<story><title>The Future of Payments and Open Source Support</title><url>http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/11/2/payments-in-the-future/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>mike_hearn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure it is. I&amp;#x27;m not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it&amp;#x27;s opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn&amp;#x27;t point out what &lt;i&gt;specifically&lt;/i&gt; would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different using Bitcoin isn&amp;#x27;t obvious. You can declare tips as income, no problem.&lt;p&gt;The real cause of his discomfort is revealed later in the post:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Personally I believe that Bitcoin is a terrible currency ... If you have a completely broken piece of country then I can imagine that you are suspicious of regulation and this sort of thing, but for me regulation is what keeps my world running and working.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Bitcoin for me feels like a cult. The vocal people in the community seem like they don&amp;#x27;t actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their &amp;quot;investment&amp;quot; makes a profit&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So he has a generalised feeling that Bitcoin is bad because it&amp;#x27;s popular and has vocal fans, and that regulation is good yet also complicated, so anything which seems simple must be unregulated and therefore bad.&lt;p&gt;I do not consider myself particularly libertarian, though I do use and work on Bitcoin. Regardless, this doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a great set of arguments. Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don&amp;#x27;t seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin.</text></item><item><author>wdewind</author><text>TLDR; there are two problems with tip4commit:&lt;p&gt;1. The obvious, that they are collecting funds on behalf of other people&amp;#x27;s work and then keeping them when the funds go &amp;#x27;unclaimed&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;2. Even if you do want to claim it, they don&amp;#x27;t make it easy, and for someone in a complicated tax country (like the author, Austria) there is almost no way he could accept the money without incurring some kind of risk.  So basically when they are keeping money that goes unclaimed it&amp;#x27;s very problematic because they don&amp;#x27;t make the money easy to claim in the first place.  Obvious incentives issues.&lt;p&gt;Point 2 is what this article is about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_mitsuhiko</author><text>&amp;gt; author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn&amp;#x27;t point out what specifically would cause problems here.&lt;p&gt;JFTR: &amp;quot;accepting tips&amp;quot; for software is something that is not at all straightforward.  The way bountysource and others get around that is through invoices once a large enough amount has accumulated.  I have no idea how that works in other countries.  Gratipay&amp;#x2F;bountysource solve this problem, no bitcoin service I have seen does.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don&amp;#x27;t seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin.&lt;p&gt;I think you misunderstand something there: I am pointing out why Bitcoin is something that does not solve problems for me and I doubt I am the only one.  The premise of tip4commit is that it helps Open Source projects.  It&amp;#x27;s not just not helping me, it&amp;#x27;s making my life more complicated.  In fact, right now, pretty much anything that has bitcoin involved makes it harder for me.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Future of Payments and Open Source Support</title><url>http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/11/2/payments-in-the-future/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>mike_hearn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure it is. I&amp;#x27;m not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it&amp;#x27;s opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn&amp;#x27;t point out what &lt;i&gt;specifically&lt;/i&gt; would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different using Bitcoin isn&amp;#x27;t obvious. You can declare tips as income, no problem.&lt;p&gt;The real cause of his discomfort is revealed later in the post:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Personally I believe that Bitcoin is a terrible currency ... If you have a completely broken piece of country then I can imagine that you are suspicious of regulation and this sort of thing, but for me regulation is what keeps my world running and working.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Bitcoin for me feels like a cult. The vocal people in the community seem like they don&amp;#x27;t actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their &amp;quot;investment&amp;quot; makes a profit&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So he has a generalised feeling that Bitcoin is bad because it&amp;#x27;s popular and has vocal fans, and that regulation is good yet also complicated, so anything which seems simple must be unregulated and therefore bad.&lt;p&gt;I do not consider myself particularly libertarian, though I do use and work on Bitcoin. Regardless, this doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a great set of arguments. Rather, the author has decided that because a lot of Bitcoin users don&amp;#x27;t seem to like government, and he likes government, he should not like Bitcoin.</text></item><item><author>wdewind</author><text>TLDR; there are two problems with tip4commit:&lt;p&gt;1. The obvious, that they are collecting funds on behalf of other people&amp;#x27;s work and then keeping them when the funds go &amp;#x27;unclaimed&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;2. Even if you do want to claim it, they don&amp;#x27;t make it easy, and for someone in a complicated tax country (like the author, Austria) there is almost no way he could accept the money without incurring some kind of risk.  So basically when they are keeping money that goes unclaimed it&amp;#x27;s very problematic because they don&amp;#x27;t make the money easy to claim in the first place.  Obvious incentives issues.&lt;p&gt;Point 2 is what this article is about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djur</author><text>This may have changed in the last 24 hours, but last I checked tip4commit&amp;#x27;s opt-out model is &amp;quot;get stuffed&amp;quot;. The original controversy was over their refusal to remove projects from the site on request.&lt;p&gt;I agree that Bitcoin is more or less irrelevant to the controversy, but like the OP says, the tip4commit defenders seem to have intentionally made it a pro&amp;#x2F;anti-Bitcoin conflict. Bitcoin advocates were mobilized to support the site.</text></comment>