It's fun to read through their bug tracker and read discussions with their payment processor and look at debates on how different corporate minutia should be handled.
Even if you're not interested in Gittip (and I am, I think it's a very interesting funding model) the open company model that they follow should be quite inspirational.
The really inspirational part, to me, is the follow-through. A lot of people pay lip service to openness, but very few actually commit to it. I really love the idea behind Gittip, but I'm even more impressed with the way they're doing it.
Agreed. I chatted with Chad Whitacre (the creator of Gittip) recently and was impressed with how "all-in" he is on this. He's receiving 100% of his funding through Gittip, taking in no outside contributions and even doing no outside consulting work. He should certainly be lauded for this, few have the commitment to execute. I assume at some point either Gittip will be bringing in enough money to allow him to do this forever or he'll have to bail/get a side job. Not sure how long that'll take but I really hope he succeeds!
The full story is a bit more complex, but, yes: my wife and kids and I are sacrificing financially so that I can work full-time on Gittip. When I work on Gittip part-time, it flatlines. When I work on Gittip full-time, it grows. I'm grateful to have consulting work available to me, but at this point I'm so wrapped up in Gittip that I really just can't concentrate on other work.
I'm netting almost $200/wk on Gittip right now (thank you!) and if that gets to $800/wk by the end of 2013 I'll be the happiest kid in America. Gittip will be almost born. I'm encouraged that that's only a 4x increase.
That said, if Gittip works for me it'll only be because it's working for many other people as well. My focus in the next month or three is going to be on roughing in the features like communities and projects and funds and friend-finding that will help Gittip work for everyone and will get money moving through the system. Then the focus will shift again to building up the contributor community around Gittip, once the pieces are in place to actually get people paid for working on Gittip.
Gittip is almost a year old. If it's going to fly, we'll know within another year. I'm hopeful! :D
http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open-compa...
It's fun to read through their bug tracker and read discussions with their payment processor and look at debates on how different corporate minutia should be handled.
https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues
Even if you're not interested in Gittip (and I am, I think it's a very interesting funding model) the open company model that they follow should be quite inspirational.