Please remove mitsuhiko/* - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127 <comment><AUTHOR> What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoin is more like cultural revolution. It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach, but surely the Bitcoin revolutionists like to place themselves above the rest, and don't see themselves as a part of the "old" world (legal, financial system etc.).

For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]".

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/)

<comment><USER2> I think it's fair to say that the vocal majority of BitCoiners have a very naive view of some basic economic concepts.

<comment><USER3> >a very naive view of some basic economic concepts.

Which concepts in particular are you referring to?

<comment><USER4> The failure, nay the pigheaded refusal, to learn from history.

BitCoin is _faux_ money and will likely be recorded as the "Dutch Tulip Bubble" [0] of our times.

Intentions and wishful thinking alone are not enough to create revolutions. Crises are invariably required to change such fundamental concepts as _value_ of currency in the public's mind, and it has to happen on a _massive_ scale in a _tiny_ span of time. BitCoin will be no more than the butt of jokes in another decade unless it finds it's destiny in a crisis made for it to shine.

[0] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania)

<comment><USER3> You haven't actually mentioned any economic principles; you've just compared Bitcoin to a historical bubble (of which there were certainly many) without any evidence supporting this comparison.

>BitCoin is _faux_ money

Could you expand on this? How do you define "faux" money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not normally rant, but tip4commit and its ilk are some of the most infuriating people in the world to deal with, since they're opting other people's projects into something that has all sorts of legal/taxation consequences and think that "we have no way to remove you once you get opted in" is an acceptable answer.

I'd push complaints further up to GitHub, since I'm sure _something_ in the way this works violates their ToS, but ultimately that wouldn't do anything except cause them to self-host their code and keep running the "service".

<comment><USER6> How can there be taxation consequences unless you act to set up a bitcoin address and accept the offered tip? If you've done all that, I think it's clear you know what you're doing. If you don't do that, then the money (apparently?) returns to the project you committed to, from whence it came.

The only way there could be tax is if you receive the money, and that can only happen by you deliberately becoming involved.

<comment><USER5> To take some examples:

* In some countries it is illegal to opt someone into services they didn't ask for.

* In some countries it is illegal to send unsolicited emails about services.

* In some countries it is illegal to accept or solicit donations without registering first with tax authorities.

* In some countries it is illegal to suggest a financial relationship between yourself and another person/entity when no such relationship exists.

* In some countries it is illegal to pay out to people without also filing tax documents to track the payment and provide the recipient with records they legally are required to keep.

etc., etc.

Their track record when confronted by people who have issues with some/all of the above is not encouraging. They appear to me to be putting far too much faith in "we're doing BitCoin on the internet" as a magic shield against laws, and they do not appear to have ever talked to anyone who knows even the tax or service laws of even major countries in which the developers they solicit on "behalf" of live (evidenced by comments from them that they are too small to afford lawyers).

<comment><USER7>
        > In some countries it is illegal to opt someone into services they didn't ask for.

Nope. You are not a part of service unless you accept the tip.

        > In some countries it is illegal to send unsolicited emails about services.

True that. This should probably be fixed.

        > In some countries it is illegal to accept or solicit donations without registering first with tax authorities.

Donation does not exist unless you accept that bitcoin. This is not a problem of tip4commit. It's a problem between country and it's tax resident.

        > In some countries it is illegal to suggest a financial relationship between yourself and another person/entity when no such relationship exists.

Once again. Relationship does not exist unless you've created it by accepting that tip. As for suggestion - they are only suggesting that you can create such relationship.

        > In some countries it is illegal to pay out to people without also filing tax documents to track the payment and provide the recipient with records they legally are required to keep.

PEBCATR - Problem exists between country and tax resident.

If those are really problems - you have problem with your gov and your laws, not bitcoin or tip4commit.

<comment><USER8> > If those are really problems - you have problem with your gov and your laws, > not bitcoin or tip4commit.

This is a staggeringly arrogant position to take. "Go change your laws, not this bitcoin service." Really?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused to why this project is a good idea. It seems like they are collecting funds on behalf of a third party without that third parties consent and then distributing those funds, again without third parties knowledge or consent.

As much as the project seems to have good intentions, insisting that _It 's BitCoin, BitCoin is different_ doesn't mean your product is actually exempt from rules and law. Or that Bitcoin is all that different.

There is no reason someone couldn't build a similar project using traditional currency. But then they would run afoul of the many laws designed to protect depositors, investors, and the financial system writ-large. As someone remarks in TFA, holding the amount of currency on ones balance sheets this project would, if successful, is a terrible idea. It's ripe for fraud and abuse. There is a reason services like Gittip assist in transferring fund, and act as the debiter and depositor.

This whole thing is emblematic of the problems with Bitcoin culture, which seems to think it doesn't have to follow any of the rules. Sorry lads, if Bitcoin is currency, you have to behave like banks and investment firms if you are going to act like banks and investment firms.

<comment><USER10> I think that the project is a bad idea because you can't impersonate me and take donations in my name without my consent, no matter which currency is being used.

<comment><USER11> Can you explain how they have given that impression? I still don't fully understand what's going on here, but my first impression (Which seems to be the issue you have, that they are masquarading or implying that they are operating on behalf of the developer) is that they let people put bounties on bugs.

That means they are independent and third party and in no way necessarily affiliated with the project. I understood that right from the start, but I only have a 3rd person perspective on this, are the private messages different?

Could you go into more detail on your position?

<comment><USER12> The big text on the landing page says

> Contribute to Open Source

> Donate bitcoins to open source projects or make commits and get tips for it.

The language used is "donate to projects". If you click the "See projects" button, you get to a page with the header "Supported projects", which suggests some kind of agreement between the project and Tip4Commit.

If you click a project, you get to a page with text like "Project sponsors", and even "No sponsors yet. _Be the first to support this project._ ". The implied "... on Tip4Commit" part is not obvious.

The _only_ thing suggesting that Tip4Commit is not affiliated with the projects is a low-contrast message at the bottom of each page, which was added _after_ this blew up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the FAQ:

        > What happens to unclaimed tips (if recipient doesn't sign in and specify his/her bitcoin address)?
        Funds that are not claimed during 30 days get returned back to the project.

Presumably "the project" in the answer refers to tip4commit? If so, isn't tip4commit committing fraud by advertising that tips go to the intended recipient, when in fact, if the recipient does not participate, they go into tip4commit's coffers?

(Or is "the project" a mistake and should read "the donor"?)

<comment><USER14> When I said "returned to the project's balance" \- I meant "returned to the funded project's balance" so that other contributors to that project could receive them.

Sorry if sounds ambiguous, English is not my native language.

E. g. if you donate to reward contributors of [https://tip4commit.com/github/bitcoin/bitcoin](https://tip4commit.com/github/bitcoin/bitcoin) and some contributor doesn't specify bitcoin address to claim tips within 30 days then his or her tips will be returned back to bitcoin/bitcoin's balance (see this logic at [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/blob/master/app/mod...](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/blob/master/app/models/tip.rb#L82))

<comment><USER15> And what happens when a project's owner will never claim tips? Like if he declared he is not interested in using your site, but people will pay tips because they see the project's name?

<comment><USER16> It's been a long time since I was a law student. However, as I recall the rules of trusts in common law countries (assuming this thing is covered by those rules):

1\. If you take a donation from A on behalf of B, you are now a trustee. That means you're bound by fiduciary duty, which is a very strict standard of behaviour[1].

2\. If you can't find B, or if B refuses to accept the donation, you _must return it to A_. It _cannot_ be repurposed for other beneficiaries.

3\. If you repurpose the funds for yourself, you have breached fiduciary duty and are legally in deep, deep shit.

The exceptions are, of course, if you explicitly formed a trust with explicit terms allowing you to select other beneficiaries.

Of course, the laws vary according to jurisdiction. Trusts caselaw has evolved slightly differently in different common law countries. And legislatures are typically suspicious of trusts because they get used a lot to reduce tax burdens, so there tends to be a lot of local tinkering with the trusts laws.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please send donations for the Django project directly to me. Once the donations accumulate to more than $3000, I will email the Django developers, requesting that they come get the donations.

<whisper>And if the Django project doesn't come get the donations within 30 days, we don't tell you what happens to the donations. What happens to the money, if its not claimed, may (or may not) go against the wishes of yourself or the Django developers (that we're collecting money on behalf of, without permission). Also, sending these donations exposes the developers to serious legal consequences.</whisper>

</comment><comment><USER18> The tip4commit website is vulnerable to Heartbleed:

[https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#tip4commit.com](https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#tip4commit.com)

Don't sign in or register or you may have more to worry about than undesired tax liabilities.

EDIT: It's fixed now.

<comment><USER19> Did you tell them?

EDIT: I did [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/147](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/147)

<comment><USER20> I'm sure he sent them a notification about their new account on his website on which, if they create an account, they may or may not find information of value to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few things I found about tip4commit by searching through reddit:

\- 4 months ago Bitcoin Core was happy to raise 1.8BTC in two days using tip4commit [0], but today's comment [1] signals they are not happy with tip4commit, because it encourages submitting large number of small commits

\- an IT World article about 40% donations being unclaimed [2] (1.384BTC)

\- "we discovered a security breach" [3]

\- OpenBazaar, a fork of Dark Market, a market for drugs, encourages to make donations using tip4commit [4]

\- "Tip4Coin donations look like they are stolen" [5]

Unfortunately it looks like a typical Bitcoin project - naivety of the authors, in terms of technical and legal matters, plus douchebag attitude (ignoring others, even if they are owners of things they profit from), plus shady entities benefiting from them.

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2993ja/good_news_ev...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2993ja/good_news_everyone_since_june_25th_we_have_raised/)

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kzlsh/tip4commit_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kzlsh/tip4commit_spammy_as_fuck/clq7fyn)

[2] [http://www.itworld.com/article/2693360/cloud- computing/linus...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2693360/cloud- computing/linus-torvalds-and-other-developers-are-leaving-bitcoins-on-the- table.html)

[3] [http://imgur.com/Qd6EPZ7](http://imgur.com/Qd6EPZ7)

[4] [http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/27bdlo/its_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/27bdlo/its_coming_drug_auctions_on_openbazaar/)

[5] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20bvau/tip4coin_don...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20bvau/tip4coin_donations_look_like_they_are_stolen/)

<comment><USER22> There's also the small matter of their fee [0][1], which I do not see mentioned anywhere on their landing page.

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kzlsh/tip4commit_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kzlsh/tip4commit_spammy_as_fuck/clq9cl3)

[1] [https://tip4commit.com/projects/914/deposits](https://tip4commit.com/projects/914/deposits)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First, I want to apologize. We have received a lot of negative feedback suddenly and I can assure you that we take it seriously.

I temporary disabled ALL the email notifications (even though I don't think they were a real problem) and added a warning that we are not affiliated with project owners. When my teammate is online he will probably also some of the other issues.

I see a lot of misinformation about tip4commit and our intentions. I can't quickly respond to everybody, but I'll try to keep basic answers here: [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/wiki/FAQ](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/wiki/FAQ)

Perhaps some people just misunderstand the project and hate it.

Also I think that it is normal that developers try to understand the motivation of users and ask questions in order to find a better solution, please don't take it as offence or reluctance to change.

We are going to resolve every issue or close the project.

Btw, if you think this project shouldn't exist - welcome to [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/157](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/157) \- that could be the easiest solution for all of us.

If you believe the project can be improved - welcome to leave your feedback on the desired improvements, such as [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/152](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/152) and [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/154](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/154)

or others.

Thanks for reading this and please accept apologies if we offended you (never wanted to).

<comment><USER17> >> Btw, if you think this project shouldn't exist - welcome to [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/157](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/157) \- that could be the easiest solution for all of us.

The project should be opt-in or shouldn't exist at all.

<comment><USER23> Opt-in would kill the project. But I think they could do opt-out if they were a LOT more sensitive to their constituents.

<comment><USER17> Why would being opt-in kill the project?

<comment><USER23> Because instead of having a million projects, you'd have 3. The power of defaults and opt-out is pretty well-understood to the point I'd call it non- controversial.

<comment><USER17> They would have projects from people who are interested in their services, and interested in having them accept money on the projects behalf. If that number is 3, so be it.

<comment><USER23> Which is why you have to be way more aggressive in just about any endeavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fun fact: mitsuhiko also asked a fork of Tip4Commit to remove his projects. Now their page states [1]:

> This project has been disabled. It doesn't accept donation and it will not > distribute tips.

> Reason: Project author request: > [https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/110](https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/110)

On the other hand, Tip4Comment has only this notice [2]:

> Project maintainers have decided not to notify new contributors about tips > and they probably don't like this way of funding.

[1]: [http://prime4commit.com/projects/129](http://prime4commit.com/projects/129)

[2]: [https://tip4commit.com/github/mitsuhiko/flask](https://tip4commit.com/github/mitsuhiko/flask)

</comment><comment><USER25> These "funding" schemes keep popping up in different contexts. Journalism attracted a bunch of these schemes 5 to 10 years ago. Consider what Mike Krahulik said about Kachingle:

"you can't just start collecting money for me without some kind of deal."

[http://webcomictweets.com/detail/tweet/138771362931163136](http://webcomictweets.com/detail/tweet/138771362931163136)

Kachingle was an extreme case, gathering "donations" for sites like Wikipedia, Google News, and also small sites like Mike Krahulik's. Using this approach on Github is just a new variation on an old scam. As someone else said in that same thread:

"that is the weirdest creepiest business model ever."

<comment><USER26> who says there is a business model behind this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ahh yes, the classic Bitcoiner approach of attempting to drive adoption simply by giving the damn things to people whether they want them or not.

<comment><USER6> How awful!

/s

<comment><USER28> Kittens are nice, but I don't think they should be automatically posted to everyone.

Not all of the time, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really don't understand the hate and anger that seems to be being directed at the developer, in particular the constant stream of assertions that the project is a scam, fraudulent, and created with the intent of cashing out with everyone's donations after pretending to be 'hacked'. It seems like this sort of accusation is more likely to be a cause for legal action _by_ @arsenische rather than the flimsy pretexts for legal action _against_ them. The developer seems to have created this during a hackathon as a fun little project demonstrating what can be achieved using the GitHub APIs and Bitcoin; I'm quite impressed at the end result, to be honest. I don't have any real need for the service, since my employer pays for me to work on open source projects anyway, but if I was wanting to raise beer money from a side-project I don't see any reason not to consider it. As for the opt-in mechanism, it looks like they have resolved most of the issues, and many of the complainants have never interacted with the project until reading about it here - the number of complaints about SPAM and assertions of illegality are amazing, all from people who have never received an email from tip4commit. These days it seems laughable to complain about unsolicited email - perhaps it was a problem in the days of USENET when messages cost real money to deliver over expensive leased lines and dial-up connections, but today with filtering and cheap bandwidth it makes no sense...

<comment><USER22> The outright refusal to de-list projects makes this seem very suspicious.

It makes it seem like they want to capitalize on well-known oss projects, and more or less trick people into giving money, when there's no clear entity behind the service and no clear rules about what happens with "unclaimed" money.

The two obvious explanations here are "scam" and "thoughtless developers". In either case, I wouldn't want any project I was associated with, listed on their page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Could somebody please provide some context?

<comment><USER5> tip4commit is one of a number of services which, without asking for permission or notifying you, opt your projects into a BitCoin-based crowdfunding system. Even if your project doesn't want it, even if your project has its own donation/support system you'd like to send people to.

Historically they spammed committers of force-opted-in repositories with an email on _every commit_ to tell them what their new BTC donation balance was after the commit. And they insist that once a repository has been added to their system, they do not have the ability to remove it.

This has legal and tax consequences they seem to be blissfully unaware of, and the best they'll offer is to stop sending you an email every time you make a commit.

We (meaning the Django project) went a few rounds with them a while back and ultimately had to resort to threatening spam complaints against their ISP just to get the damn emails turned off. We still have been unable to get removed from the list of projects they "helpfully" collect donations for:

[https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111)

The link in this thread is another major developer also attempting to get his repositories removed from their "service", and being stonewalled just as we were.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if you could threaten them with a cease & desist over a trademark violation? (Is there an argument to be made that they are illegally using your trademark to market their service by association?)

Would be interested to hear from someone with a legal background about this.

<comment><USER5> Like I said, it's something I've investigated.

Best I can tell as a non-attorney acting on advice from others, the way in which they advertise their services could be easily confused as implying a financial relationship with organizations or individuals with whom they do not have a (consenting) financial relationship. Where to go from there is an open question.

The bigger question, as always with such things, is whether they cause enough annoyance to be worth lawyering them, and whether playing whack-a-mole -- since they're not the only "service" which does this -- would be a prudent way to spend time and money.

<comment><USER16> I'd broaden my response to go after services they rely on, starting with github.

<comment><USER22> Github TOS G10: You must not upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited email, SMSs, or "spam" messages.

[https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#g-...](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#g-general-conditions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If minimum donation was say $5 and it notified you one time when you had $25, I do see the people who this would bother being edge cases.

The tax thing is a good point, but I think it would be entirely reasonable and ethical to simply ignore any donations you got if you didn't want them, and not declare them. Perhaps Tip4Commit could auto forward any unclaimed tips to a charity if they are not claimed in a month.

Email spam is another good point, but if it was simply reduced to a one time email when you had accumulated $25 USD I don't see it as unreasonable.

If they implemented the above I'd probably defend them. Right now not so much perhaps, micro cents of tips and lots of emails are understandably pretty annoying.

<comment><USER5> The fact that they have a site on which they solicit donations for specific projects by name, without the permission of the projects involved, raises legal concerns both for them and for the projects if someone succumbs to the reasonable confusion that projects listed on tip4commit have some sort of fundraising agreement with tip4commit.

I've considered a few times figuring out what it would cost to give them a good once-over with an attorney, just because it seems historically that existential threats to their "service" are the only way they ever give even the minimal response to complaints.

<comment><USER31> The idea behind Tip4Commit seems sound to me, it just seems like they've executed it really poorly which is a shame.

Unfortunately can't seem to access their site, but if you're right and they are intentionally creating confusion then that is obviously a bad thing.

<comment><USER5> I have no problem with crowdfunded donation services... so long as the person/project the donations are being collected for has consented to it.

I have a large problem with forcibly opting me and projects I work on into this, especially since some of those projects have donation mechanisms already, and an even bigger problem with no way to opt out once in. And I have a huge problem with the implication that I or those projects have any sort of relationship with tip4commit other than one of saying "please stop this" and getting back "no" over and over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My money is on the old Bitcoin play of "we were hacked" once they have a large enough balance of donations.

<comment><USER33> As someone else has already pointed out, they don't even have to pretend to get hacked to get to keep contributors' money. The model of dispensing 1% of balance per commit guarantees that it's impossible to get all of a project's contributions back out again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is problematic in many different ways. Tax reasons are one. Noncompete agreements with exempts for non commercial / open source work another.

Having a balance on this site, even if it's zero, can have severe implications for the maintainer(s).

<comment><USER35> I don't think it can have consequences - how would you justify punishing somebody for something somebody else did?

<comment><USER36> In Finland all kickstarter style fundraisers are explicitly illegal, so is this. Basically any collection of money requires a special permit that is only handed to certain charitable causes etc. Otherwise it's paid work and has totally different rules governing it.

In this case the person would have to prove that they're not involved with tip4commit. Quite likely the prosecutor would simply say that you're cheating and are trying to circumvent the law this way. Because how improbable it is that someone would collect money for you even if you wouldn't want to?

So yeah. In some countries it might become a big problem.

<comment><USER35> I don't think it would work out this way. Looking at tip4commit would make it quite clear that you don't have to be involved. And why would you have to prove that you are not involved instead of having the prosecutor prove the opposite? No not-guilty-until-proven in Finland?

<comment><USER36> Because they have been doing it before.

Recently an exhibition called "Beer and Whiskey expo" was under threat due to it's name. Mention of Whiskey can be said to be an advertisement of strong alcohol. So they changed the name and it become just the Beer expo. After that they were informed that they will be denied permits unless individual bloggers with no connection to them would also remove mentions of Whiskey in their posts about the expo.

In the end the individual bloggers removed the mentions to allow the exhibition to continue. Short description of what happened [https://thriftyfinn.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/the-grand- whisk...](https://thriftyfinn.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/the-grand-whiskeygate- of-finland/) for those who don't speak Finnish.

So yeah. Actions of individuals whom you have no connection with can count against you here. Especially if the regulators think that you might be benefiting of them in some way, thus basically trying to cheat the system.

Remember this. Not every country follows the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I believe Flattr does something similar.

They will accept donations on behalf of a YouTube channel (or Instagram, Soundcloud, etc.) whether the content creator opted in or not and release the fund when the creator claims his/her donations.

<comment><USER38> Bountysource[1] seems to be even closer, not sure if that got any such complaints.

[1]: [https://www.bountysource.com/](https://www.bountysource.com/)

<comment><USER9> Bounty Source makes it pretty clear the bounties aren't from the project maintainers, and bounties aren't collected or solicited as if they are from or for the project maintainers..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://tip4commit.com/projects/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=...](https://tip4commit.com/projects/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=popcorn&order=balance)

4 project currently listed under popcorn time. Great, he just painted an extra bulls-eye on their heads beause now they're making money with the project. Food for lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER40> The Django project has done their complaint the right way. They asked to be removed, voiced the reason why and then have threatened to open a complaint to the email provider, Mandril, for unsolicited email, i.e. spam. See here: [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/111)

This is probably the tactic that people should use for sites that do email mining and unsolicited emails. Good for them.

</comment><comment><USER11> could someone explain the problem me? I'm not 100% on this service, and I'm not sure I follow the issues here (are they skimming from donations? Is that the problem? Most charities do...)

he says tip4commit is profiting off their project, but, it seems like they're just storing the money till the dev claims it, if he wants it.

Alternatively, what if I were to hypothetically state the following?:

      I will give the dev who contributes a pull requests that fixes
      this issue: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/issues/1092
      10 dollars.

Have I commited an unfair act? Have I violated mitsuhiko in some way? Is the dev that claims this 10 dollars immoral? is mitsuhiko harmed?

I am honestly assuming I'm missing the intricacies here. Could someone explain?

<comment><USER41> Some countries have strict rules about soliciting or collecting donations.

People in those countries want to avoid the small possibility of legal trouble. They want to opt out of the project.

The project refuses to allow any form of optout.

This means that some people in some countries may have to sepnd time (and this money) talking to police and explaining what's going on.

Dumping this time + cost burden on someone else when they have specifically asked to avoid it is sub-optimal.

As an example of a group who were interviewed by police and who had to explain that their local group was not soliciting donations - the US parent group was: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8543640)

There was another problem which has since been fixed. The project would send out an email when a tip had been donated, even when it was a tiny donation and even if the receiver was not able to withdraw that tip. This is unsolicited and probably bulk and thus meets the treshold for spam.

Finally it's not really clear what happens to the money. Say you're involved in $OpenSourceProject. Now imagine I donate a few US cents (but in bitcoin) to GhotiFish for a commit you made to $OpenSourceProject and you never collect it. This thread uas clarified that the money goes into a pool for $OpenSourceProject. But what if they never collect it?

Tl:dr get permission from people before you use their name or project-names in your stuff.

<comment><USER11> Well all that is fair, the devil definitely is in the details here.

I can empathise with the reasons to avoid opt out for them, if they view themselves as a transparent third party, then their perspective would be the same as the suggestion I put forward. That people are putting their money towards a project by their own volition. From that perspective, there's nothing the owner can do about it but ask people not to do it.

My post was made before I had gone through the bulk of text in this discussion, so I can see the issue there.

I have to agree with all your points, but your conclusion and ours are different.

Despite the complications, I don't see why a projects head have an innate right to prevent donations to that projects developers. I keep seeing this sentiment come up over and over. I do disagree with that.

Thanks for summarizing the issues!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wanted to tell these guys that they remind me of the infuriating Comcast guy who refused to disconnect the customer's account, until I saw that somebody else felt the same way and had already told them.

</comment><comment><USER43> These kinds of episodes are making me increasingly depressed.

On one hand, I'm incredibly disappointed in the ethics and morality of some of the people who have latched on to Bitcoin. And sadly, I'd have to include tip4commit in that group, particularly since they are "opt-out" and yet have been spamming people after each commit [ubernostrum points out below that they aren't even "opt-out", since they're not honoring opt out requests]. At best, it's poorly thought out. They may have good intentions, but they've implemented their intentions in a very sketchy manner. Completely unacceptable, and I understand people's anger. Bitcoin has attracted more than it's fair share of assholes, and I understand the frustration people have toward such people and companies.

On the other hand, I'm even more saddened by the irrational hatred so many developers have for Bitcoin, who refuse to acknowledge that not everyone who is interested in Bitcoin is a scammer or lunatic. I have met some incredibly honest, generous, and kind individuals in the Bitcoin community. And the Bitcoin project holds such promise for the financial world, if it's not first destroyed by scammers, regulators, and close-minded developers.

As just one example of what drew me to Bitcoin, Bitcoin holds (or used to hold) such tremendous promise for the developing world, and to people who are shut out of traditional banking. It's bitterly disappointing to me that so many people are intent on destroying Bitcoin because its implications are perceived to threaten their political beliefs, or because of some kind of jealousy toward the imagined wealth of earlier adopters. The contempt around here is palpable, and it's directed toward _anyone_ associated with Bitcoin.

The emotions here are so intense that we have HNers pulling out the DMCA, which is so hypocritical coming from certain people that I am left speechless.

Can we please bear in mind that Bitcoin has many, many ethical, kind, honest developers and users, and that not everyone should be painted with this brush of contempt that some of you wield so recklessly. Bitcoin has the misfortune to have experienced an huge gain in price last winter, which drew in an inordinate number of scammers, opportunists, and speculators. We, the developers and users of Bitcoin, are not to blame for these types of dishonest people. Very often, we are their victims.

If Bitcoin does fail, a large part of the blame will be one the shoulders of so many software and IT people who make a flash decision that Bitcoin was "tulips" or a "ponzi scheme", and who refused to change their minds in the face of evidence otherwise (like scores of established corporations choosing to accept Bitcoin).

I actually worry now that some of my Bitcoin open source contributions in my real name will be held against me now. All my hard work building a great Github repo is going to be discounted because people see contributions to one or two Bitcoin projects in my "contributed to" Github section.

The whole situation makes me sad beyond belief.

<comment><USER44> > If Bitcoin does fail, a large part of the blame will be one the shoulders of > so many software and IT people who make a flash decision that Bitcoin was > "tulips" or a "ponzi scheme"

Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. That people think they have any value shows they have a fundamental misunderstanding of value. This group might include a lot of people, but the number of people who owned over-priced houses in 2008, or dot-com stock in 2000 was large as well.

HN'ers talk about how they are sober, logical, rational people who can see business (and engineering) opportunities that "traditional" business and finance can not. So Bitcoin is a good lesson in this regard, since the snake oil seems to have infected Silicon Valley like some west coast est cult, with lots of major VC's singing the praises of this scam they are running. Even people not interested in Bitcoins should pay attention to this aspect of Bitcoins, as familiarity with these scams is useful. You can see major VC's lying about the future of Bitcoin, the cluelessness of so many people here and so forth. Aside from understanding scams, you'll understand that there are some people, such as myself and others talking about tulips and ponzi etc., who understand the concept of value. The people hyping the Bitcoins, which will inevitably go to $0, do not understand value, but despite this, nothing will really change. The majority will still listen to the big VC and angel con artists peddling this type of scam, those of us who were prescient about it will be ignored - though inevitably proved wrong on Bitcoin, the VC scammers will still be considered "right". This will be one of the more instructive lessons, not that of Bitcoin. One of these more instructive lessons is that the VCs are fundamentally wrong about why a currency or commodity has value. We understand value, they don't, but that knowledge only helps us avoid scams like Bitcoin for now. They hold the microphone and those of us who are right will be marginalized even when proved correct. It's kind of like how Richard Dawkins, who is correct about reality, logic, Christianity and so forth, is a marginalized figure, because preachers shaking down their congregations for tithes and money are who have the microphone and the power. But in this case we're not talking about delusions infecting uneducated, rural yokels, we're talking about delusions that infect the educated, well-to-do denizens of the Bay Area. Bitcoin is down 7% today, and way down from last November, when Bitcoin was trading at $1160, and no matter how much the bagholders on HN downvote my karma, nothing will stop Bitcoin's drop from that $1160 peak last November to today's $326, to it's inevitable proper price of $0.

I've talked about WHY Bitcoin is worthless in previous posts, but to reiterate - the question is WHY is Bitcoin valuable? Ask that simple question before buying a Bitcoin, or spending thousands to get an ASIC on backorder (the major Bitcoin ASIC sellers, Butterfly Labs, were raided by the feds recently due to fraud). There is no answer. "It's valuable because people are buying it right now" is not a real answer. You could say that about new Sacramento real estate developments in 2008, or Pets.com stock in 2000. It's a tautological argument - if people are buying it for $326, according to that theory, it's worth that because people will pay that, if it drops to $2, it's worth that because people will only pay that. It's a tautological argument.

Commodities have a real value. Real, long-term currencies are just commodities with traits that make them good currencies. The traits are things like durability, portability, uniformity and divisibility. People have been trading for thousands of years, so what has been a currency for thousands of years? Gold has been one of the most popular - not because it is different than other commodities, other than those mentioned traits which make it a good currency. All of the precious metals make decent currencies.

Half a century ago US currency was paper with no inherent value, but with the promise that one could trade it for gold that was held in Fort Knox and other places. So through all these thousands of years, currency was tied to a real commodity, a precious metal. Bitcoin does not have such a link.

Of course in 1971, Nixon broke the link between Federal Reserve notes and gold. Other major currencies followed suit. Some Bitcoin advocates point to that event and say Bitcoin can float on thin air as well. Why that is not so is too much to go into in an HN comment. Suffice it to say, the US government holds over 10,000 tons of gold in Fort Knox and other places. If US currency ever began to collapse, a simple announcement that dollars were convertible to that gold at a certain price would stabilize the currency. Why does the US government spend all that money to hold 10,000 tons of gold? It's understood that that gold still backs US currency, in a more abstract, unpromised way. There are no 10,000 tons of gold backing Bitcoin.

<comment><USER45> It is valuable because it is a shared public data store with equal access read and write privileges. Data stored in it is available, partitionable and eventually consistent. It works due to the economic incentives of being rewarded for validating transactions.

Prior to Bitcoin there were no shared public data stores that satisfied these requirements. Bittorrent and Freenet are not guaranteed to have data availability. That is, you can't always get what you stored. DHTs only work when they are centralized and are susceptible to a number of different attacks when operated with general public access.

The only way to interact with this data store is by being in control of Bitcoin. That is what gives value to the units of account.

<comment><USER44> I understand what you're saying. The only problem is _what_ data is in that decentralized, available, secure data store. The only data allowed in is self- referencing data. Most people don't care about the Bitcoin data store. If I could access, say, Gutenberg.org books in that data store, or something of that nature, I and others would find more value in it.

On the other end of that, processing, not data, there are distributed processing projects out there finding the optimal golomb rulers, looking for pulsars, how protein folds etc. There could be value in a distributed project processing these and other projects. All of Bitcoin processing is self- referential though, it does not allow for this potentially more valuable processing.

What you're describing would be valuable, but not if the only data storable is self-referencing. People don't buy 1 terabyte disk drives that already store Bitcoin blockchain history. They pay for hard drives because they will store the information they want to store and retrieve on them.

<comment><USER45> [http://cryptograffiti.info/](http://cryptograffiti.info/)

[http://coinsecrets.org/](http://coinsecrets.org/)

[https://www.coinprism.info/address/1BvvRfz4XnxSWJ524TusetYKr...](https://www.coinprism.info/address/1BvvRfz4XnxSWJ524TusetYKrtZnAbgV3r)

[https://blockchain.info/new-transactions](https://blockchain.info/new- transactions)

I personally believe that there is intrinsic value in just the self- referential nature of Bitcoin transactions but what's important to realize is that the transactional nature of Bitcoin is what allows for the entire system to work, regardless of what is built on top of it.

A basic transaction of "A sent X to Y" might not be as valuable as a poem, but it still has some level of value.

<comment><USER44> Interesting.

If digital currencies focused more on this type of thing, they might actually stay around for a while longer. This is something I can see the value and usefulness of. A Bitcoin competitor focused around things like this, and perhaps allowing people to pay for non-blockchain mass processing power, might actually be viable in the long term. Because it would be actually useful and valuable.

<comment><USER11> >If digital currencies focused more on this type of thing, they might actually stay around for a while longer. This is something I can see the value and usefulness of.

Bitcoins protocol was _SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED_ to allow these kinds of services. [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script)

It is exactly what you say it should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I started a project called Issue-Bidder ([https://issue- bidder.com/](https://issue-bidder.com/)) with the same concept before I even knew that bountysource (and meanwhile also tip4commit) existed. I do not collect any repositories from Github but rather let the users manually submit a repo to Issue-Bidder. And at this point I think there is only one reason why bountysource does the opposite: For marketing reason – or better let's say this straight-out: the intention to make money. Guess what, the opensource community (speaking as a set of all specific communities) is a high potential and open market. Everybody is able to move mountains if you're ruthless enough. Let's just take this post on reddit as an example: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2dsvme/someone_stol...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2dsvme/someone_stole_my_gpl_code_from_github_showing_it/) and I'm sure tons of other example cases exist out there. In my opinion we can compare bountysource and all the other vultures out there with the financial brokers back in the 90' (why did I even set a filter to the 90' anyways?). Should we now all hate them? Or are we now just hating around because we are naive and didn't restrict all our repos and do believe in the positive aspects of this high potential market called opensource?

</comment><comment><USER47> This is gross to read because it's really about consent.

<comment><USER48> I disagree. He explicitly consented to everybody doing whatever they want with the software.

I just don't think it's fair to allow people to do one thing and then make them feel bad about it once they do it.

\---

Let me clarify a couple of things here so I don't have to write short replies to all of you.

Let's start with the 3-clause-BSD license. It states that you aren't allowed to use the names of the contributors to endorse derived works. They don't do any of that so this is not an issue.

Somebody brought up trademarks. If there's a trademark issue the legal situation should be clear and this issue should resolve itself in no time. Nobody likes lawsuits. I don't see how they violate any trademarks though.

Somebody else brought up handles. This has always been an issue. It seems to boil down to if you like a project, it's okay for them to use somebody else's handle, if you don't, it's unacceptable. I don't think it's a good idea to build a moral argument on top of that. I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of this myself.

The money/tax thing is very interesting. I really wouldn't know, but I don't think you can collect money on someone else's behalf. As in, it only becomes a tax issue/your money once you actually accept the money.

If you're one of the people who think "GitHub should just shut these scumbags down" we might as well start shutting down political parties, newspapers and TV station we don't like. I don't want to live in a world like that.

What upsets me the most is the fact that it becomes harder and harder to have a discussion about topics like this one. What's the point in having a discussion platform if everybody is expected to agree anyway? And even worse, if you don't immediately state that you don't support someone/something you're guilty by association somehow.

I'm sad now. Please continue.

<comment><USER49> Your focus on the software and license (which continues in your clarification) is more a demonstration that you haven't understood the situation than it is disagreement with anything being discussed. The complaint is _Please remove my repositories from the website and do not add a way to add them again. I do not value third party websites gameifying my projects_ , but where it says "repositories", it is not talking about copies of the software, it is talking about listings on tip4commit.com that look(ed!) like they were collecting donations for mitsuhiko/*.

Maybe my other replies will make more sense in that light.

(the (ed!) is because they at least have stuck up a disclaimer saying the projects don't like the funding)

<comment><USER48> The reason I felt the need to explain the legal situation is that some people seem to think there's an objective right/wrong here and that's just not true.

Furthermore, I believe the reaction to this issue is way over the top. The tip4commit people seem very well intentioned in that they created a website for people to donate to open source projects. They might be stubborn and adding the disclaimer might have taken a couple of days to long, but I don't see how any of this justifies so much hate.

<comment><USER50> > The tip4commit people seem very well intentioned

Yeah, it seems after their response to the issue their intentions became a bit more clear, and they are as good you claim.

<comment><USER48> > [...] it seems after their response to the issue their intentions became a > bit more clear [...]

Care to share any new insights you've gained?

<comment><USER50> The insight that they were not well intentioned for the projects they supposedly wanted to help. This was a project which explicitly asked them to fix a problem. Not any problem, it was a very serious one. They refused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> You know what really helps open source developers? Annoying them until they say f-it. Not only is os its own sort of challenge, but then you get a ghetto bitcoin angle going on it... and these tips sort of amount to shit. Big contributors (likely alternatively funded well beyond the tips) don't see much and small contributors get fuck all. And that unclaimed currency goes back to the "project?" Stop.

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's an interesting one. They only email contributors when they have over 0.005 BTC sitting around. So any contributor who over their lifetime is donated less than 0.005 BTC is never told that the money has been given to them.

So we can reasonably expect that almost all the money put into this service will end up sitting around and not going to the people it's supposed to help.

</comment><comment><USER53> "each new commit receives 1% of available balance"

So if you put a dollar in the account, even after 100 commits there's still 36 cents leftover (assuming every commit is "claimed"). Which is to say, by construction most of this money is going to remained unclaimed.

<comment><USER11> that's true, seems like there should be a way for funds to be exhausted at some point, and it could lead to a bit of spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Maybe it's time for a LICENSE addendum? "Unless the services stated here, no money should be collect in the project behalf. "?

I know it's not a good solution, but it's a solution, where you can file license violations wherever they host this project.

<comment><USER55> IANAL but I don't think that would work unless tip4commit is using your software; otherwise they don't have to agree to your license.

<comment><USER54> Good catch, all they are using is the project name. =( I guess a license addendum would have no effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Even ignoring all the legal implications, it's pretty damn rude to reach out to people contributing to open source projects on their own free time without asking for anything in return and offer them a few measly dollars for hours of work.

<comment><USER57> In fact, this communicates entirely the wrong information about the value of their work. If I were looking to encourage people to work on open-source projects, I certainly wouldn't try to entice them with a pittance too small to even buy a pack of gum.

<comment><USER56> Exactly. As an active open source contributor I'll be very insulted if someone offers this to me without me opting in.

If I want money I look for jobs or clients. Literally any other job in the world will pay more than this ever will. I'm not doing open source for the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Bitcoin subreddit thread:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/)

</comment><comment><USER59> 1 of 2 fixes needed here.

1\. Unclaimed money is never processed/withdrawn from the donor

2\. Opt-in only

That's it.

</comment><comment><USER60> Oh, no: now all we need is for ISIS to start using tip4commit to contribute to open source projects, and we'll be living in a South Park episode.

</comment><comment><USER61> In theory, I can association anyone with tip4commit just by searching for their project by name/project, correct?

</comment><comment><USER62> If open source parasites like tip4commit don't learn, the next logical step is to trademark projects and send DMCA notices without wasting any further time.

Also, with this kind of sleazy behavior, the advertising clause in the BSD license suddenly becomes very appealing again.

<comment><USER63> Giving money to open source developers. How parasitical.

<comment><USER64> Not all open source developers want money for their open source software. You think collecting money using someone else's hard work isn't a bad thing. A hard work that the person _explicitly_ went to the trouble of making free and abstained from any income derived solely from it.

<comment><USER65> _Lots_ of people want to make money from their open-source projects, directly or indirectly.

<comment><USER64> This project is only directly, which violates indirectly. Lots of people don't want to be paid _directly_ for their open-source projects.

Mainly because that's precisely what open-source isn't: it's not distribution of software services. There isn't a consumer-producer relationship.

Indirectly is what works great: someone with a vested interest pays an open source developer for his expertise to make sure the open source project continues on. The developer is backed by the full extent of labor laws, welfare services and all other work-related niceties her or his country might have. Or the developer provides a service with clear boundaries which other people pay for, helping provide income for the project's developer and possibly giving it guidance.

Directly there's none of that. There's only people giving money to someone who now has to bear the full legality of it, unaware of the purpose or source of said money. If they don't want it, don't force it on them. Not to mention most projects which _want_ money already have a system set up for it, a system which they explicitly decided was the best for them.

There are loads of other ways to support open source developers other than forcibly putting them in a situation in which they need to hire a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I don't really see a problem with this, and feel it's been blown waaaaaaay bigger than it should have been.

They even included "We are not affiliated with most of the projects, their owners might not endorse use of tip4commit." at the bottom of their frontpage.

</comment><comment><USER67> in a nutshell they're refusing to implement a blacklisting mechanism and being stubborn about it.

<comment><USER65> Since the project is open source itself, I wonder if they'd accept a pull request that implemented a blacklist.

<comment><USER68> That would be an interesting way to deal with the developer's response that he add one himself:

"Perhaps there should be a "black list" that prevents certain projects from being added. But I am not yet sure if we should develop this feature since motivation is not clear to me."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Wow, fuck that guy.

</comment><comment><USER70> I received a tip from tip4commit for a merged pull request to some github repository. The tip was too small to "cash out" on though, and I think I might have needed 40 or more tips like that in order to get a sum that was redeemable.

</comment><comment><USER71> The best thing would be to get GitHub to close this scumbags down.

</comment><comment><USER71> One useful exercize would be to read the "right to forget" thing within the frame of this exchange.

</comment><comment><USER72> So basically main point of opposition boil down to:

1\. "Don't use my project name to collect money for me!"

Why not use your project name? Did you trademarked it? If not, then it's just public information and you can't control how anyone chooses to use it.

No one is collecting money for you. The guy just collects money and promises to give it to you if you ask. Until you ask it's his money.

2\. "Don't spam!"

Well, spamming is certainly in bad taste. I guess he just wanted to make sure people know that he will give them some money if they ask. Probably mistake on his part.

3\. "There might be some laws against some of those things in some countries."

So? There are countries that have laws that say that being gay is illegal. Nobody cares about all the laws.

I think it illustrates that you should "do NOT as you would be done by" because you might have different tastes. Personally I'm all for free pennies and all possible schemes of bringing money to developers so they can do what they wan't instead of do what others tell them to do.

<comment><USER41> > No one is collecting money for you. The guy just collects money and promises > to give it to you if you ask. Until you ask it's his money.

Did you see the bit of US tax law helpfully posted elsewhere in the thread?

<comment><USER72> I just did. What a bizarre construct. Totally unenforceable. You'll get 'civil forfeiture'-d 50 times at random before IRS will charge you with that and wins. Besides it's not uncashed check. It's verbal (or even virtual) promise made by person in another country. If Nigerian prince offers you 500000$ you just need to claim do you have to pay taxes on that?

<comment><USER73> > I just did. What a bizarre construct. Totally unenforceable. Y

Oh, well thank god for that.

Whoever might have legal issues with this can just tell the relevant authorities in their country that scotty79 on HN says it's bizarre and totally unenforceable, and that'll shut them right up, won't it.

And, also, hey who gives a shit if the people involved in the various projects want their project associated with this. If there's no legal means to prevent it, then it's 100% ok because there's no such thing as just respecting the wishes of the people involved and being a decent person. After all, those people for put their code out there in public, so they have it coming and fuck them if they don't like it.

Can you seriously not see why people have a problem with this? And why it'd be good for the folks running the site to not automatically include whoever they please in their scheme, and to allow projects to remove themselves if asked?

<comment><USER72> > Whoever might have legal issues with this can just tell the relevant > authorities in their country that scotty79 on HN says it's bizarre and > totally unenforceable, and that'll shut them right up, won't it.

Yup. Btw that someone won't care because that will be the day when that someone will get struck by lightning three times, once after each meal, so he'll have much more to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a bit sad and annoying to see educated people with uneducated opinions on something that is as clear as my command line. The guys are not impersonating anyone nor taking any money from anyone. Google is opt-out tool and I don't see anyone complaining. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people bringing extra attention to someone's project and if contributors are going to make money in the process, that's epic.

Yes, they probably should have emailed contributors less often but they've fixed it. Instead of complaining, come up with ideas to make it better... in the end, that's what this kind of community should be all about.

BTW, get your ego's checked... seems like it's a bit inflated... and if you are going to sue anyone, think about your federal income tax... because that money is actually stolen from you :P

<comment><USER41> > Google is opt-out tool and I don't see anyone complaining.

I see plenty of people complaining. That's why "Right to be forgotten" has so much traffic in EU.

> Instead of complaining, come up with ideas to make it better

People have suggested ways to make it better. The project has ignored them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I'm really, really surprised and confused by what seems to be the overall sentiment here.

This tipping project was born of a hackathon combining cryptocurrency (cool) and supporting open source projects. Awesome!

Then when people started getting tipped tiny amounts it generated spam... annoying, but it was fixed.

It's a bit outrageous to claim that emailing someone after they have received _free money_ (over some threshold) to invite them to accept it is going over the line.

Claims about taxes, etc.. are laughable. HOW DARE YOU GIVE ME FREE MONEY AND ALLOW ME TO DECLINE IT. Give me a break.

Overall the tone of alexanderz is extremely reasonable. It is not clear to me why the equivalent of a social-site invite being emailed on behalf of some user is suddenly worth getting angry and talking about international spam law. Especially when the exact same opt-out functionality exists. Click one button and never seen another email.. what's the deal here.

<comment><USER49> I guess the aspect you aren't addressing is that people feel like a listing on the site creates an association between the site and their project (quoting from the bug report _I do not want to be associated with this kind of thing._ ).

You can disagree about whether the listing implies an association and disagree that such an association is a bad thing, but it should be clear enough that there are people who do think it creates an association and that they do not want that appearance.

<comment><USER74> fair. It seems 'opt-out' is fine to me though and here is why: I want to contribute to some persons tiny little 4-stars github project because it saved my ass.. it is a bit audacious for long-tail repos to be signing up to accept tips; but sometimes my long-tail tip will cross her long-tail repo.

Even more, what does mitsuhiko care if _other people_ are getting money for contributions to his repos. If mitsuhiko is getting spam or seeing stuff in his issue queue despite opting out; that is a serious breach of ettiquite.

It doesn't seem to me this is the case though.. it's like he is angry that other people are getting emails?

<comment><USER49> I don't think he is angry, I just think he isn't comfortable having his projects listed on sites like this. Read his comments on the bug; they are polite, they explain his perspective, they ask for a specific action, they don't contain insults.

In your scenario, if you actually wanted to tip a meaningful amount, I think it wouldn't be a big deal to simply contact the project directly and see how they wanted to handle it. If you are talking about software users keeping $0.50 tips instead of the projects collecting them, I think that argument is sort of neutral to the opt-in/opt-out question (if a project thinks the combined small tips are worth dealing with, they will likely opt in).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Color now available on Android Market - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jckjck.color <comment><USER2> Wow, first run of the app actually managed to make my phone reboot! Haven't seen anything like that before. Furthermore, I had no idea what I was doing or getting myself into when snapping a photo of myself and 'posting' it (after which the app crashed and my phone rebooted).

So this is the android-part of something that got 41 million in funding? Pretty interesting.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the warning! Anyways, as apps are supposed to run sandboxed, an app shouldn't be able to crash the whole system. They might have found an Android bug there.

<comment><USER4> On my droid x it often is rebooted when I try and send mail with the gmail client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "WARNING: DON'T LAUNCH COLOR ALONE."

I like the concept, but, if you require people to organize themselves in order to set up their first use experience, you are in big trouble.

<comment><USER6> I don't even know what this means. Do I have to launch Wordfeud first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're curious, there are GPS location spoofers in the Android Market. Just remember to Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> Allow mock locations. Then you can use Color + your location spoofer to see photos from people in other places!

</comment><comment><USER8> 4 of 6 user reviews give it 1 or 2 stars. Not an auspicious launch for a $41 million startup.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not doing so great when reviewers are already making comments like "I really failed to see the idea of Color.". $41 million? Maybe there is something about this software or concept that isn't been seen yet by reviewers.

<comment><USER10> It is most definitely different. My first impulse was "where in the hell is the login"

So to do anything "interesting" with it you need to be in the direct proximity of other users with the app. I managed to get the picture of myself it asks for, but because it is such a PITA to find in the (Apple App) store I didn't bother putting it on my wife's phone to try. That seems lame anyway.

This is probably not going to be a big hit with the reclusive introvert type (me). It is an interesting concept though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently they had a 3am push it get it up and it has just been made available for download in the last few minutes

<comment><USER11> damn. I just lost 3 hours. I was about to make the comment that it was midnight west coast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like a great way to have a random stranger's private parts show up on your phone.

</comment><comment><USER13> There was tons of hate, "That's so stupid," and what's the point commentary in Twitter's 1st and 2nd year of existence.

I would think it wouldn't have gotten funding like this if the backers didnt see a similar opportunity.

<comment><USER14> ...at least twitter "worked". Yeah, it fell over, but only because boatload of people were using it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I change my wife's browsing workflow? - <AUTHOR> My wife permanently keeps 100+ browser tabs open "to check one day". I have tried everything to get her to realize she is wasting a lot of time waiting for the browser to respond when she could easily bookmark things for later and keep the session leaner.
I have tried introducing her to read later style services, bookmark all tabs into a folder, session saving browser extensions, but nothing has worked.
Occasionally she copy pastes a bunch of links by hand into Windows notepad to check later. As you may imagine that drives me even crazier than seeing all the tabs open all the time!
Do you have any suggestions on what I could show her as an alternative? <comment><USER2> Breath deeply and consider that her actions and workflows are not your own. You are separate people and are both idiosyncratic. You cannot separate the parts, meaning that the annoying and beloved are both facets of the same person and that person is one you love and respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment and the others as well. I understand this, sorry I seem to have phrased the question in a way that makes it seem about my frustration.

But it comes from a desire to help her be more organized in these little things. To make her day to day "lighter" and have less "to-do list" anxiety. It's not about some petty OCD self absorbed motivation =)

She has similar problems with her email (subscribes to too many mailing lists, and ends up feeling behind on everything), house chores (starts too many tasks at the same time and leaves them all halfway finished around the house).

I guess what I'm wondering is are there any writings (book, articles) that you could recommend to a person that has these traits?

thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Better question: Why should you change your wife's browsing workflow?

I can't think of anything less consequential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you are right, there was other context that I left out and now added on a comment above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you exhibit this "you're doing it wrong" behavior in other aspects of your married life?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! Don't we all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't all of that use a lot of ram? Why not remove some ram from her machine, wait until she complains it's so slow and then educate her, keep it that way for a few weeks and then put the ram back in.

<comment><USER4> Or alternately why not buy a few extra gigs of ram and upgrade her computer to more adequately meet her patterns of use.

<comment><AUTHOR> We live a frugal life-style. There is one computer in the house for a family of 4 (couple + 6yo + 1yo). It's a 5 year old laptop running Win7 and 4Gigs of ram (with a slow conventional Hard-drive).

We will not upgrade or change this. But thanks for the suggestion.</comment></comment></comment>


Eating to Break 100: Longevity Diet Tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/11/398325030/eating-to-break-100-longevity-diet-tips-from-the-blue-zones <comment><USER2> First the article says:

>The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot. They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to de- stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're committed to their families.

Then it goes ahead and talks entirely about diet without bothering to show that diet has anything to do with long life at all...

<comment><USER3> It really is an odd way to start the article. The first three paragraphs seem to undermine the idea that diet is such a central element in a long lifestyle, but then in the next two it just sort of waves that away with a "but diet is worth a close look, too".

I think the interview linked to later expanded on the nuances of this argument pretty well. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9127414...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91274144)

<comment><USER4> I think they're trying to avoid people thinking that it's _all_ about diet. They don't want you to think that you can be physically inactive, live a high- stress life, but eat this magic diet, and you'll live to 100.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm tired of media abusing and bullshitting people's health consciousness and wanting to know what to eat. I'm even more appalled at the scientists who have no idea how nutrition works. We're down to treating the body like a black box and resorting to laws of thermodynamics (aka calorie counting) or anecdotal knowledge of veggies are good cheesecake is bad. It is increasingly absurd in an era of synthesizing proteins designed to combat specific diseases that we can't tell people who want to eat healthy what to do with any scientific backing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Aside from their diet, the other factor these communities all have in common is that they are _isolated_ , either socially or geographically, or both. Which means that their gene pool is also isolated. Which means that if they happen to have mutations that lead to long life, those mutations are likely to persist locally.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real question is, who wants to live to 100? I don't.

I was recently talking to my dad about my grandfather who lived to the ripe old age of 98. He was relatively healthy, mobile, and mentally sharp but the thing that seemed to bother him the most was a particular type of loneliness he was experiencing. The loneliness of not having those individuals in his life that he grew old with like my grandmother and childhood friends. Life without those you love and shared experiences with just doesn't seem worth it.

<comment><USER8> If you don't have friends when you are that old then that's not your problem, it's theirs. I would have hobby or my grandchildren if I feel lonely at that age. I want to live forever, yes I'm not greedy, think about the vastness of the Universe, even if everyone on this planet occupy a new planet still we have so many planets and stars. It's our limited beliefs to not live forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As with so many of these kinds of articles, it skips talking about what they _don 't_ eat: sugared drinks, refined carbs, industrially refined oils, factory farmed animal products, etc. etc.

Living healthily is really, really simple: if it comes in a packet, don't eat it!

<comment><USER10> What is unhealthy about factory farmed animals? Asside from maybe some growth hormones, they seem pretty much the same as regular animals.

<comment><USER11> They move much less, and have much more fat and maybe something else in them.</comment></comment></comment>