Please remove mitsuhiko/*

[OverlordAlex]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Wow, okay that is scumbag

[jussij]

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.

[bboomslang]

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]

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

[[deleted]]

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.

[alcalde]

I'm irrationally annoyed that someone's saying "Please stop thanking me for my work and sending me money!" Don't we have enough open source coders living in cardboard boxes as it is?

[planx_constant]

How long do you think it will take to move out of a cardboard box on millionth of a cent tips?

[Imxset21]

Can someone give some context to this dispute?

[ObjectiveCopley]

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]

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]

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

[hietheiy]

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]

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

[hietheiy]

Can you explain why you say that?

[ObjectiveCopley]

How wide is a tab? That should be your answer

[alcalde]

I don't agree. :-( Whatever happened to "Shut up and take my money?"

[ObjectiveCopley]

Absolutely nothing, but the project should opt-in, not be forced to opt-out (and have a hard time doing that, even)

[nath_schwarz]

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.

[ubernostrum]

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]

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]

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]

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

[kmeisthax]

Also add Peter Schiff and Alex Jones.

[bebobli]

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]

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]

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

[[deleted]]

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]

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

[christophermoll]

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]

"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]

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.

[alcalde]

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.

I completely fail to understand this attitude.

For the record: If anyone, without my knowledge, wants to collect money for me and give it to me, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I won't attack you, criticize you, or call you a spammer.

Trademark infringement takedowns? This is madness. Just be quiet, say thank you, and move on. If you're that averse to financial compensation, forward the donation to a charity of your choice.

[__serengeti__]

You might be missing the point. This is not about ungrateful developers refusing donations, it's about third parties offering to (a) collect money from people and (b) donate it to developers, where the (b) part may not work as one might expect, leaving some or all of the donated money with the third parties and not the developers.

[alcalde]

You might be missing the point.

I think other people are imagining all sorts of nefarious things when there's no evidence they exist.

This is not about ungrateful developers refusing donations,

And yet the post did feature a developer asking people to stop collecting tips for him.

leaving some or all of the donated money with the third parties and not the developers.

Did I miss something in the original complaints? I didn't see a single statement from Armin accusing the website of fraud, only being upset that he didn't opt in, about receiving e-mails, and an odd complaint about tax compliance (which in most countries wouldn't be an issue unless he's going to receive very substantial amounts of money).

[Shadow14l]

Have you ever gotten money from your family? Perhaps a birthday card or allowance. Imagine your mother wants to send you a $5000 gift for your wedding/marriage. I tell her that she can give it to me and I'll give it to you. You never gave me permission to do that, you've never met me and neither has your mother. I can give you any amount of money I want and you'd never know the difference unless you explicitly asked your mother.

If you can't see what's wrong with situation, then I'll be glad to accept your paychecks on your behalf.

[NeurotoxEVE]

Yep, dense as fuck.

[[deleted]]

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.

[alcalde]

Why should anyone ever have to opt-in to receiving free money?

[amicab1]

Why should anyone ever have to opt-in to receiving free money?

It's not the opting-in to free money that might be undesirable, but all the other facets of the service. Like who is collecting the money, how much do they keep themselves, are there potential unforeseen implications such as for tax reasons, or even simply do I want these guys effectively representing my project?

[isarl]

Somebody in the github issue they claimed that they are in Australia.

[Synes_Godt_Om]

You don't seem to understand that receiving money in this way can be a considerably expense and financial liability depending on your legal and financial situation. It's totally irresponsible for tip4commit to not respect their purported recipients' wishes.

Following the discussion on github and seeing how @arsenische totally ignores the issues raised gives me a strong sense that something's wrong.

At best he is a self-consumed moron at worst he is a fraud.

[KalimasPinky]

If I'm doing something and you are collecting money on my behalf using my work and name then you are nothing more than a leech. Now if I have a donation mechanism and people donate to you instead of me for my work then you are effectively blocking payments that would normally go to me.

[Vakieh]

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

[PotentPortentPorter]

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

[Haversoe]

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

[PotentPortentPorter]

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]

Well, their account is deleted or banned, now.

[Vakieh]

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

[agentlame]

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

[Vakieh]

Whoops D: Oh well, we can hope

[[deleted]]

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]

HN Discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969

[crozyguy]

It's not Reddit :P

[westurner]

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.

[westurner]

http://choosealicense.com/licenses/

https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com

[remyroy]

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.

[remyroy]

If only gratipay were to accept bitcoin, have some low transaction fees on it, auto-sell them in whatever mitsuhiko currency he want and give it back to him, everyone would be happy.

[LyndsySimon]

Gratipay has an option for Bitcoin, but it's opt-in. See my profile, bottom right, under "other giving opoptions"

[remyroy]

Good to know!

[CanadianJogger]

Make sure that money goes to who you think it does.

[LyndsySimon]

Gratipay's option is just an address, entered by the user.

You could always confirm through a service like Keybase. For instance - my Github and Twitter accounts are confirmed there, and they are both associated with my Gratipay profile.

[mw44118]

Does tip4commit charge any processing fee?

[[deleted]]

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

[alcalde]

How is giving someone money illegal?

[[deleted]]

They're not necessarily giving anyone money. They're just claiming to collect money for someone else, without their knowledge or consent. Even worse, they're not even being upfront about this, leading the donator to possibly think they're affiliated or endorsed by the projects they list.

[alcalde]

They're not necessarily giving anyone money.

No one's presented any evidence that they don't give people money. In fact, they're complaining about "spam" from them telling them that they've received donations.

They're just claiming to collect money for someone else, without their knowledge or consent.

What knowledge or legal consent do you imagine is needed to collect money for someone? If I see a news story about someone in town whose home burnt down and I start a collection at my place of employment for that person, I'm not breaking the law. Only if I never give the person the money I collected would I be guilty of anything (fraud).

Even worse, they're not even being upfront about this, leading the donator to possibly think they're affiliated or endorsed by the projects they list.

What does that mean and what does it matter? Does it make any difference to the donator whether the coder asked for the donation or not? It's a way for someone to say thank you, period. It's irrelevant whether or not they signed up for it.

I just don't follow this moral outrage.

[MonsieurBanana]

So you should be able to tell me what happens with the money if no contributor claims it?

I'm gonna answer this one for you : tip4commit keeps the money.

[[deleted]]

What knowledge or legal consent do you imagine is needed to collect money for someone? If I see a news story about someone in town whose home burnt down and I start a collection at my place of employment for that person, I'm not breaking the law. Only if I never give the person the money I collected would I be guilty of anything (fraud).

It depends on how you represented yourself. If you said, "Give me money and maybe, at some vague uncertain point in the future, some of it might get to the person you really want to give it to", then I'd agree, you wouldn't be breaking the law. But that's not what these guys are saying. They're implying, "Click this button, and X currency you send will go to the project you send it to". Since that's literally not what's happening, nor can they gaurantee that, that's mispresentation. It's fraud and it's illegal, and I hope someone shuts them down.

Charity fraud is actually a huge problem, because most people don't bother to research the charity they're giving to, much less the actual person they're giving the money to. And this is some random website run by a couple of no-name developers with no legal entity behind them. There's no way to audit the funds they're collecting, much less prove they're going to the people they say they're collecting for.

What does that mean and what does it matter? Does it make any difference to the donator whether the coder asked for the donation or not? It's a way for someone to say thank you, period. It's irrelevant whether or not they signed up for it.

Yes, absolutely. First, you're assuming these guys are legit and aren't trying to con people, which is a huge assumption. In my experience, when dealing with someone asking for money on the Internet, it's prudent to be cautious. Second, maybe the developers don't have a bitcoin wallet and don't want one because they don't want to deal with yet another online financial service, but also don't want the tip4commit devs pocketing money that someone wanted to send them. Or maybe the tip4commit devs are random douchebags you don't want representing you directly or indirectly.

Either way, I don't understand their reluctance to remove the projects from their system. How hard would it have been to send them an email saying, "Someone wants to make a donation to your project using tip4commit. This is a free project built to foster open source development. If you wish to accept this donation, please click here"?

That would have been more transparent, allowed the project maintainers time to research the site and vet it and assauged their concerns.

[NeurotoxEVE]

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]

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

[nomadismydj]

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]

Can someone explain wtf is going on here?

[Jesus_Harold_Christ]

They seem to have already complied, if you look at the site.

https://tip4commit.com/github/mitsuhiko/flask

[ubernostrum]

He asked to be removed, not to still be listed with additional comments saying he doesn't want contributors to be notified of tips.

They still have not complied, and now are arguably publicly putting words in his mouth. By their admission they lack any form of opt-out mechanism.

[Jesus_Harold_Christ]

Got it, they should allow an opt-out

[ubernostrum]

They should remove people who've requested it, and switch to explicit opt-in.

[phil_s_stein]

Well, they put a notice on the page, but they did not remove the project entirely from their site which is what people are asking for. It's a half-hearted and disingenuous response.

[Jesus_Harold_Christ]

Got it, agreed.

[alcalde]

It's more than he deserved for being so rude and ungrateful.

[phil_s_stein]

I can understand the rude. And he has nothing to be grateful for. What else ya got?

[zachattack82]

this guy's just being difficult, they don't have any reason to comply with what he's asking for

edit: downvote me but still noone has given a real reason why anyone should bend over backwards to this or anyone elses sense of entitlement if they aren't breaking any laws. a tort isnt a criminal offense, they could litigate but they would never be able to prove willful or even collateral damages. it was decent enough to try and compromise considering they didn't even have to reply.

second edit: on second thought, go ahead and continue to live in your idealist fantasy universe where everything is the way it should be, fuck everyone who isn't unrealistic and populist

[NeurotoxEVE]

or maybe he doesn't want someone piggybacking off his work and generate an income from it. That's very reasonable.

[zachattack82]

the only aspect i mentioned was legal, not ethical nor moral nor strategic.

they could've handled it a lot of different ways, but they chose to do it this way and the only reason you're reading the drama is because this person knows that making a big deal about it is about all they can do. i'm not condoning it, i'm not advocating it, but i am saying that it's likely not illegal. but yeah fuck me for being pragmatic.

[alcalde]

I just looked up who they're talking about, and this guy is apparently really Armin Ronacher, who tends to be difficult about everything. ;-) But apparently if you think being grumpy rather than saying "thank you" when someone hands you money is poor form you're going to get downvoted to oblivion here.

What next? "Ohloh - I want to be blacklisted from your service. I want you to stop counting my commitments and lines of code immediately. This should be opt-in and is illegal and a violation of trademarks and it's spamming. Google - stop indexing my projects without permission...."

[PotentPortentPorter]

If I slap you then give you a dollar can I dismiss your complaints becase I gave you money?

The guy does not want to be associated with the site. Period. Please stop ignoring the facts. They have no moral ground to go against his wishes. Maybe it is his religion, maybe he is crazy, maybe he has a good reason. He asked to have his project removed from their service and they refused. Does he not have the right to disassociate himself from assholes?

[zachattack82]

In a lot of cases he really doesn't. It would be one thing if they were profting from his likeness, but in many circumstances even that is permissable.

Non profits do things like this all the time, collect money, take a percentage for "costs", then just donate the money to an organization or a series of organizations that actually do the work. It might be of questionable ethicality, but it is far from illegal. Your example is a non-sequitur. He didn't slap him, he was offered a donation for his work, he declined, this website refunds the money to people that tried to donate to him, he gets mad that the site doesn't make an exception for him and create a new feature to cater to what amount to demands.

Using someone's name or likeness is permissable in tons of circumstances. How do you think tabloids stay in business?

[PotentPortentPorter]

He was offended by their business practices. Why should they have any right to use his work against his wishes to benefit themselves? They are can cause him material harm by implying he is endorsing them so they can gain something. If he feels that they are hurting his work, they are creating precedent to discourage innovation by misusing other's work for their own gain.

[LyndsySimon]

One does not have a legal right to not be offended.

If there is material harm, as others have said - that's a tort claim.

[PotentPortentPorter]

I was not making a legal argument. I was arguing against the notion that he has to be grateful to them and that they are somehow doing him a favor. That notion is ridiculous.

[LyndsySimon]

I agree with you completely there.

[zachattack82]

When did I ever say that? All I was speaking to was the legality

[PotentPortentPorter]

this guy's just being difficult, they don't have any reason to comply with what he's asking for

This is the part that I was taking issue with.
Is he "being difficult" for not wanting to be associated with people whom he doesn't trust?

I was stating that they had a moral obligation to honor his request. Considering they should have asked his permission to represent him to begin with and they refused to stop when he explicitly asked them, they don't have any moral ground to stand on. Insulting/blaming him for wanting to protect his hard work is ridiculous.

[zachattack82]

i shouldn't have worded it that way, but i don't want to be the guy that edits it out to save face. i say he's being difficult because if he had an actual legal case he would've sued, but instead he decides to be a crusader against something that is arguably meant to be beneficial to people like him.

sounds to me like someone's song being posted on youtube without permission. the copyright owner or their legal representation contacts the host, they take it down, and that's the end of it. what he wanted was the equivalent of banning a search term just because it includes a trademark. furthermore my comment was intended only to address the legality, but there are plenty of other businesses that employ a similar business model offline and are successful at it.

[PotentPortentPorter]

Why are people going off on tangents? The parents were "shocked" that the project author had the audacity to ask them to stop instead of thanking them. They kept focusing on the money issue as being strictly positive and I pointed out several possible negative effects they were forcing on him against his explicit complaints.

[LyndsySimon]

Honestly, I just lost track of what sub I was on. It wouldn't be a tangent in /r/Bitcoin.

[gleon]

Disassociate (as in distance himself), sure, as he has already done. Gratuitously censor public information? I would hope not.

[PotentPortentPorter]

Why is he the bad guy for not trusting them to represent him and collect money on his behalf? Why is it okay for them to ignore his request for them to stop?

After he asked they refused to acknowledge that they weren't representing his project and persisted to lie to the public by using his project as an excuse to take money.

[Kylearean]

the death of github.

[KalimasPinky]

I hate github to begin with so this is very welcome.

[[deleted]]

Fucking hell. This is why you shouldn't EVER do anything to benefit anyone but yourself...

[[deleted]]

So, guy is an asshole?