Would Linus Torvalds Please Collect His Bitcoin Tips?

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Would Linus Torvalds Please Collect His Bitcoin Tips?

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 30, 2014 @02:27AM from the just-keeping-them-backed-up-on-the-internet dept.

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."

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Value by Joce640k · 2014-01-30 02:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

$136 is an insult. I'd ignore it, too.

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No sig today...
1. Re:Value by wisnoskij · 2014-01-30 02:36 · Score: 4, 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.
  
  --
  Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
2. Re:Value by beltsbear · 2014-01-30 02:41 · Score: 3, 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.
3. Re:Value by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 02:42 · 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.
4. Re:Value by gbjbaanb · 2014-01-30 03:18 · Score: 4, 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.
5. Re:Value by Burning1 · 2014-01-30 03:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The front page of Slashdot just doesn't have the value it used to have.
6. Re:Value by Desler · 2014-01-30 03:31 · 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.
7. Re:Value by Desler · 2014-01-30 03:35 · 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.
8. Re:Value by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-30 04:27 · Score: 3, 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?
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
9. Re:Value by phantomfive · 2014-01-30 04:36 · Score: 2
  
  I would bet that it does still have the same value, for everyone except investors, who bought it expecting massive growth. The main difference between a decade ago is that other news sources have grown up and gotten more attention. But Slashdot still has the #1 place among programmers.
  
  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.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
10. Re:Value by unrtst · 2014-01-30 05:35 · Score: 3, 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.
11. Re:Value by Bryan+Ischo · 2014-01-30 06:02 · Score: 4, 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.
12. Re:Value by hairyfeet · 2014-01-30 07:18 · Score: 2
  
  What is sad to me (and I personally blame the allowing of AC posts and broken mod system, but that's another story) is how much lower the quality of threads are now. In the golden age the only AC posts you got were in the Penisbird GNAA vein and the majority of posts were insightful and would delve quite deeply into a subject. I remember being a part of 300+ threads on the advantages and disadvantages of various file systems, 200+ threads on string theory where guys from CERN would break down some of the more heady stuff for laymen like myself, hell even if you didn't agree you LEARNED and left knowing more than you knew before you got here.
  Now? Now the only thing you'll learn is that Shill/Troll/Astroturfer is shorthand for "you disagree with me", that thanks to being able to AC bomb a thread its trivially easy for a real shill to divert a thread away from a topic negative to the parent corp, and that no matter what the topic or thread it quickly degrades into a 4chan level of posts, usually trashed by AC trolls spewing insults thus making sure no thread lasts beyond a couple dozen posts.
  Sigh I've been looking high and low for a site that is actually nerdy but it seems like all the nerd sites have been replaced by Digg/Reddit/ FB style garbage. Surely there has to be a place out there where geeks can talk about science and tech without it being ruined by the channers, anybody know of such a place? OSNews is good for a few topics but holwerda rules the roost so only things he personally likes/dislikes will ever be there, surely there is someplace like the old /. out there?
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
13. Re:Value by Cryacin · 2014-01-30 10:59 · Score: 2
  
  He's just waiting another 2 weeks for that to turn into $100,000?
  
  --
  Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
$136? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 02:31 · Score: 2

I think he'd be all over that if it was $136,000....
Stop making everything about Bitcoin, please.
1. Re:$136? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 02:43 · 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.
2. Re:$136? by Arkham · 2014-01-30 04:10 · Score: 4, 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.
  
  --
  - Vincit qui patitur.
Nah. by WizardFusion · 2014-01-30 02:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
136 dollars? by Kardos · 2014-01-30 02:34 · Score: 4, 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 by bradgoodman · 2014-01-30 02:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Just because it has the keywords "Bitcoin" and "Linus Torvalds" in the headline - it doesn't really mean its "news".
1. Re:Robotic News by Kjella · 2014-01-30 02:37 · Score: 4, 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.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
2. Re:Robotic News by AthanasiusKircher · 2014-01-30 03:05 · Score: 2
  
  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.
bitcoins... by mythix · 2014-01-30 02:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

lol...
that's all.
Genius by Spad · 2014-01-30 02:36 · Score: 4, 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"
1. Re:Genius by nine-times · 2014-01-30 03:05 · Score: 2
  
  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.
2. Re:Genius by Kaenneth · 2014-01-30 06:31 · Score: 2
  
  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 by Chemisor · 2014-01-30 02:36 · 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?
1. Re:Some developers don't know by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 02:59 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Frankly I had no idea I was related to so many foreign princes!
2. Re: Some developers don't know by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 03:08 · 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:Linus' time by radiumsoup · 2014-01-30 02:41 · Score: 2

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.
Unicorn Horns! by rockmuelle · 2014-01-30 02:57 · Score: 4, 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??
what's the address? by Janek+Kozicki · 2014-01-30 03:07 · Score: 2

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.

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# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #
Perhaps he ignores it for some tax or legal reason by Kaptain+Kruton · 2014-01-30 03:21 · Score: 2

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 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-30 03:27 · 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.
Re:Maybe it's the taxes by jandrese · 2014-01-30 03:37 · Score: 2

The government doesn't care about a random $136, but if you really wanted to report it you would put it as gift income. If you started making real money with this then it would be an issue, but this is way down in the noise.

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I read the internet for the articles.
Re:He REALLY shouldn't from a trade-off standpoint by faedle · 2014-01-30 03:56 · Score: 2

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.
Not a gift ... an honorarium by oneiros27 · 2014-01-30 04:26 · Score: 2

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)

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Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
tip4commit is a pretty good scam by Adm.Wiggin · 2014-01-30 04:38 · Score: 2

You will get your money when your balance hits the threshold of 0.00100000

95% of deposited funds will be used to tip for new commits.

each new commit receives 1% of available balance
Disappearing act? by Captain_Chaos · 2014-01-30 06:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

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?