I Believe in Gittip

Please make it accept bitcoin. No, seriously.<p>If you convert the bitcoins to cash automatically on reception I don't see any issues with people's confidence in the currency -- it just transparently becomes a payment vector for real dollars that automatically get exchanged via mtgox or whatever.<p>I really look forward to the day when I can just toss a few bitcoins towards programmers or musicians on the internet. Right now, signing up my credit card for every website I want to interact with is just not going to happen, and Paypal isn't an option for me either.<p>I wish services like bandcamp and things like bug bounties and the like allowed me to just throw some coins their way, but instead there's this whole complicated credit system with one or more third parties to deal with, and it's annoying. I hate typing my CC number into every damn website I want to make a microtransaction with.<p>Personally I don't know or care whether bitcoin will <i>transform world economics</i> the way some people predict, but I <i>do</i> think it's a pretty convenient way to deal with internet transactions, even if it's just used as a temporary medium for real currency. This kind of thing, in all honesty, is its "killer app."

About doing what you really want and getting an income: sometime they don't mix well.<p>Right now, I am just building projects on whatever I felt like doing. Some are no doubt, useful to everybody else. However, the rest may be just be interesting only to me or solve a problem that is unique only to me.<p>Do I know where I will get my money? No clues. However, it been a blast for me, personally. I learn a few tech such as meteor.js and how to develop chrome extensions, although I really want greybeard knowledge(algorithms, debugging, and other core skills), not the latest fad.

I applaud his courage, but leaving a job for $115.73 per week seems a bit risky. Maybe if this concept was combined with something like Kickstarter it would be more effective. E.g. you create an open-source project and pledge to continue development on it as long as your Gittip payments stay above a certain threshold.

I like the idea of Gittip, and I have definitely thought about the problem of how society can encourage things that benefit it (i.e. open source software).<p>I had a bad experience with Gittip though. I tried to tip you. It said sign in with github, so I did. Then I go back. I tried to tip you again, and it said there was an error. Then I clicked "back with a credit card". And it says I need to sign in with github to add a credit card. But it already says I'm signed in as my user name in the upper right corner. So something is wrong.<p>Also I think it would be better to allow one-time payments too. I just wanted to try your system but I wasn't committed to making a recurring payment. I was going to cancel it after I tried it. I would have been fine with a one-time payment.

How does this compare with Flattr? It may be slightly different, but is it sufficiently different?

He's proven his belief in the product by taking a stand. This is already more than most could hope to do. For that I offer my applause. If this isn't a next big thing, it at least offers a life changing mindset. For that I offer my thanks.

So what are the restrictions on getting money out?<p>That's a major concern to me. You say you handle them manually, but do you have restrictions on how much money can be paid out, what country the recipient may be resident in, etc?

So Gittip is a recurring donation platform for Github authors ?

Eating your own dogfood: an excellent idea :)

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