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Please remove mitsuhiko/*

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Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#171

Post by bewaretheirs »

randallsquared wrote: post #45
ubernostrum wrote: post #5

I do not normally rant, but tip4commit and its ilk are some of the most infuriating people in the world to deal with, since they're opting other people's projects into something that has all sorts of legal/taxation consequences and think that "we have no way to remove you once you get opted in" is an acceptable answer. I'd push complaints further up to GitHub, since I'm sure something in the way this works violates t…

How can there be taxation consequences unless you act to set up a bitcoin address and accept the offered tip? If you've done all that, I think it's clear you know what you're doing. If you don't do that, then the money (apparently?) returns to the project you committed to, from whence it came. The only way there could be tax is if you receive the money, and that can only happen by you deliberately becoming involved.

In the US, if a payment is "available" to you, it must be reported as income at the time it becomes available. Failure to cash a paycheck doesn't mean you don't owe tax on it.

See IRS publication 525, page 2, "constructively received income": http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf

There's some fuzziness and legal room here but the safe thing would be to declare it as income.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#172

Post by eropple »

jordanpg wrote: post #107
Cakez0r wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those projects are in the public domain. If there are purposes that you don't want your project to be used for then forbid it in the license. When you put your contact information in the public domain and then complain about being notified when somebody has given you money, I feel like you're complaining just for the sake of complaining. Set up filter rules or don't put your contact information on the internet. If I…

> then forbid it in the license Isn't this really all there is to say on this subject?

No, it's not. The software itself has nothing to do with taking donations on its behalf.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#174

Post by apendleton »

brador wrote: post #26

My money is on the old Bitcoin play of "we were hacked" once they have a large enough balance of donations.

As someone else has already pointed out, they don't even have to pretend to get hacked to get to keep contributors' money. The model of dispensing 1% of balance per commit guarantees that it's impossible to get all of a project's contributions back out again.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#175

Post by atmosx »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #31
waterlesscloud wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to where they believe they are immune to the rules because they're using Bitcoin? To me it just looks like a badly implemented concept that happens to use Bitcoin. I'm not seeing any Bitcoin exceptionalism here.

The Bitcoin exceptionalism is clear in this bit: ---- arsenische - Do I need to learn all the laws of all the countries before publishing anything online or may I just use the common sense and conscience please? mitsuhiko - To be honest: when it comes to handling money I would assume so. If this website would be dealing with a real world currency you would have a bunch of problems on yourself at this point. Most peop…

Hm, how old are these people? Because from what I understand, they don't have a clue about what they are actually doing or how businesses.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#176

Post by natch »

arsenische wrote: post #89
michaelmior wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed "the project" meant that the tip goes back into a general pool still dedicated to the particular project the tip was originally designated for. Then these funds would be available for redistribution when new commits are made to the project. I can see how "the project" could also be interpreted as tip4commit though and if that's the case, that's pretty lousy.

> I assumed "the project" meant that the tip goes back into a general pool still dedicated to the particular project the tip was originally designated for. This interpretation is correct

If by now you don't understand that this project is a bad idea, you are going to get a reputation of being not intelligent. That's not a good reputation for a coder.

Why is it a bad idea?

Maybe people have already stated the reasons. And you (wrongly) think you have effectively refuted them. You are being, to choose a mild word, dense.

Sometimes it's best to just look at how mad you are making people, and draw your conclusions from that.

You are making something people don't want.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#177

Post by bewaretheirs »

Erwin wrote: post #83
randallsquared wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can there be taxation consequences unless you act to set up a bitcoin address and accept the offered tip? If you've done all that, I think it's clear you know what you're doing. If you don't do that, then the money (apparently?) returns to the project you committed to, from whence it came. The only way there could be tax is if you receive the money, and that can only happen by you deliberately becoming involved.

Consider this: you are in a high-tax country and have some incoming lucrative income. Instead of receiving that income and paying the tax, the company sends you an email saying: Here's a $100,000, come get if you want, but you don't have to! It's a tip! It'll get donated to MSF in a few years. Wink, wink. You put in your income for the year as $0 (not having accepted this tip), and leave for the Seyschelles, where su…

in the US the key event is when the income becomes available to you, not when you collect it.

The proper thing to do in your hypothetical case (where you didn't see the message until well into the next tax year) would be to file an amended return for the previous year declaring the recently discovered income.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#178

Post by natch »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #123
brador wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you trademark open source project names?

Absolutely. Mozilla, Firefox, OpenOffice, Apache, Debian, etc are all registered trademarks and can not be used by others without permission.

And most famously Linux: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:88w...

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#179

Post by gnud »

jacques_chester wrote: post #147
ubernostrum wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, it's something I've investigated. Best I can tell as a non-attorney acting on advice from others, the way in which they advertise their services could be easily confused as implying a financial relationship with organizations or individuals with whom they do not have a (consenting) financial relationship. Where to go from there is an open question. The bigger question, as always with such things, is whet…

I'd broaden my response to go after services they rely on, starting with github.

Github TOS G10: You must not upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited email, SMSs, or "spam" messages.

https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#g-...

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