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."
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: 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.
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.