Would Linus Torvalds Please Collect His Bitcoin Tips? 231
jfruh writes "Tip4Commit is a new service that allows anyone to link a tip for a developer to GitHub commits for open source projects. The tips are denominated in Bitcoin — and it appears that some developers aren't interested, with almost 40% of the total value tipped going uncollected. One dev who hasn't collected his $136 in tips is Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. It's not clear if the devs who aren't collecting their tips are opposed to the concept of tipping on open source projects or just don't want to deal with Bitcoin."
Nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
136 dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
A morning's worth of developer wages collected over half a year? Plus it's not money, the effort to get that converted into money is probably more than a morning. Why bother?
Robotic News (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Value (Score:5, Insightful)
And the ridiculous part is this is for Linus himself. Obvious a lot of the money goes uncollected, is sounds like most of the devs who get tips probably don't even have 5 bucks yet.
Genius (Score:5, Insightful)
"I know, let's set up a tip service that's totally unrelated to what you're tipping for, has no input from the people you're tipping and provides the tips in a currency that half the recipients either won't want or don't care about"
Re:Value (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I am into Bitcoin and as long as I knew it was not going to be taken by someone else I might not rush to move it either. I might wait until it gets up to a couple hundred. This is really not a necessary Bitcoin story as we have so many others.
Re:Value (Score:5, Insightful)
All it took was $136 to get an advertisement on the front page of Slashdot and other geek news sites. Pretty good ad for a startup nobody has ever heard of.
Unicorn Horns! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't /. readers collecting the virtual unicorn horns I left for them on my website?? Don't they appreciate the gesture and realize the value they're leaving on the table??
Re:Nah. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Didn't know people sent money to that thing" is another.
Re:Value (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess they could implement a "not for me, pass it along to EFF or other charitable body" option on the recipient's end for those who don't care to bother with their tips.
Re:Value (Score:5, Insightful)
The front page of Slashdot just doesn't have the value it used to have.
Re:Value (Score:1, Insightful)
/. missed the Digg and then the Reddit train.
Doesn't surprise me, still has teh same shitty interface more or less from the late 90s. Won't even tell me if someone replied to one of my comments without me looking manually. Doesn't display correctly on tablet/phone, can't select post display setting on said devices.
This so called tech site sucks in a lot of ways.
Re:Value (Score:4, Insightful)
$136 is an insult.
How on earth can it be an insult? Or, to put it another way, how could it be more insulting than $0, which is the amount people have to pay to get access to the work?
Re:Value (Score:4, Insightful)
I would collect. Not collecting sends a message to anyone who is considering to tip you that you're not interested.
Pan handlers have long since known this is NOT true. You leave some in the cup so it looks like other people felt comfortable enough to donate, but not so much that people think you have more than enough already. On the scale of Linus, leaving a couple hundred bucks in there seems about right.