Linus Torvalds and other developers are leaving Bitcoins on the table | Hacker News Reader

Linus Torvalds and other developers are leaving Bitcoins on the table

itworld.com

25 pointssashazykov30 comments

Linus's annual earnings are in the region of $10m, his net worth is ballpark $150m, and we're meant to be surprised he hasn't collected $136 in Github tips? Really?

Perhaps Tip4Commit should make it easier for developers to nominate a charity for their unclaimed tips to go to? Or just automatically donate anything unclaimed after six months.

How does Linus make 10m a year? Just curious. Not trying to say he doesn't deserve it!

Red Hat and VA Linux gave him stock options back in the day. Once they IPOed, Linus became a very wealthy man. Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_torvalds#Later_years)

That was in 1999. The RHT IPO was at 20 and shot up 155 and is now at around 57. VA IPO'd at 30 and rose to 320 before cratering to below 5 in 2006. They are now known as Geeknet (GKNT) after some mergers and name changes which that trades at around 18.

All in all, Linus may have had a lot of money on paper, but unless he cashed out at the top, his stock is worth a lot less now. That is not to say that he may still have a couple of millions, but he's not even close to the really rich people likes Gates with his 77 billion.

Adjusted for the split, the offer price for Redhat was $7.

Where does that $10m figure come out from? I couldn't find any solid references with a web search.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-t...

Pretty shitty reference, admittedly.

I had found that one, but it's in no way "solid" and I couldn't find any reference to back that up ;)

If you search for "Linus Torvalds net worth" you'll find pages that back up the $10m figure.

But then again, I didn't see any sources on those pages so they might as well be based on a thread like this one.

> Linus's annual earnings are in the region of $10m

Did you just make that up? Linus is paid by the Linux Foundation, which is a non-profit, which means the information is largely available. He is not a director or board member but so the exact details are not available. [1]

At any rate, it looks like Non-Director employee expense is $2.34M in total. There are at least 5 employees who combine for that number, and it includes all expense including travel/benefits/taxes/etc. My guess his annual salary is probably around $400k, which would be equal to the highest paid director. It could be $250k, it could be $1M, but it is absolutely impossible that it is $10M.

http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/460/4605038...

Why are we having opinions about how other people spend their time and money? People have been contributing to open source projects without any compensation for a lot longer than any of these on-line "tip" services have existed.

edit: Five minutes on Tip4Commit reveals:

Meaningful, feature-enhancing and bug-fixing commits to the linux kernel are earning ~$0.02 each

* 0.00002458 ɃTC https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/3405d230b374b692387...

* 0.00002559 ɃTC https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/fb5bb60cd004a00c1d1...

Meanwhile, storing a google drive mirror inside of a git repo and committing things that shouldn't even be in source control is generating $10+ per commit

* 0.01648708 BTC https://github.com/super3/Peercoin.net/commit/3921ceaa64ce39...

* 0.01632221 BTC https://github.com/super3/Peercoin.net/commit/574d0f43389ee0...

Maybe Tip4Commit is just not a well designed system for allocating reward and value? As a developer working on something you care about, this kind of comparison could potentially be a turn-off from participating in the tip community.

Other core Rust devs and I sometimes receive Bitcoin tips through this program, but as we're employed full time to work on Rust we're uncomfortable accepting them. I'd rather people donate to charity, as the article suggests.

Well, the site should have option that you could redirect your earnings to charity...

Grab one of the Bitcoin addresses for EFF or IA. Put it in your tips's address. Done.

If we could just donate them back to the pool or opt out that would solve that problem.

In all fairness $136 isn't really serious amount of money to be collected and it can be a little bit trickier for someone who isn't used to Bitcoin. I wouldn't bother to collect it as well.

It's not that.

Linus is a public figure, so you can bet that some people would spin his acceptance of a BTC tip into something bizarre, something like "The father of Linux embraces virtual drug money".

Does he need this headache even if a chance of it is small? Not for $136 :)

Why is it fair for Linus to get tips for Linux kernel commits? My understanding is that he rarely (if ever) writes code for the kernel anymore. He just takes code from his lieutenants and merges it. Maybe he doesn't feel right taking the money for other people's work.

he manages the development and what is included or excluded from the main branch, while he is not writing all that code he does make a huge impact on linux

>Tip4Commit recently made a change to revert tips that remain unclaimed for 30 days back to the project. So far, according to Gasparyan, about 20% of the value of all tips have reverted back to their projects.

That might annoy me, if I had sent any tips, or if I had received any. Not that I am opposed to supporting T4C but I think 90 days would be more reasonable, and I also liked some other HN user's suggestion that people be given the option to elect a charity or other project to receive funds.

While the reasons people mentioned here are all extremely valid, I found another reason:

To sign in to Tip4Commit (which appears to be required to collect your money), I have to grant Tip4Commit read/write access to what GitHub calls my "Personal user data". Now I suspect if they change my name or something it wouldn't be the end of the world, I could just revert it, but if you hover over the little ? icon it reveals that it also gives them read/write access to YOUR SSH KEYS. Now that right there is probably why larger devs don't do this.

Someone, please please please tell me I missed something...

It's not needed any more https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/17 could you please test how it works now? I didn't know that it's possible to get email address without asking read-write access.

Why do you need my email at all?

I am not surprised.

I don't always check my reddit messages, because they're generally not that important/interesting. The other day I thankfully decided to take a peek as the 21 day window on a bitcointip was about to close.

I have been using reddit for years. I know about the bitcointip project. But unless/until it really smacks you in the face that you received money via some obscure means of communication that you never really used in the first place, I would expect more tips to go unclaimed in the future.

I'm avoiding Bitcoin until I see how this plays out with the IRS.

As an investor that's a bad idea. As a citizen of a democracy this is also a bad idea... IRS should have no problem with bitcoin, as it's more traceable than cash. You seem to think IRS will kill bitcoin for no good reason, in which case it's your duty as a democratic citizen to object to such nonsense.

I mean the mechanics of it. The IRS is likely right now formulating means for demanding a record of Bitcoin payments recieved. No doubt the IRS realizes that Bitcoin is a new reality. They have no reason to want to stop it, but their mission is to make sure proper taxes are collected and no income remains hidden.

Edit: How to Pay Taxes on Your Bitcoin Investment

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/01/27/bitcoin_taxat...

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you avoiding it until guidance on how to use it in a tax compliant way is made? Or are you planning to not use it if IRS gets involved?

is $136 from some random service really worth a post?

Worse, $136 for more than 275 commits (= about $0.50 per commit), which is not that much. Plus most of Linus' commits are (iirc) merge commits, given how that's what he usually does.

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