It's interesting to think of a system to support development of open source software, providing monetary compensation in addition to that feel-good feeling. The other day I was thinking if we could almost have a standardized commit message for developers seeking tips, something like <public bitcoin address><clearsignature of address with developers pgp key>, so that one could do this on a direct basis (and with certainty that their funds reach the dev).
This is NOT to say that I don't trust tip4commit, not at all. Think of the previous paragraph as an aside, a thought on how to tip in a way that guarantees all tips go to developers. If arsenische were less trustworthy there might be a greater argument, but I think people familiar with bitcointalk will know he's cool.
It's great to see an easy, less-painful, automatic way to have this done than simply looking up dev's addresses on an individualized basis (tedious if you like lots of projects).
Cool stuff.
I like your idea of putting developers' bitcoin address into commit message. I totally agree with you that direct tips are instant and reliable, they don't require trust to any third party.
However most developers probably don't even have a Bitcoin address, we hope to change that :)
It is just a tip, some additional incentive to make new commits. Hopefully it will attract attention of new developers to the projects that are needed by people.
Free flow of value.
So I have three choices
1) Work on this opensource project and potentially make 0.077 bitcoins
2) Work on my projects / startup
3) Work for somebody else with guaranteed salary of $100-150/hr.
I don't see how #1 is competitive at all, unless you're an idealist.
Working on an OSS project is fulfilling in ways other than money, and some people really enjoy doing it in their spare time, etc. I know some of my friends from college who went off to do work at Facebook, Google, IBM, and they actually all enjoy submitting their code to open source projects for 0 dollars.
So while you're right there is some sort of "idealism" required, it's a common ideal in the culture of programming it seems. Supporting what one thinks is right, simply by nature of believing in it. Then you can go off to your day job at Google and make six figures.
1) Work on this opensource project for free
2) Work on my projects / startup
3) Work for somebody else with guaranteed salary of $100-150/hr.
That lack of competitiveness doesn't seem to have stopped the success of open source.
