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Gittip, Year Two

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Re: Gittip, Year Two

#51

Post by whit537 »

User9812 wrote: post #27
jve wrote: post #8

Took me some looking around to find a link on bottom of the (gittip.com) page to actually find out what gittip does. First thought was - is it a way to get paid by submitting patches through GitHub? No, actually thats a site where you give/receive donations to people on Twitter/GitHub/Bitbucket

Same thing here, I had no idea about this site, so I click their mission from the article. http://building.gittip.com/big-picture/mission Well, that made it more confusing, so I click process at the bottom of the above page. Now it sounds like it's a giant pool of money, anyone can volunteer for anything, and take some of that money. So, I can say I want to keep the elderly company and go play scrabble with them in t…

Okay, I've also added +1s for you to:

"revamp homepage" https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074

"sign up with email" https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1052

We're working on bringing disciplines besides programming into the mix. The challenge for us is that we run everything open source, which is a cross-cultural experience for most marketers, sales people, and product designers. I talk about this in the post.

If you are or know any folks with relevant skills that want to try out open source, by all means send them our way! :-)

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#52

Post by whit537 »

whit537 wrote: post #49
User9812 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here, I had no idea about this site, so I click their mission from the article. http://building.gittip.com/big-picture/mission Well, that made it more confusing, so I click process at the bottom of the above page. Now it sounds like it's a giant pool of money, anyone can volunteer for anything, and take some of that money. So, I can say I want to keep the elderly company and go play scrabble with them in t…

Great feedback, thanks! Starting to process it here ... I've ticketed "Building Gittip is confusing as a first impression" https://github.com/gittip/building.gittip.com/issues/63

Because what we apparently aren't making clear is that "Building Gittip" is a subsite for people building Gittip. It's not intended to be a starting point for people coming to Gittip for the first time as a potential user. The first impression should either be the homepage or a specific profile page (if you find us through a link from someone you know, which is how most people find us).

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#53

Post by sokoloff »

kmfrk wrote: post #38
User9812 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here, I had no idea about this site, so I click their mission from the article. http://building.gittip.com/big-picture/mission Well, that made it more confusing, so I click process at the bottom of the above page. Now it sounds like it's a giant pool of money, anyone can volunteer for anything, and take some of that money. So, I can say I want to keep the elderly company and go play scrabble with them in t…

At least some of the pages are open source; I'm sure they wouldn't mind a pull request for some changes in language: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/tree/ee8ebf663e74fb... .

Open source doesn't fix this issue.

The GP doesn't understand what gittip is for, what the overall direction is supposed to be or could be, and so can't reasonably submit a pull request to fix that confusion.

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#54

Post by whit537 »

MateuszMucha wrote: post #46
jballanc wrote: post #32

It seems to me that Gittip is making the same mistake that Gnu/FSF have made: the most effective change comes one step at a time. Ostensibly, the primary goal of Gittip is to create an economy of Open Source work. But instead of focusing on this goal, they are also (from the article): * running a non-traditional "open" company * shunning investors not willing to work with an "open" company * only doing "open" intervi…

The thing is that it's crucial for us to have people like RMS. Even if their main projects aren't as successful as their pragmatic "competition", the society as a whole benefits from them being a hard-core idealists. They're the ones who keep reminding us about the values we otherwise would have forgotten (or at least we wouldn't have thought about them as much). I've had a similar discussion with my wife just last n…

:-)

You, too!

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#55

Post by luxpir »

po wrote: post #37

I would suggest one thing that may be controversial, and I hope you take it as constructive criticism: Change the name of Gittip. Maybe you've discussed this before somewhere but… The name suggests two things that I think hinder the service: - This is a service for software developers only (git) - A tip is a small amount of money in exchange for quality service There is no reason to tie yourself only to software deve…

As a non-target-market neutral observer I have a comment on this point. What it lacks in directly relevant meaning, the name makes up for in memorability. The sound/rhyme/rhythm, simple length, inference (devs/money) are all well thought out enough to encourage further investigation.

It's true that tipping culture varies widely around the world, but if visitors are aware of how tipping culture works in the States then the name's function is fulfilled.

Many tips can indeed add up to a living in many places, even in the States, and making a reference to tipping culture can also reflect the humble requirements of OSS developers who have by definition not opted to work on OSS projects for the money.

Seems sensible enough from that point of view.

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#56

Post by whit537 »

chroma wrote: post #10

Let me preface this by saying: I want Gittip to succeed. I really want them to succeed. I would love to be able to spend my time getting paid by a community to develop open source software. However... those growth curves look linear, if not sigmoid. More importantly: >The Gittip team receives $20,339 per year (averaging the past ten weeks). There are 39 people splitting that money. $500 per person per year? That's no…

Our curve was exponential throughout 2013 and into 2014. We doubled three times, about every four or five months. We started to flatten out the past few months as we try to gather a full-time team. Because here's the thing: any other company that doubled three times in a year would go withdraw $2M from the angel network ATM and just flat-out hire a team. We've got a company structure and culture that most angels aren't ready for. E.g.:

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/468570235390271489

I call this "double-bootstrapping" in the post.

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#57

Post by ronaldx »

chroma wrote: post #10

Let me preface this by saying: I want Gittip to succeed. I really want them to succeed. I would love to be able to spend my time getting paid by a community to develop open source software. However... those growth curves look linear, if not sigmoid. More importantly: >The Gittip team receives $20,339 per year (averaging the past ten weeks). There are 39 people splitting that money. $500 per person per year? That's no…

> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California.

This didn't sound right, so I checked it for you:

Full-time minimum wage in California is officially about to increase to $14k.

Based on a 30-hour work week (ref: wikipedia definition of full-time) at $9ph (as of July 1, 2014).

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#58

Post by zoul »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
ama729 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Most prominent: not to limit the future chances of the children). Did they specify a reason? There is quite a lot of good schools there IIRC.

Yes, the schools are fine. But not as good as in the countries surrounding it, and since moving within europe is cheap and relatively easy why not go for one of the best. I've yet to meet a parent that did not want to give their children the most opportunity possible. Combined with the limited opportunity in the local economy, the fact that the quality of life is still far behind nearby countries I really don't fault…

I’m Czech, 33, have lived here all my life. The quality of life certainly isn’t far behind nearby countries. It’s comparable – better in some regards, worse in others. The differences between regions are much bigger than the differences between states. And as for my future children’s chances, they are also much more dependent on factors other than the state I live in. It’s hard to say if I would gain anything by moving.

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#59

Post by whit537 »

po wrote: post #37

I would suggest one thing that may be controversial, and I hope you take it as constructive criticism: Change the name of Gittip. Maybe you've discussed this before somewhere but… The name suggests two things that I think hinder the service: - This is a service for software developers only (git) - A tip is a small amount of money in exchange for quality service There is no reason to tie yourself only to software deve…

Thanks for the feedback! We actually had a loooong bikeshed on this a month into Gittip. Here's the thread:

https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/138

Maybe someday we'll rebrand, but that would be a fair bit of work at this point and would distract us from more pressing concerns such as better discoverability and usability.

Re: Gittip, Year Two

#60

Post by 6cxs2hd6 »

chroma wrote: post #19
sspiff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. Exactly. In California. If you want to live off of what is basically donations for community work, you might want to relocate to a much cheaper place. Eastern Europe or South-East Asia are nice places to live on a tighter budget. I donate a small amount every week myself, though I find it hard to make a bigger commitment to it.

Living in cheap places is fun when you're young, but eventually you take on more responsibilities and your body fails you. Are eastern europe and southeast asia known for their health care? Are dentists cheap there? Most importantly, are they good places to raise a family? I can totally get behind you when it comes to arbitraging cost of living, but not everyone can do that. At best, one could live in an inexpensive…

As just one example, you could live in Rochester MN. Nice 4 BR house There a dozens of places like this between the two insanely expensive coastal zones of the US. Places where things like housing cost nearly an order of magnitude less.

[1]: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Rochester-MN/26791_rid/...

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