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Would you be interested in making more people contribute to open source code? Gittip lets people give money to their favorite open source contributors. https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com CodeDoor is a way for programmers to leverage their open source contributions to freelance work. (Note: I'm the founder of CodeDoor) https://github.com/CodeDoor/codedoor

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! It's definitely getting much much better, as you described it - but it still has a long way to go. I do tend to hang out more in very FOSS-centric circles, so maybe my perspective is a bit skewed by this. (and I do agree with you re:startups - I wish we saw more open source product code. Gittip is doing a great job with that: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/ )

Andy Weissman from USV suggested that on a skype call we had. Unfortunately that was before I started doing open calls so I can't link to it. :-/ Ticketed: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1153

I've been watching Gittip and have been very impressed with how they're attempting to run an open company: http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open-compa... It's fun to read through their bug tracker and read discussions with their payment processor and look at debates on how different corporate minutia should be handled. https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues Even if you're not interested in Gittip (and I am, I think it's a very interesting funding model) the open company model that they follow should be quite inspirational.

Here are some examples of where I was able to do just that. It's tiny things, but it feels great to make something better. https://github.com/liveprogramming/2013/pull/1/files https://github.com/liveprogramming/2013/pull/2/files https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public/pull/1/files https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/625/files https://github.com/mojombo/semver.org/pull/55/files

Well, there's plenty of one-time options (PayPal, Kickstarter, Pledgie, ...). Gittip is differentiating on the recurring option. The goal with Gittip is for people to make a living on it. Bills are recurring, so funding has to be as well. Yes it means that there is some short-term money left on the table, but it also means that the money that is there is relatively stable and predictable over time. Gittip is designed to grow slowly and shrink slowly. The goal is for JSFiddle to be able to truly depend on it. And the minimum tip amount is $0.25 per week, which is $13 per year: not that much. Note that the minimum charge is $10 (to minimize transaction fees). So if you only tip a quarter we'd charge you $10 every 37 weeks or so. That said, I expect we'll mix in one-time payments in some form at some point. I've added a +1 for you here: http

Yup. That's going to be the biggest challenge. Wanna help solve it? :) https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/449

Nope. It was a very early design decision that gifts on Gittip are anonymous in the particulars. The idea was to remove the "why did you unfriend me?" awkwardness that only gets compounded if money is involved. We want gifts on Gittip to be no-strings-attached for both sides. With companies coming on board, we may have to rethink this a bit. Fortunately there are some features in the pipeline that I think will address this. If you want to dive in: https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/449