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."
Value (Score:5, Interesting)
$136 is an insult. I'd ignore it, too.
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.
Re:Value (Score:3)
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)
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.
They can - but not to the EFF (Score:2)
They already can - just enter the Bitcoin address of whoever in the settings.
However, the EFF would not be an option, as the EFF stopped accepting Bitcoin [eff.org] and the EFF ditched their Bitcoin donated [eff.org] prior to that decision.
Re:They can - but not to the EFF (Score:2)
Then they changed their mind [eff.org], though they make it a bit more difficult than usual [eff.org].
Re:Value (Score:2)
Not collecting sends a message to anyone who is considering to tip you that you're not interested.
And if they really aren't interested, so what? Why should anyone be obligated to care about this stupid startup? If they can't get people interested then the whole thing should simply be allowed to fail.
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.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Value (Score:2)
I agree, it does send a message that tips aren't apreciated.
Sure, running bitcoind is pretty easy. But.. you can just get an online wallet if you don't want to run it yourself.
As for waiting for it to grow, you don't have to turn it into fiat if you don't want to. Just make a wallet and move it there every now and then.
About the email address read access thing... is there any reason it has to be your regular address? Free email accounts are all over the net.
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.
Re:Value (Score:5, Insightful)
The front page of Slashdot just doesn't have the value it used to have.
Re:Value (Score:3)
I estimate this because of #1, the number of comments on articles hasn't really gone down from a decade ago, and #2, Slashdot seems to be having no trouble finding ads to put on the page.
Of course, if the beta comes out, that will kill everything.
Re:Value (Score:2)
Digg and redit are too big of time syncs. If I go there I'm "stuck" for way to long, too much to see. Slashdot is more the right size for me.
Re:Value (Score:2)
Re:Value (Score:2)
Won't even tell me if someone replied to one of my comments without me looking manually.
I came back here after a decade hiatus because reddit got blocked at work. I was shocked that there had been virtually no improvements made in that time.
Re:Value (Score:5, Interesting)
I read Slashdot literally every single day, multiple times per day usually, from 1998 until 2007. Then I got tired of the trend towards fluff articles posted solely to incite flame wars and all of the constant barrage of tinfoil hat articles. I came back and started reading semi-regularly a couple of weeks ago and I see that things haven't really changed at all. The big difference is that I've lowered my expectations and no longer expect every headline to be relevent and interesting like they used to be back in Slashdot's golden years (1998 - 2005-ish).
I wrote CmdTaco numerous times in the mid to late 2000s expressing my concern over the poor judgement of the at-the-time "new" editors (who appear to have become the only editors now) but he dismissed my concerns outright.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Value (Score:2)
surely there is someplace like the old /. out there?
That place never existed and never will, you're experiencing what is known as 'nostalgia', the tendency to recall the pleasurable and forget the noise.
hell even if you didn't agree you LEARNED and left knowing more than you knew before you got here
When you first meet your wife all her stories were new and interesting, same deal with Slashdot (and the internet in general).
I personally blame the allowing of AC posts
AC frees the reader from any pre-existing bias for/against the author.
Re:Value (Score:2)
/. 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.
Not sure how you expect to get notified of replies as AC... try logging in, and you'll have the option of various forms of notifications when someone replies to your comments. And a phone/tablet site was launched a few months ago: http://m.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
Re:Value (Score:2)
He probably loses money wasting time collecting that dust.
Re:Value (Score:2)
Re:Value (Score:2)
Nope they haven't even amassed 4 bitcoins in donation.
Tip4Commit supported 337 GitHub projects, for which 9,076 tips have been earned (a tip is earned when a pull request for a commit on a supported project is accepted), totaling about 3.34 (worth about $2,650 at today's Bitcoin exchange rate of $793.20).
This is just an advertisement for some no-name trying to ride Linus' coattails for publicity.
Re:Value (Score:2)
The question to me is, was this a $2 tip left 3 years ago?
I sold a copy of software for 1 bitcoin back in mid-2012, worth $5 at the time. I sold said bitcoin in mid-2013 for $125, not a bad gain, but of course I would have done 1000% better to go stand at a cash register and say "you want fries with that" for the time spent writing the software in 2012, put all the income in bitcoin and sold in late-2013 instead.
Anybody got that crystal ball thing figured out yet?
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:2)
Huh, seems a self-destructive way of looking at it. OSSoftware is a gift, freely given. If I appreciate the gift and would like to buy you a beer in thanks, that is also a gift. It doesn't imply that I think your work is worth one beer, just that I've got an extra beer and would rather give it to someone who has improved my life than drink it myself. It's like a garage band doing a gig at the local bar - they know they're not going to actually make a fair wage from their tips, but then that's not why they're doing it. They play for the pleasure of performing for an audience, the tips are just a bonus.
Purely hypothetical: A possibly more pressing factor in the case of Linus is that he's a celebrity, and as such accepting a tip through "Service X" would act as an implicit endorsement of that service and their tip allocation algorithms. If he does not actually approve of them, then $136 is a pretty low price to sell a celebrity endorsement for.
Audience participation (Score:2)
Re:Value (Score:2)
Sure ... if it was just one person handing it to you in person then it would be rude to turn it down. It might be all they can afford.
But it isn't.
$136? (Score:2)
I think he'd be all over that if it was $136,000....
Stop making everything about Bitcoin, please.
Re:$136? (Score:2, Funny)
Quite right, my good AC, quite right.
As I recall, Slashdot had no shortage of stories about Flooz back in the day, so it's entirely proper for them to constantly bombard us about Flooz 2.0.
Re:$136? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not interested in Bitcoin either, but let's be fair. No fiat currency has any intrinsic value either. In the case of the US$, it hasn't been backed by anything of material value for a long time, since we went off the gold standard.
Re:$136? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not interested in Bitcoin either, but let's be fair. No fiat currency has any intrinsic value either. In the case of the US$, it hasn't been backed by anything of material value for a long time, since we went off the gold standard.
True but US currency is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the US federal government, a body worth $66.07 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States) versus Bitcoin, which is backed by mathematics and some currency speculators.
Re:$136? (Score:2)
I don't really care if it's backed by a material value myself. After all Gold is also only worth what you value it at as well. I trust the value of the USD for instance more than the value of Diamonds.
Re:$136? (Score:2)
Let's make two lists. "Things you can buy with US dollars" and "Things you can buy with bitcoin". That will tell you which one has more value in the real world.
Re: $136? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re: $136? (Score:2)
Yet as a New Zealander it costs me $20 to send anywhere from $1 to $1,000,000 to someone in Australia, and takes 3 hours. And that money is sent the same way Wells Fargo sends it. Don't assume that because you have a shitty bank that it reflects everyone's experience with the system.
Re:$136? (Score:2)
The US dollar is backed by the world's largest economy
Please remind me, how big is the national debt of the country with the world's largest economy?
Re:Intrinsic? (Score:2)
Sure, but gold has been used as an exchange medium since before the beginning of civilization. Everybody knows what gold is and everybody thinks it has value. The wearing of gold is a symbol of wealth almost anywhere in the world. Part of the US reserve is a big pile of gold in Fort Knox.
Bitcoin? Not so much.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nah. (Score:2)
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?
Re:136 dollars? (Score:2)
A mornings worth?
More like an hours worth.
Re:136 dollars? (Score:2)
Re:136 dollars? (Score:2)
I don't think that is true. The US government won't accept tax payments in Euros either, but if someone pays me in Euros you can be damn sure they will want me to pay taxes on it even if I haven't converted it.
Re:136 dollars? (Score:2)
Robotic News (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Robotic News (Score:5, Funny)
Just because it has the keywords "Bitcoin" and "Linus Torvalds" in the headline - it doesn't really mean its "news".
Oh, they seem happy enough to publish anything wtih a 50% hit rate on that. And I'm stupid enough to click the 2342564354th Bitcoin story and leave a comment, so shame on me.
Re:Robotic News (Score:2)
Re:Robotic News (Score:3)
Just because it has the keywords "Bitcoin" and "Linus Torvalds" in the headline - it doesn't really mean its "news".
Personally, I've been finding lately that if it has the word "Bitcoin" in the headline, chances are that it's actually "anti-news" -- it actually sucks away collective "news-worthiness" from any site it appears on.
In all seriousness, the Slashdot editors and a lot of people around here must be invested in Bitcoin and banking on all the speculation going on. The strongest correlation to Bitcoin's value seems to be the amount of media attention it receives. The daily Bitcoin story here is getting ridiculous.
So you know what? I'm taking the Slashdot pledge -- from this day forward, I refuse to click on any story with "Bitcoin" in the headline. I refuse to comment.
I'm tired of debating with folks who have little clue about how currency works. I'm tired of debating with gold fanatics, or people who bizarrely think that deflation is a good thing. I'm tired of all the stupid arguments about exactly what sort of analogy is adequate to describe the kind of finance scheme is driving the value of cryptocurrencies -- Ponzi schemes, multi-level marketing, pump-and-dump, whatever. Followed, inevitably, by Wikipedia links describing all the details of various financial schemes, and why Bitcoin is none of them. What the heck cares?
Look, you guys want to invest in Bitcoin? Go ahead. Believe it will save the world or allow you to have your privacy or whatever. Maybe it will -- in like five or ten years or something. Maybe.
For now, it's just another speculative venture. You could just as well be debating the value of investing in any one of hundreds of companies or natural resources or commodities or whatever. What the heck makes Bitcoin so freakin' special? (And please, PLEASE -- don't answer that rhetorical question. I've heard a thousand variations on the answers.)
Come on, folks -- take the Bitcoin pledge with me! Save Slashdot from this nonsense.
Re:Robotic News (Score:2)
Re:Robotic News (Score:2)
Re:Robotic News (Score:2)
bitcoins... (Score:2, Interesting)
lol...
that's all.
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:Genius (Score:2)
If only people from your local area want to tip you - Great! You have it absolutely right, just do it in the local currency.
Not too many people want to pay their bank's BS foreign exchange fees to leave (the equivalent of) a dollar in the tip jar, though, nor do most people want to get tips in 27 different currencies.
BitCoin makes a nice compromise that eliminates most of the problems of dealing with a global market that old-school government-issued currencies and their authorized middle-men just can't compete with.
That said, others have already pointed out the biggest problem here... $136 for the single biggest name in Open Source (even before RMS, I dare say)??? Just... Wow. I wouldn't bother giving out my contact info to collect such a pittance either.
Re:Genius (Score:3)
That said, others have already pointed out the biggest problem here... $136 for the single biggest name in Open Source (even before RMS, I dare say)??? Just... Wow. I wouldn't bother giving out my contact info to collect such a pittance either.
On the other hand, it's a relatively new kind of transaction provided with a "currency" associated with illegal activity and scam artists. If I got some sort of notification by email informing me that I'd received $136 and I could collect it in bitcoins by signing up to some service-- well, I'd hope that email would be filtered out as spam before I ever saw it.
That doesn't mean it's a completely terrible idea.
Suitcases full of 100 USD bills (Score:2)
a "currency" associated with illegal activity and scam artists
Are you describing cash?
Re:Suitcases full of 100 USD bills (Score:2)
Percentage-wise, cash is used primarily for legal activities. Its role is diminishing with proliferation of alternative payment instruments (plastic, checks, online transfers, Bill Pay services) but so far cash has plenty of legitimate uses.
On the other hand, BTC shines in gray economy, where you need to pay online but do not want your identity to be known. See the case of BitInstant - the exchange was heavily dependent on Silk Road. BTC is either pointless, or inconvenient, or financially unattractive to pay for gas or for coffee. Credit cards are far more convenient - the transaction gets confirmed instantly, and you get insurance against fraud. Many banks also offer one-time, unique c/c numbers that you may use with a vendor who you do not trust. All the benefits of BTC (for legal stuff) and no hassle.
Re:Genius (Score:3)
Back when PayPal was a new thing I thought it seemed cool, and I had gotten a small windfall of money, I sent some unsolicited 'tips' to a few of the early webcomics that I enjoyed.
In response, a couple of them thanked me on their front page, and posted an address if anyone else wanted to donate.
Other webcomics soon copied (or thought of independently) and donate buttons quickly proliferated.
That was also the last thing I used PayPay for, as they quickly turned evil.
Bitcoin, at least, isn't run by a corporation, and has no say in transactions (like ordering antique violins destroyed)
Some developers don't know (Score:5, Interesting)
Gee, a service I have never heard of before is saying that maybe I have a valuable stash of bitcoins given to me by grateful users of my OSS project and that for a small fee they would be happy to liberate it for me for a tidy profit. Where have I heard this before?
Re:Some developers don't know (Score:4, Funny)
Frankly I had no idea I was related to so many foreign princes!
Re: Some developers don't know (Score:5, Informative)
To claim the rewards you need to give the app rights to read and write your github profile, including writing email address and ssh keys. The app claims this is just so they can see your email, but this is available from the commit anyways. Seems like a big scam to me.
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:Unicorn Horns! (Score:2)
In at least a few cases, they may have tried to pick them up, and realized they couldn't because only virgins can touch unicorns.
what's the address? (Score:3)
Perhaps he ignores it for some tax or legal reason (Score:3)
I don't know much about tax laws and financial laws other than they can often be complex and confusing. I suspect the complexity grows substantially with non-profit organizations (such the Linux Foundation, in which Torvalds is a key person). Perhaps by accepting tips for what is essentially his job, he is opening up a can of worms that he doesn't want to touch.
That is just wild speculation, though.
Payout: 1% per commit (Score:2, Interesting)
So if you give any donation, it takes 69 commits before even half of your donation is distributed. And then another 69 commits before half of the rest gets distributed.
So if you are a developer in a large, fast-moving project, you'll receive very little because it will be distributed among many people, and if you are dominating a small project, you'll receive very little because Tip4Commit will hold onto most of the donations for a very long time.
tip4commit is a pretty good scam (Score:2)
Disappearing act? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
$136 in 30 days or so? Could add up to quite a tidy sum over time...
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
It isn't big money nor is it a primary source of income, but it may be worth the time. $136 is easily beer money for a month, depending where you live. Or it could be redirected to his favourite charity. Either way, why not?
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
Not in Finland! Beers seem to run about 7-9 Euro here, which is to say you might get about 12 beers out of it... that's more than I drink in a month but some than less of my colleagues drink in a weekend.
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
Re: Linus' time (Score:2)
Wow. I pay R50 for 6 beers. Decent beer too.
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
>> ... but it may be worth the time. $136 is easily beer money for a month
Yeah... I remember being 14 years old too
Re: Linus' time (Score:2)
Huh? Where I live that is a good 120+beers. I don't know any 14 year olds with that capacity.
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
$1600 isn't bad for essentially nothing- i.e., assuming (like Linus) you don't have to change your behaviour at all to get it. That's still a couple of weeks salary for most people.
As you say, assuming that this isn't just launch hype. Which I expect it is.
Re:Linus' time (Score:3)
you're assuming he *has* to convert to dollars. It should be obvious that he could simply keep the bitcoin. Takes 2 minutes or less to start up an online wallet, which would be perfectly acceptable for a 1 bitcoin balance.
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
It takes a couple hours of "brain time" to go from not understanding bitcoin to having a functional account that you trust.
I don't blame Linus if he'd rather spend his free time re-watching Ender's Game on DVD instead of figuring out bitcoin so he can (maybe) claim the price of a nice dinner for two in Portland / Helsinki.
Re: Linus' time (Score:2)
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
You made it a little too obvious that you're just pretending to be a noob. what's generate?
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
6. google "how to get a bitcoin address"
6. google "what is a bitcoin address"
or just
6. google "bitcoin address"
They'll lead you to other links that generally go into online wallets and I agree that will add a few (to several) minutes of reading. :)
On the up side, it's for github users.. hopefully even when they're noobs they're tech-inclined
Re:Linus' time (Score:2)
what's a bitcoin 'address', is it like an e-mail address? can I use my existing address? or like an IP address?
Re:spam (Score:2)
Yes. When you see the story that says Bitcoin on the title, do not click on it.
I feel the same way about all of these gun related stories as you do about the Bitcoin ones but it is no big deal. Just ignore them. It is not like SPAM in your email box that might cause a phone notification or fill up your inbox. Slashdot is no your inbox.
Re:spam (Score:2)
Here, I just made a little bookmarklet to make the bitcoin articles have a lower opacity.
javascript:$('#firehoselist [id^="firehose-"]').each(function(i){var $article=$(this);if(/bitcoin/i.test($article.text()))$article.css("opacity",0.25)});
Clearly I make a draggable link but you're probably a smart cookie and can figure out where to put it.
Re:Maybe it's the taxes (Score:3)
Not a gift ... an honorarium (Score:3)
This would likely qualify as an honorarium [wikipedia.org] (a payment given for professional services that are rendered nominally without charge) ... which is taxable in the US.
As with anything else ... the government *might* not care about it for most people, but once they've decided they don't like you, they're more than willing to find any little law they can to get you.
Until the money gets to be high enough that it's worth contacting a tax attorney about, it's better to just not take it.
(I am *not* a tax attorney, but I have received honoraria before (I think it was $500), and they gave me the appropriate paperwork to include when filing my taxes)
Re:Not worth the potential legal problems (Score:2)
136 bucks to potentially get some special attention from the US government, sponsored by Microsoft and Apple? No thanks.
Please explain why Microsoft and Apple would do anything to harass Linus Torvalds?
Re:Copyright infringement. (Score:2)
infringement (Score:2)
Re:infringement (Score:2)
Re:Copyright infringement. (Score:2)
Unfortunately there are lots of organisations like this and they seem to be immune. I gave up trying to figure out how many groups (Copyright Licencing Agency being the top of the list) could be claiming "licencing fees" for the right to reprint journal articles I've written*, and just wrote it off as a loss. I suspect almost everyone else the CLA is ostensibly collecting fees for too.
*Yes, you'd better believe this is fair use.
Re:He REALLY shouldn't from a trade-off standpoint (Score:3)
FWIW, while I'm sure Linus is living quite comfortably, and may in fact be a millionaire (which really isn't that much money these days: my parents were paper millionaires and they were a postal carrier and a government clerk.. they only were "millionaires" because the Southern California house they owned wound up being worth $600,000, plus another $400,000 combined in retirement assets), but he's not exactly living the life of a 1%er. From what I understand, he earns a respectable salary from the Linux Foundation, but not anything out-of-line for a talented software engineer in Portland.
He's not exactly shuttling around the West Hills in a limo. Unless you consider TriMet MAX (Portland's light-rail system) a limo.
Re:He REALLY shouldn't from a trade-off standpoint (Score:2)
Try converting the DOW over the last century adjusting for inflation. You'll see it's gone nowhere - it only seems to go up because the number gets higher but it ends up only matching inflation.
In the 1980s a million $ was a huge unobtainable amount for nearly everybody on earth (but that didn't stop people from unrealistic dreams of earning that much.) Not so much today. Thinking in terms of real items, a cheap car back in the 80s was $10,000 cheaper than it is today. There has been a huge amount of inflation. Property values went up more than most everything due to additional factors, so it's not a great measure other than one needs shelter (sadly it's over emphasis in the economy creates a disconnect from shelter and investment. So we have to fight to get solar panels because some idiot neighbor is worried about their property value in 30 years when they move to a retirement home.)
Re:Free software (Score:2)
nonsense, Linus already makes money producing "free software" (GPL'd).
no conflict whatsoever.
Re:Free software (Score:2)
The cold fact is that when people want "open source", they mostly just want something that is free in beer.
Next time, when someone is in need of open source solution, ask them for what they actually need the source code, and you'll see.