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Gittip at Khan Academy

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Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#41

Post by patcon »

whit537 wrote: post #24
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…

I had a go-round on this with Gabe Stein of FastCo.Labs. Since Gittip is anonymous in the particulars I thought maybe that would get around the journalistic conflict of interest, but Gabe articulated how that probably wasn't sufficient because there's always the threat of finding out (as with jashkenas and Khan in this case). Queued up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s Not sure yet what, if anythin…

What if there was a mode that folks could set their accounts to, where they couldn't cash out and could only pass it on to other users? People could go into that mode when they were in a job that frowned upon gifts, and it could be displayed prominently so that allow donors were aware :)

Perhaps the system could even convert dollars to some sort of non-monetary "token", which they could pass along to someone who could cash it out, and then there's further reason that it wouldn't be considered a gift?

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#42

Post by tarr11 »

Influence is worth more than git tips in the OSS marketplace. I can make more in an hour from an employer then I can in an entire year on gittip.

I'd rather have "star" or "follower" - those are things that can be meaningful in my career.

That said, I wonder if this model makes sense in countries where these dollar amounts have a more meaningful impact on your life.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#43

Post by shurcooL »

daenz wrote: post #39
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…

It's not about them not working on OSS if they don't get money for it.

It's about them being able to work on OSS 30+ hours a week instead of 8 hrs a week if you (and many others) give 'em a few bucks a week.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#44

Post by whit537 »

patcon wrote: post #41
whit537 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a go-round on this with Gabe Stein of FastCo.Labs. Since Gittip is anonymous in the particulars I thought maybe that would get around the journalistic conflict of interest, but Gabe articulated how that probably wasn't sufficient because there's always the threat of finding out (as with jashkenas and Khan in this case). Queued up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s Not sure yet what, if anythin…

What if there was a mode that folks could set their accounts to, where they couldn't cash out and could only pass it on to other users? People could go into that mode when they were in a job that frowned upon gifts, and it could be displayed prominently so that allow donors were aware :) Perhaps the system could even convert dollars to some sort of non-monetary "token", which they could pass along to someone who coul…

If you don't connect a bank account then this is effectively what happens. Also, it's currently public on your profile whether you've attached a bank account.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#45

Post by jmathai »

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…

The point is that Gittip is in its infancy. I agree that most OSS developers aren't going to make a ton of money. I never viewed Gittip as a way to get paid as much as I view it as a way to support.

Chad's goals for Gittip are much larger than paying people to write code. But all big ideas start somewhere. I'm an eternal pessimist and I can say that Chad is on to something really big with Gittip. Not sure anyone knows exactly what it is yet though.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#46

Post by ilaksh »

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),…

Can we get a hint about the new project that is in early planning stages?

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#47

Post by pbiggar »

I don't want to be critical of what is a small step in the right direction, but it does feel like such a very small donation. $5/week is, well, nothing. A developer at Khan probably earns $2000/week, and has an over cost to Khan of probably $2500/week at least.

I bring this up because I feel that if gittip optimizes towards that, then people will follow their lead. The right amount for a company with a wage bill of $3m/yr (back of the envelope based on figures in the article) to give back to OSS cannot be $6k/yr.

So one step in the right direction, and thanks Khan for doing that, and I'd love to see the next step being companies donating about 10x that each.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#48

Post by anonymoushn »

Jd wrote: post #40
jareau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found the web site and block a little light on details. As in, there were none at all. It's not clear what benefit the Evergreen digital currency has over any other currency. Is it centralized? What does "secure" mean? What is it backed by?

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#49

Post by dllthomas »

whit537 wrote: post #44
patcon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there was a mode that folks could set their accounts to, where they couldn't cash out and could only pass it on to other users? People could go into that mode when they were in a job that frowned upon gifts, and it could be displayed prominently so that allow donors were aware :) Perhaps the system could even convert dollars to some sort of non-monetary "token", which they could pass along to someone who coul…

If you don't connect a bank account then this is effectively what happens. Also, it's currently public on your profile whether you've attached a bank account.

But presumably you could let cash accumulate, and add a bank account later. I think probably passing the money through to a charity is the safest.

Re: Gittip at Khan Academy

#50

Post by 8ig8 »

Idea... Let's come up with some semi-standard language to include in contacts for client projects to request an optional fee to pass along to open-source projects used. Something like, "we recommend 1% of the development budget be allocated for contribution to open-source projects (blah, blah, blah)." It's easy to expense fees for software licenses, but there is no mechanism for open-source contributions. There should be.
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