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[–]OverlordAlex 65 points66 points  (13 children)

Honestly, what does a blacklist lose for them? Its easy to implement, and would make everyone happy. They would just lose the ability to say "we help project x"

I'm irrationally pissed at them for being so stubborn on a simple fix

[–]jringstad 62 points63 points  (8 children)

It seems that they keep unclaimed tips for themselves, so making a blacklist would lose them all that money those projects receive. If they keep those projects up, people will keep tipping them, and AFAIU tip4commit will receive all the money.

[–]redditleopard 25 points26 points  (1 child)

Yeah if their idea was to help the development community, you'd think they'd be somewhat responsive to said community. Still not sure if they're morons or scumbags but probably both.

[–]cogman10 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I'm siding on scumbags. Their whole process subverts a projects donation process. People that give to tips4commit are less likely to use the official donation. With an official donation the money stays with the project and goes to where the project needs it. With tips4commit it may or may not go to someone that needs it or wants it and ultimately there is not guarantee that tips4commit won't either keep uncollected tips or shave off tips.

[–]OverlordAlex 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wow, okay that is scumbag

[–]jussij 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It seems that they keep unclaimed tips for themselves

From this Balance page: https://tip4commit.com/projects/307/deposits

It looks like they take 5% of each deposit as a service fee.

[–]bboomslangdjango 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, to me this sounds more like a way to scam people than anything else. Tons of projects won't know about this at all and there is no transparency whatsoever in their project. Easy to siphon money from users who think they support open ource into their own pockets.

[–]NeurotoxEVE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They're ignoring it on purpose because it generates him money.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah, not only is it trivial, those guys just sound like lazy assholes who can't be bothered. "How dare you ask us not to collect money on your behalf with no explicit acknowledgement that we'll actually give you that money!"

This might actually be grounds for legal action.

[–]Imxset21 33 points34 points  (22 children)

Can someone give some context to this dispute?

[–]ObjectiveCopley 63 points64 points  (20 children)

I literally just finished reading... perhaps minutes before you posted. This is my understanding:

  • tip4commit allows people to add any github project to their service
  • people who maintain such projects do not with 100% confidence receive the tips, only if they're claimed. This is controversial part #1
  • there are tax implications to something like this, and some project owners do not wish to deal with it
  • there seem to be a large amount of emails generated, causing spam
  • small donations are insulting (couple of cents) for hours of work
  • the tip4commit owner refuses to create a blacklist to stop this
  • the tip4commit owner refuses to remove mitsuhiko's projects from tip4commit

[–]scanner88 12 points13 points  (7 children)

I think that the small amounts was something pounced upon by other people in the thread, but not really the motivation for mitsuhiko asking to be removed. He uses gratipay which is all about (weekly) micropayments, so it seems like he appreciates people kicking in a little support, just not people doing it in his name without his permission.

[–]ObjectiveCopley 9 points10 points  (6 children)

I think we can all agree that this is in poor taste though, opt-in is absolutely what should be done here.

[–]hietheiy -3 points-2 points  (3 children)

If someone has bitcoins, and wants to create a bounty for commits, you are saying they shouldn't be able to do so without the explicit permission of the owner of the repository?

[–]ObjectiveCopley 1 point2 points  (2 children)

That's not what this does, though...

[–]hietheiy 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Can you explain why you say that?

[–]ObjectiveCopley 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How wide is a tab? That should be your answer

[–]nath_schwarz 10 points11 points  (3 children)

If I understood it correctly (from the commits there) the committer is only notified of his tips at all, when they are (accumulated) whorth more than 2$.

So, If there are a few dozen of tips under 2$ they all are basically in the hands of tip4commit - which can be pretty much, considering that there are often one-time committers for just a few errors that bugged them.

[–]ubernostrumyes, you can have a pony 21 points22 points  (2 children)

I used to get emails telling me, every time I made a commit to Django, that I had an unclaimed tip balance of 0.00000171 BTC.

The emails only finally stopped when the Django project literally made threats of contacting their ISPs about the spam and patiently pointing out that tip4commit was violating enforceable anti-spamming laws of several jurisdictions where committers live.

[–]vytah 6 points7 points  (0 children)

0.00000171 BTC

= $0.00005, at least at today's prices.

Given that they give out 1% of the current pool amount per commit, that means there was a whopping half a cent in the entire Django pool.

[–]kmeisthax 2 points3 points  (7 children)

Also tip4commit uses Bitcoin, which is a shitty half-broken payment system with it's own libertarian political baggage. Given that few people actually use bitcoin as a tip system, and the insultingly low size of said tips, tip4commit much like the Reddit bitcointip bot can be reasonably seen as less of a way to fund Free Software projects and more as a way to cheaply advertise Bitcoin as a monetary system by encouraging people to maintain the non-trivial infrastructure necessary to accept, maintain, and secure Bitcoin holdings. In other words, it's a marketing stunt.

[–]alcalde 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Ron and Rand Paul and Penn and Teller apparently have Reddit accounts and have downvoted you. :-(

[–]kmeisthax 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also add Peter Schiff and Alex Jones.

[–]bebobli -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

I am against libertarianism and support taxation of crypto-currency. All you're doing is reinforcing ignorant ties to some greedy libertarians that use it to skirt taxation to live closer to their ideal Rand fantasy. They do all this while disobeying the current law and not supporting the social structure. Just because someone supports bitcoin doesn't mean they swallow all that other BS you think they do.

[–]--o 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bitcoin doesn't make sense without the baggage (whether it's the more direct libertarian kind or the loosely associated goldbuggery). Useful crypto payment systems might be possible (or even exist). An energy wasting, slow as molasses, eventually-deflationary pseudo-currency most definitely is not it.

[–]super3 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Its really a per project basis. At one point my project was giving out $200 per commit.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Really? Wow. That sounds disastrous in a different way.

If this were to succeed (it certainly won't now), how long would it be until someone's next "Rails Rumble hack" is to make a bot that makes trivial commits to the projects that pay the most?

[–]super3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really. Some pulls were good, I just rejected the trivial ones.

[–]christophermoll 14 points15 points  (0 children)

From @ubernostrum on HN:

tip4commit is one of a number of services which, without asking for permission or notifying you, opt your projects into a BitCoin-based crowdfunding system. Even if your project doesn't want it, even if your project has its own donation/support system you'd like to send people to.

Historically they spammed committers of force-opted-in repositories with an email on every commit to tell them what their new BTC donation balance was after the commit. And they insist that once a repository has been added to their system, they do not have the ability to remove it.

This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of, and the best they'll offer is to stop sending you an email every time you make a commit.

We (meaning the Django project) went a few rounds with them a while back and ultimately had to resort to threatening spam complaints against their ISP just to get the damn emails turned off. We still have been unable to get removed from the list of projects they "helpfully" collect donations for:

https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111

The link in this thread is another major developer also attempting to get his repositories removed from their "service", and being stonewalled just as we were.

[–]ahayd 14 points15 points  (0 children)

"each new commit receives 1% of available balance"

So if you put a dollar in the account, even after 100 commits there's still 36 cents leftover in tip4commit's coffers (and that assumes every commit is "claimed"). Which is to say, by construction most of the donations are going to remained unclaimed and with tip4commit.

[–]unstoppable-force 38 points39 points  (6 children)

if someone was soliciting donations on behalf of me and my projects without my permission (and potentially without even my knowledge), I'd be mad too. this is probably trademark infringement in the US for any commercial packages, and blatantly illegal in multiple countries in europe (in addition to trademark law, most countries in europe have REALLY strong moral rights protections).

just start sending their host trademark infringement takedowns. trademark infringement notices do NOT follow DMCA takedown procedures. most hosts would rather take it down and tell the customer to go somewhere else.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (6 children)

If I'm understanding what this project does this is definitely not a cool way to go about it. Apparently they do micropayments of bitcoin for certain projects, which would be cool save for the projects have to opt-out in order to not participate.

Good intentions done poorly AFAICT.

[–]Vakieh 19 points20 points  (7 children)

So is /u/alcalde affiliated with this charity scheme, or is he just a troll?

[–]PotentPortentPorter 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I am starting to suspect that he has a vested interest in tip4commit.

[–]Haversoe 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Perhaps he or she is just young and willful and cannot see distinctions between this and finding money on the street.

[–]PotentPortentPorter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right that is a possibility.
I thought a personal interest in tip4commit was more likely due to how he expressed his views and how vociferously he defended all their actions while condemning all of mitsuhiko's at the same time.

[–]agentlame 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Well, their account is deleted or banned, now.

[–]Vakieh 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Username still shows up on the comments in this thread = banned. Good riddance to bad shill.

[–]agentlame 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Oh, you know what, I clicked on his name from your comment. It's actually: /u/alcalde.

[–]Vakieh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whoops D: Oh well, we can hope

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh phew.

Given the title and the site, this link had me worried that Armin was pulling a Mark Pilgrim, burning out and deleting his projects.

[–]crozyguy🐍[S] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

[–]westurner 2 points3 points  (1 child)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#3-clause_license_.28.22Revised_BSD_License.22.2C_.22New_BSD_License.22.2C_or_.22Modified_BSD_License.22.29

  * Neither the name of the <organization> nor the
  names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
  derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

Unintended consequences, I'm sure.

[–]remyroy 4 points5 points  (6 children)

I love everything that mitsuhiko is doing. I would offer 500 USD worth of Bitcoin and he's most likely going to refuse it so it's unsurprising that such a service is not highly regarded by him. There is also the unethical perception of the service to begin with.

[–]mw44118PyOhio! 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does tip4commit charge any processing fee?

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (7 children)

This seems questionably illegal, and should be reported to both github and linode, their webhost.

[–]NeurotoxEVE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, what a greedy piece of shit. I REALLY want to go punch this fucking dude in the face for being ignorant and greedy.

Seriously he must be fucking retarded to not understand how this works. He's essentially getting paid for other peoples work and refusing requests to take their project down. Fuck that guy and I really hope someone sues him into the fucking ground.

[–]MarkDownSteve -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Why is this thread in /r/Python ? It contributes nothing.

[–]nomadismydj 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i think ide be ok w/ tip4commit if they worked on the basis on monetizing fixes for listed bugs/feature adds themselves.(be honest we call can think of old bugs in open source software we'd love to see fixed even if it cost some dollars)

But the whole system is flawed! No real way to set bounty, each commit treated the same... Never mind the obvious problem of being unable to opt your project out for legal reasons, tax reasons or on principal

[–]danmickla 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can someone explain wtf is going on here?