I think what strikes me as the large-scale problem here is that some people are baffled by the concept that not wanting money might be a rational decision. As a completely different example of the same decision being rational, let's remember when Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market) because dealing with Canadian sales tax law was too much overhead. Even if the path to accepting money legally is clear and well-documented, it still might not be worth it.
Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby.
There is a worldview that seems to me to be prevalent in the cryptocurrency community (I don't know which direction causation runs, but there's certainly a bit of correlation) that everyone wants micropayments and microtips -- cf. the tip bots on Reddit. It's not uncommon to see the tipbots get downvoted, and the tippers to be completely confused why someone might think it unwanted or off-topic.
http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_...
Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market)
FWIW, Canadians are about 2% of Tarsnap's customer base by revenue. This is a bit less than proportional by population, but not much; the USA is about 40% of Tarsnap's revenue, but that includes several large startups (like Stripe) and Canada is distinctly lacking in similar.
The extra 2% is probably worth doing the sales tax paperwork for... but only barely.
> Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby.
I am having trouble finding a good link, but I believe this effect is well documented in several areas – where compensating someone for an activity winds up with them being less likely to do it.
Dan Ariely talks quite well about the subject of social norms vs financial norms and how just assuming you can move an activity from one to the other is very ignorant.
If some "pay for open source work" scheme got github level popular it would completely destroy open source for a long time. Right now there is more work being done than the community could pay for. But at the same time, it's handy to use bribes to get some necessary but boring stuff done.
Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby.
There is a worldview that seems to me to be prevalent in the cryptocurrency community (I don't know which direction causation runs, but there's certainly a bit of correlation) that everyone wants micropayments and microtips -- cf. the tip bots on Reddit. It's not uncommon to see the tipbots get downvoted, and the tippers to be completely confused why someone might think it unwanted or off-topic. http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/234ds8/tipping_in_...