of a few good uses for it ;) I'm afraid that I'm still "actively" working on everything (except for Ruby-Processing, which has been passed along),…

Geez, man. Wow. I'm sorry. :-( I can't believe I'm asking this, but what would it take for you to work on open-source full time instead of going back to NYT in the winter? Is that something you would even want? What would it take to keep you funemployed forever?

    > Is that something you would even want?
I don't think so. Having a balance between short-term deadline driven stories and slower, larger, more greenfield projects is a terribly nice luxury for a programmer to have. I also find it hard to imagine a more interesting and enlivening day-to-day environment than a national newsroom.

I talk a little bit more about it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HanxEFFlk

... and Derek's got a great post from this morning about the job as well: http://thescoop.org/archives/2013/07/16/why-develop-in-the-n...

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#36

Post by opsmgmt »

jashkenas wrote: post #21
shmageggy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Maybe a gittip feature (I don't know if it already does this) is an option to make all donations anonymous so that the recipient does not know the source. This should remove the conflict of interest then.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#37

Post by spicyj »

opsmgmt wrote: post #36
jashkenas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe a gittip feature (I don't know if it already does this) is an option to make all donations anonymous so that the recipient does not know the source. This should remove the conflict of interest then.

As whit537 mentions in a sibling comment, all Gittip donations are already anonymous, but blog posts like John's here end up removing the anonymity for particular donations.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#38

Post by kingkilr »

jeresig wrote: post #20
jashkenas wrote: post #16

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 busines…

I'm really happy that you've signed up! Amusingly I'm in a very similar boat to you. I'm fairly certain that almost all the money that I'm receiving on Gittip is due to my work on jQuery - which I haven't actively worked in quite a few years. One way in which Chad explained it to me, that resonated, was that Gittip can be better thought of as a "genius grant". People are giving you money not to support a specific thi…

If you enjoy speaking or attending conferences, I've tried to use some of the money (since I'm also in the "have a full time job" boat) towards going to conferences I normally wouldn't, and trying to be an asset to the community there.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#39

Post by daenz »

jmduke wrote: post #7

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…

> 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.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#40

Post by Jd »

jareau wrote: post #18
Jd wrote: post #10

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.

what payment method besides CC would you like to see? Bitcoin? ACH?

Since you ask, I happen to run my own asset-backed digital currency w/ an open REST API. See profile.
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