[ANN] Tip4Commit.com - support opensource projects, contribute and earn bitcoins

[arsenische]

We developed Tip4Commit.com - a web-service that motivates people to contribute to open source projects hosted at GitHub.

Tip4Commit.com doesn't require user registration. Anybody can choose any open source GitHub project and donate any amount of bitcoins to it.

Each commit accepted by project maintainer will be tipped with 1% of funds available for that project.

If we don't know recipient's Bitcoin address, we send an email with a unique link that allows to specify it (alternatively developers can sign in via GitHub, but it is not required). Thus we spread a word about Bitcoin among software developers.

Support the development of Bitcoin software!

bitcoin/bitcoin
super3/peercoin.net
sigmike/peer4commit
tip4commit/tip4commit

and other open source projects.

Tip4Commit is Open Source now! https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit

[alexandrz]

Gavin Andresen is the first one who received tips for his commit. It works!

You can tip Bitcoin core team here: http://tip4commit.com/projects/2

[TheButterZone]

Cool! Just added all my starred repos, linked my account, added my BTC address, favorited the Rails Rumble entry.

[Diapolo]

Guys, this is a pretty cool project and via the tips I got my first "donation" ever for participating to Bitcoin-Qt .
It's motivating to further help here and I love it.

Dia

[xchrix]

great project
would be nice to link every transaction on the payouts you made to blockchain.info for example so that visitors can see you really give away the donations

[arsenische]

Thanks for kind words to everybody.

would be nice to link every transaction on the payouts you made to blockchain.info for example so that visitors can see you really give away the donations

We where thinking about it, there are couple more features that could be implemented. But we were constrained by the contest's 48-hour limitation and decided to spend more time on testing than on implementing features.

Btw, do you think if it is OK to show developers' bitcoin addresses, or does it raise a privacy concern?

[arsenische]

We made several improvements:

• An embeddable shield that shows the expected reward for commit, e. g. here is the one for Bitcoin project:
• Changed the way how tips are calculated. Each tip is 1% of project's balance.
• Page with tips and transaction ids, e. g. here is the list of all tips for Bitcoin project

Hopefully some of you will find these features useful.

[deftnerd]

Great service idea. I'm about to go live with a business that has pledged to donate 10% to 15% of its income to opensource developers, and this is the perfect service for me to use.

My only requirement would be to have a profile page I can link to that shows the donations/tips that user has MADE.

Additionally, a shield that displays how much a user has donated could become very popular in forum sigs and bring a lot more traffic to your service.

[arsenische]

Great service idea. I'm about to go live with a business that has pledged to donate 10% to 15% of its income to opensource developers, and this is the perfect service for me to use.

My only requirement would be to have a profile page I can link to that shows the donations/tips that user has MADE.

Additionally, a shield that displays how much a user has donated could become very popular in forum sigs and bring a lot more traffic to your service.

Wow, thanks, awesome proposal, we'll do it!

[Luke-Jr]

So here are my bug reports:

• GitHub wants to give the site WRITE access to my profile and some other stuff. I'm not willing to do this, even with the promise it isn't used.
• It just automatically sends tips in 0.01+ BTC increments to an address configured once. While I'm guilty of setting up Eligius in a similar way, this is bad practice that really isn't necessary for tip4commit since someone could just as well give it a new address for each withdrawl.
• Security issue that will be PM'd.

[arsenische]

So here are my bug reports:

• GitHub wants to give the site WRITE access to my profile and some other stuff. I'm not willing to do this, even with the promise it isn't used.
• It just automatically sends tips in 0.01+ BTC increments to an address configured once. While I'm guilty of setting up Eligius in a similar way, this is bad practice that really isn't necessary for tip4commit since someone could just as well give it a new address for each withdrawl.
• Security issue that will be PM'd.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Unfortunately if we don't request WRITE access, GitHub doesn't give us user's email. But it is not neccessary to sign in via GitHub. Maybe we should remove GitHub sign in option to avoid confusion and potential security threats.

Yes, we send 0.01+ BTC increments automatically, it seems to be the simplest solution for both us and user and it adds to transparency. Everybody can easily check that tips are actually paid to the contributors. And we don't need to hold users' balances for a long time (actually we want to get rid of them ASAP ).

However I agree that there could be privacy concerns here and maybe users should be able to hide their withdrawal addresses and withdraw manually. Transparency and privacy are not always compatible.

Thanks again!

[arsenische]

Great service idea. I'm about to go live with a business that has pledged to donate 10% to 15% of its income to opensource developers, and this is the perfect service for me to use.

My only requirement would be to have a profile page I can link to that shows the donations/tips that user has MADE.

Additionally, a shield that displays how much a user has donated could become very popular in forum sigs and bring a lot more traffic to your service.

Wow, thanks, awesome proposal, we'll do it!

Hi again!

We just implemented it as a separate service coingiving.com that can be used to support any project that has a permanent bitcoin address (not only the ones listed at tip4commit).

You can become a sponsor of any project and you can have a link to your profile that shows all the info about your donations.

So Tip4Commit shows list of top sponsors for each project using this service now.

Hopefully you'll find it useful.

Thanks!

[giszmo]

As services go out of service, here is my question how you will handle going out of service? Will you do an instawallet and keep the money for you? Will the maintainers get the money to continue the payouts at their own discretion? Will you get "hacked"? How much is in hot wallets? How much will you cover from your private money? Who are you?

[arsenische]

As services go out of service, here is my question how you will handle going out of service? Will you do an instawallet and keep the money for you? Will the maintainers get the money to continue the payouts at their own discretion? Will you get "hacked"? How much is in hot wallets? How much will you cover from your private money? Who are you?

Thanks for important questions. We are the developers of Anonymous Ads.

Frankly speaking I don't know yet how we handle the possible situation of a hack or service shutdown. I can only promise that we won't profit from such situation (though in bitcoin world promises are worthless). We are not bitcoin millionaires and can't guarantee to cover the losses with our private money. So, yes, this is a major risk and a weak point of the project.

This service started as a 48-hour project for Rails Rumble, so (unlike a-ads) all the funds are stored in a blockchain.info wallet. If the service gets traction, we will surely need to change it.

[Authentic]

Is it possible to make the "Supported Projects" page allow sorting by other variables, like Watchers? I think it would be useful when there are more projects.

[alexandrz]

http://www.itworld.com/application-management/387099/contribute-open-source-and-you-could-make-some-bitcoin

[super3]

Love this tool. Peercoin.net is the most funded project on Tip4Commit. When can we expect additional features? Are you going to open source it?

Also one of my developers is having problems:
"Hmm, my e-mailaddress was not send with my commits from my computer. So tip4commit couldn't see those were mine."
He is listed as Justin van Oel on the project: http://tip4commit.com/projects/222

[defaced]

Yea this is a really cool idea!

[arsenische]

Love this tool. Peercoin.net is the most funded project on Tip4Commit. When can we expect additional features? Are you going to open source it?

Thanks for kind words. We recently developed a feature: unclaimed balances get automatically returned to a project within 1 month. What other features do you need?

We haven't yet made a final decision regarding making it opensource.

Also one of my developers is having problems:
"Hmm, my e-mailaddress was not send with my commits from my computer. So tip4commit couldn't see those were mine."
He is listed as Justin van Oel on the project: http://tip4commit.com/projects/222

We linked Justin's commits to his account, please ask him to check his balance.

[super3]

Love this tool. Peercoin.net is the most funded project on Tip4Commit. When can we expect additional features? Are you going to open source it?

Thanks for kind words. We recently developed a feature: unclaimed balances get automatically returned to a project within 1 month. What other features do you need?

We haven't yet made a final decision regarding making it opensource.

Also one of my developers is having problems:
"Hmm, my e-mailaddress was not send with my commits from my computer. So tip4commit couldn't see those were mine."
He is listed as Justin van Oel on the project: http://tip4commit.com/projects/222

We linked Justin's commits to his account, please ask him to check his balance.

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

If it is any help you should take the Github model. Open source the core code, but still offer the core service for people who don't want to deal with setup and maintenance. Heh. Implement the features I added below and make the project code itself. I was planning on making a competitor to your service, but in this case I can just work with you. The interface needs some help.

Would like the repo owner to have better control over tips. For example, someone might submit a one line comma fix vs. someone might submit a one line commit that fixes a really important bug. Of course LOC is not really a good metric. I seem to get 20% really good commits, and 80% comma garbage commits(since we are paying $20 a commit). I want to discourage the latter.

I think the repo owner should be able to use a keyword in the merge so that small commits get like 0.10% instead of the normal 1%.

I'd also like to put bounties on pull request and issues so I can guide development instead of having random commits.