Gittip seems highly popular amongst Python contributors at the moment. The top four, other than the Gittip founder himself, are all primarily Python devs[1] and will make $2,400 per year (~$50 per week) from Gittip if it remains steady.
I wonder if Gittip is more popular within the Python community currently or if this is just a skew in the numbers. I do know that Armin has been encouraging people through Twitter to use Gittip if they feel his work is useful. I'd be interested to see if/when Gittip becomes more popular in other programming circles and what impact that has on payments.
The other thing is that >$2,000 is actually a significant amount of money. It moves past "beer money" to "helps with rent" money and I expect this figure to continue to rise over time, especially for star OSS contributors. On top of that, it's also a form of social validation, especially when it is received when one gives their time freely with no expectation of a return.
Over time I think we'll find Gittip will encourage encourage and enrich the existing open source software model, not destabilise it as some people fear. Imagine if successful start-ups decided to give a few dollars to the creators of the software they use to make money. When your company is pulling in $10k per month, giving $50 per month (~$10 per week) to the creator of [core library] seems obvious and beneficial to both parties.
[1]: jnoller (Python/CPython), kennethreitz (Python Requests/Python for Humans), mitsuhiko (Flask/Jinja2), alex (Django,PyPy,CPython),
Generally things tend to start strong in the community where the creator came from just because of connections. I remember github being much more Ruby focused than it is today when it started out :-)
As mentioned it's skewed towards Python because that's the community where I've been most active and have the most connections. I've started getting to know the Ruby community here in Pittsburgh and would love to branch out further. If you know of an event where people should hear about Gittip, please let me know. I've started a ticket for this:
I think Gittip is starting out amongst the Python community because it is built in Python. One of the signs Gittip is maturing will be its prominent use by another dev community.
I appreciate the work prominent OS contributors have made, and I hope that Gittip takes off.
I think it's network effects from it's founder as well. It is written in Python, Chad is active with python stuff. I think that the Python community is generous, but I doubt any more so than most other OSS communities. (Please prove me right!).
Speaking for direct personal experience: the Python community is amazingly generous. In some ways, more generous and giving and understandable than any other community I've been part of.
Of course, I'm grossly biased[1], and have been very lucky[2]
Gittip seems highly popular amongst Python contributors at the moment. The top four, other than the Gittip founder himself, are all primarily Python devs[1] and will make $2,400 per year (~$50 per week) from Gittip if it remains steady.
I wonder if Gittip is more popular within the Python community currently or if this is just a skew in the numbers. I do know that Armin has been encouraging people through Twitter to use Gittip if they feel his work is useful. I'd be interested to see if/when Gittip becomes more popular in other programming circles and what impact that has on payments.
The other thing is that >$2,000 is actually a significant amount of money. It moves past "beer money" to "helps with rent" money and I expect this figure to continue to rise over time, especially for star OSS contributors. On top of that, it's also a form of social validation, especially when it is received when one gives their time freely with no expectation of a return.
Over time I think we'll find Gittip will encourage encourage and enrich the existing open source software model, not destabilise it as some people fear. Imagine if successful start-ups decided to give a few dollars to the creators of the software they use to make money. When your company is pulling in $10k per month, giving $50 per month (~$10 per week) to the creator of [core library] seems obvious and beneficial to both parties.
[1]: jnoller (Python/CPython), kennethreitz (Python Requests/Python for Humans), mitsuhiko (Flask/Jinja2), alex (Django,PyPy,CPython),