disclaimer: I say this having my own somewhat "competing" site in the oss crowdfunding area, though it is new and frankly unused. I'll give out the link if anyone is interested, but it seems poor form to do so directly in this comment.<p>I like the gist of gittip: giving hackers a way to write open source code while still making a living. That is ideal to me, and crowdfunding works for oss because oss has a return on investment for everyone.<p>I just have a hard time seeing how gittip will break an initial interest plateau. Traditional crowdfunding has worked for a few projects because there is an exact "you are getting this output for this input". With gittip it is much less obvious. I can donate an amount each week to a person, but there's nothing attached as to how that should be used for either side. The giver might expect a certain result, but the recipient doesn't know what that is or why they are receiving it.<p>Not to mention there is the issue where of what if a receiver wants to take a month off? The people who are giving do so because they expect something in return, and either the receiver is tied to that nebulous expectation of production, or they can take a break and risk losing whatever funding they received before and the resulting need to build that up again.<p>I just don't see how that can scale beyond a small, very interested audience. I feel we need the hard goals which say "if you give me this, I'll give you this". These goals give more concrete deadlines and expectations and probably are more likely to drive results.<p>But hey, anything in this area is encouraging and it will be interesting to see where gittip goes.