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Would Linus Torvalds Please Collect His Bitcoin Tips?
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."
$136 is an insult. I'd ignore it, too.
No sig today...
I think he'd be all over that if it was $136,000....
Stop making everything about Bitcoin, please.
I would think that "... just don't want to deal with Bitcoin" is spot on. For the small amount of money they will be getting, it's not worth the time.
Linus' time iss probably worth more than the time it takes to set up an account with an exchange, fiddle with bank numbers, and link everything up in your life to handle that bitcoin wallet than $136 allows.
Let the tips gain in real-world value in someone else's wallet?
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?
Just because it has the keywords "Bitcoin" and "Linus Torvalds" in the headline - it doesn't really mean its "news".
lol...
that's all.
is it possible to block bitcoin spam from slashdot?
"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"
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?
136 bucks to potentially get some special attention from the US government, sponsored by Microsoft and Apple? No thanks.
It'd be like people wondering why I don't go around picking up pennies.
Perhaps its the controversy.. and they would prefer to not be associated with it, or above the fray.
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??
give a link to this friggin' BTC address, for example on blockchain.info (that's the only interesting piece of information here), apart from that it's a joke news.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Is this it?
Hi, I'm Linus, I'll be your committer for tonight.
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.
It's well-known that the U.S. tax code is bat-shit insanely complex.
If he's not already using an account, he'd probably need to hire one just to figure out how he's supposed to disclose that $136 in his federal and state taxes.
Given that accountants aren't free, and finding a decent one takes times, it's probably just not worth it.
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.
Any currency - gold, paper, bitcoin - only has as much value as you can get somebody to pay for it. Obviously paper money has the greatest potential to be abused, but it has no less 'intrinsic' value than a shiny metal. If the definition of a valuable currency is natural scarcity, then bitcoin is every bit as good as gold. But don't mistake that for intrinsic value; there are plenty of rare things that are worthless. Just because gold is desirable today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow.
Hmm: Offer a case of beer and will see if they are interested
See it from a common, millionaire person point-of-view:
Why would Linux Torvalds, a (probable) millionaire, want to share his personal information on a bleeding edge platform like Tip4Commit, or worse, share his bank information with an exchange service (that could very well be seized, go down, open bankruptcy, pose security flaws) when he wants to convert the wallet to common currency.
I don't see what this has to do with "copyright infringement". Anyway, from what I could tell, Tip4Commit takes a 5% cut.
They are paying out 1% of the remaining funds per commit. It takes 69 commits to get a payout of 50%. Double that for a payout of 75%. So while they take 5% permanently, they'll be holding to quite a lot more for quite a long time. Not every project has the commit churn of Linux.
According to some random website of potentially dubious accuracy, he makes 10 million a year and has a 150 million net worth. This is approximately how much money he makes in 7 minutes. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there are probably better uses of his time than the equivalent of picking a penny up off the sidewalk.
... Or maybe money is not necessarily the best incentive, especially to the FOSS crowd ?
It's hardly surprising Torvalds doesn't accept a "tip" that could equally likely be obtained through mining or selling drugs or illegal pornography.
Would you accept dirty money from people that preyed on others? Normal people wouldn't.
Linus Torvalds has exclusive rights to his name and appearence. He has copyright on the code he creates. They call him a user but if he didn't sign up for the service then they don't have any kind of relationship. He didn't agree they could take a 5% cut of tips made to him. He didn't agree they can collect tips on his behalf. Do they have a licence to make profits off tipping Linux? Is that in GPL? If they were a non profit or a charity then it would not matter as much.
Might be a philosophical question whether tipping a developer is not in conflict with free software idea.
This would likely qualify as an honorarium (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)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
And I guess the man has to be *a bit* careful exactly which services he personally legitimates, whether implied or otherwise.
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.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
as PR by the bitcoin zealots.
No, really.
Why can't I just go collect the $136?
Probably because I would need to somehow prove that I am Linus, and I won't be able to do that.
Linus could, but that would mean that he would have to submit some sort of personally identifiable information.
Perhaps Linus has no reason to trust this Tip4Commit.
I'm sure that many people would be willing to start up a company and then pay $136 to be able to collect details about a celebrity -- as many details as what it would take to identify him well enough to protect his money.
Sounds to me like avoiding collecting the money at Tip4Commit may be an extremely intelligent choice. Now, did Linus make an extremely intelligent choice? Should anybody here be surprised at that result?
If someone sued Tip4Commit, someone else would just start Tip5Commit on Tor and no one could sue them.
What's the betting that the site will one day suddenly disappear, taking all the outstanding donations which happen to be on their accounts with them?
Seems a reasonable thing to do with an investment that goes up 100x a year consistently.
Seems like it's time for a crash, one article that summarizes the troubles BTC is currently experiencing is a problem.
He doesn't care what fanatical group of zealots funds his campaign of anti-Semitic insanity.
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 and the EFF ditched their Bitcoin donated prior to that decision.
a "currency" associated with illegal activity and scam artists
Are you describing cash?
I was looking for a way to get bitcoins into my bank account. It looked like $25 was the lowest fee I'd have to pay. I'd not take the $130+ over the $25 in fees too.
Paypal - don't use it. Not worth it to get $130 either. My financial privacy is worth much more.
Wearable bitcoins! Thank you, you're a genius! Surely you won't mind me patenting the idea!
Poe's Law disclaimer: this post is solely intended as a parody of some of the more brain-dead bitcoin-related initiatives we've seen, and is not meant to criticize or endorse parent or bitcoin.
Signing up for an online wallet - assuming you know which online wallets are safe - is probably two minutes. Learning that you can use online wallets and that they are safe - more than two minutes. Estimate at time to deal with bitcoin to accept $136: Much more than $136 worth of time. I assume Linus estimate his time at about the same cost I do; I'd estimate $136 at half an hour or so of professional time.
Gold doesn't have an intrinsic value either.
It is all made up
I worked with well paid engineer in the 90's who used to go busking on the street with his flute. He travelled extensively for work and made a point of busking in as many different cities as was practicable The coins thrown in the hat were a prop for his act, not the point of it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I see it as analogous to the card readers you can get for your phone/tablet. They offer the hardware to scan credit/debit cards, and in return you either pay a monthly fee, or a % of each transaction(which is ~2.75%) is taken.
Credit cards/debit cards do the same thing when you have more than the default free checking with x deposit sort of setup. If you want to change money from one account to the other, they assess a fee of a certain percentage, or a flat rate(whichever is higher).
Tip4Commit seems to be taking far too much, though. They need to assess a flat-rate fee for their service, or a small percentage(1% would be appropriate - that's up to $8 per bit coin).
i certainly am
The bane of Microsoft's existence is deserving of more than $136.
Not saying it would take an hour for him to bother with collecting these tips, but let's consider whether it's actually worth the time it would take Mister Torvalds to actually do the act you're begging him to do. The earlier posts regarding the amount of the tips are rather correct. It's pretty small considering. Nice thought tho, getting actual pay to the devs who make all of the software we love to grab for free (beer), on top of the fact that it's open sourced and free (libre)
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
C'mon, people.... a 2-second Google search will reveal that Linus Torvalds is worth well over $100 million. When compared to the average person, bothering to collect his $136 would be quite analogous to bending over to pick up a penny.
...to shitcoin