I hope to live in a future one day, where it's socially acceptable for talented scientists, artists, tinkerers, researchers, developers, people and groups of people whose work scales and benefits many thanks to technology/internet, to be completely funded via the likes of Gittip.
That way, they could fully focus 100% on their craft with the love and passion it deserves, without the drain of fixed-schedule 8 hour workdays. And they could afford to publish their work for free, fully open, without being forced to make it worse by applying DRM and selling on a per-copy basis.
I think we're slowly but surely getting there, and it makes me very happy. Cheers. :)
I don't get why gittip lets me donate "per week" but not a one-time thing. I don't do recurring donations, especially something as often as per week - could totally see myself forgetting about it before the next week.
Well, there's plenty of one-time options (PayPal, Kickstarter, Pledgie, ...). Gittip is differentiating on the recurring option.
The goal with Gittip is for people to make a living on it. Bills are recurring, so funding has to be as well. Yes it means that there is some short-term money left on the table, but it also means that the money that is there is relatively stable and predictable over time. Gittip is designed to grow slowly and shrink slowly. The goal is for JSFiddle to be able to truly depend on it.
And the minimum tip amount is $0.25 per week, which is $13 per year: not that much. Note that the minimum charge is $10 (to minimize transaction fees). So if you only tip a quarter we'd charge you $10 every 37 weeks or so.
That said, I expect we'll mix in one-time payments in some form at some point. I've added a +1 for you here:
I'm especially honored because it's the only thing on their page that's not part of the app! :O
http://jsfiddle.net/ <- Makin' it easy for ya. ;^)