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gratipay / inside.gratipay.com

Here lieth a pioneer in open source sustainability. RIP
https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981
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Bring Gratipay in for a landing #1196

Closed chadwhitacre closed 5 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

After five and a half years, I'm throwing in the towel: https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/1069#issuecomment-335488726. I'm willing to work through the end of the year to bring Gratipay in for as smooth a landing as we can.

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

Options:

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

OC are also good people. https://opencollective.com/opensource could be a good destination for the $100k stuck in our escrow.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

Wow. What a day…

@clone1018 Can you clarify how you envision the first option you listed?

Changaco commented 6 years ago

It might be obvious but I'll say it anyway: everyone here is welcome to join the Liberapay team. We work mostly the same way as Gratipay with a few exceptions (e.g. we use IRC/Gitter instead of Slack).

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Either of the first two options is agreeable to me, but I am not spending gobs of time.

Option 2 seems possible under the assumption that 1) non-personnel expenses can be covered* ("hobby" status project for all involved) and 2) Gratipay exists under maintenance status (no huge new features), also meaning that #1160 is dropped. I don't know how much time is spent on offline issues, however; stuff like #1164, bookkeeping, and annual business paperwork are non-trivial tasks.

_* This is not happening right now. According to the budget, we need $92 a week and we're only getting ~half that.

image

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

a good destination for the $100k stuck in our escrow.

Or: distribute it to existing receivers on Gratipay, in gratitude for their patronage, and to soften the blow of us shutting down. 😞

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

@Changaco No concrete ideas, at it's simplest phase we could just point all of our customers to LiberaPay. At it's hardest phase we could actually migrate over profiles.

@whit537 What are we legally allowed to do with our escrow?

@mattbk It seems dealing with taxes/finances/legal is a giant time sink.

mattbk commented 6 years ago

I just need a timeline so I can let people know if they ask via Support. The people with privileges to run payday are who I'm looking to for guidance; will it happen tomorrow or are we donezo for regular business right now?

@Changaco, I'm interested as well in how the first option would work. Building a migration pathway to Liberapay would be helpful.

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

@whit537 Do we need to worry about escheatment for the escrow account? Talking to my boss about it, as he understood it, we would be required to try and give the escrow back to the initial givers based on the state they live in.

mattbk commented 6 years ago

we would be required to try and give the escrow back to the initial givers

That makes sense to me, since the money is in escrow for them to use on Gratipay.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

I suppose we could make it relatively easy to migrate to Liberapay, kind of like https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/259 but deeper (i.e. we would transfer more data from Gratipay).

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

From http://inside.gratipay.com/big-picture/operating-agreement:

The following decisions require a vote with a 14-day voting period and at least 75% in favor to pass:

  • […]
  • selling or dissolving Gratipay.

I propose that we dissolve Gratipay on December 31, 2017.

Let the discussion and voting period begin, @clone1018! :-)

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

Before I cast my vote:

I'd like to hear thoughts from @mattbk , @EdOverflow , @rohitpaulk , @JessaWitzel , and any other contributors from our team

I'd also like to hear any integration proposal from @Changaco

mattbk commented 6 years ago

1) I'd like to see it continue, and should be able to contribute to the same degree, but 1) My previous comment still stands.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Do we need to worry about escheatment for the escrow account?

We should talk to a lawyer about this. I've got someone I can reach out to ...

Greetings, []. We had an introductory call a year ago about Gratipay, a payments processor for open source projects. Long story short Gratipay has not found traction and we are looking at shutting it down. Would you be available to advise us on how to dispose of our $100k escrow and otherwise bring this thing in for a landing?

Sent. ☝️

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Slack

I'm expecting we'll run payday at least through November.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

I expect disposing of the escrow to be the hardest part of shutting down. I guess let's see if we can get into a conversation there and see what happens before planning too much further. December 31 could very well be impossible. However, even if we have to keep a shell open for years to deal with escrow, we can stop processing new payments much sooner. Soooo I'd like to amend my proposal:

I propose we:

October 25 is when this vote closes.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Here's a sketch of a timeline assuming the proposal passes on October 25:

Changaco commented 6 years ago

@mattbk You said “I'd like to see it continue”, but what is it exactly? The Gratipay 2.0 platform? The Gratipay project/brand in general? Something else?

It would be useful to have a clear understanding of what everyone here wishes to save.

mattbk commented 6 years ago

That's an excellent question.

Perhaps I'm more attached to the brand than anything else, but I couldn't tell you exactly why. If Liberapay can serve the same purpose, maybe I should let Gratipay go.*

Mostly I've enjoyed working on a project with other people, and it's been a project that seems helpful to other people. That's not enough reason in itself to keep things going, and I hoped that was clear. Nostalgia and sunk-cost fallacy?

_*Speaking as an american user, the bar for giving via Liberapay (15 euro+fees, paid ahead of time) seems higher than that for Gratipay ($15 + fees, paid after tips accrue), but I think I'm being provincial.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

The currency difference between the two platforms is in fact a major obstacle. I was hoping to work on multi-currency support in Liberapay in the first half of 2018, but @whit537's proposal is to shut down Gratipay before the end of 2017, so the first half of 2018 is too late.

I am willing to shift my focus to currencies (https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/182). We may be able to pull off basic support for US dollars by the end of November.

Alternatively we could keep Liberapay in euros and run Gratipay separately in US dollars, but I'm not sure this is a good idea.

I have mixed feelings about the possibility of keeping the Gratipay brand alive and distinct from Liberapay.

(I don't know if I'm expressing my thoughts clearly enough here, as always feel free to ask for clarifications.)

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Alternatively we could keep Liberapay in euros and run Gratipay separately in US dollars, but I'm not sure this is a good idea.

If the decision by others is to shut down Gratipay, I think this (Liberapay operating Gratipay in the US) would be a stopgap, but if Liberapay multi-currency could be roughed in around the same time it wouldn't be necessary. Again, it may not be an issue for most users.

@whit537, @clone1018, would Liberapay count as an "official" alternative in the the "we're shutting down" announcements? It's the most closely related alternative out there, and the personal connection is there as well. In essence, what's the best thing we can do for current Gratipay users?

rohitpaulk commented 6 years ago

I'm up for whatever causes the least inconvenience to existing users on the platform. It wouldn't be cool for projects like jsbin to lose the $100/wk they currently receive.

If we had enough income to cover expenses, I'd vote for putting Gratipay into 'maintenance mode', like Bountysource did. Now that we don't - I think merging with liberapay is a good option. :)

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

@Changaco I care less about keeping the Gratipay name alive and going and more about the user experience. If there's some avenue for helping our customers move their expectations to another platform, I'm definitely in favor of that.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

Okay.

My main concern is possible disappointments. It would be bad for everyone if Gratipay users migrated to Liberapay just to find that the differences between the two platforms are problematic for them. Support for US dollars would be a significant step towards minimizing this risk.

Here's how I can see the migration process working:

  1. The user logs in on Gratipay and sees a page that explains the shutdown and invites them to migrate to another platform. The page should also explain the differences between Gratipay and any alternative platform listed, so that the user knows what to expect. For example Liberapay doesn't charge cards automatically, and doesn't support PayPal.
  2. The user is also invited to:
    • deal with any money remaining in their account;
    • export and save their account history.
  3. The user clicks a "Migrate to Liberapay" button which redirects them to Liberapay, with a migration authorization code contained in the querystring or body.
  4. The user agrees to Liberapay's terms of service.
  5. Liberapay requests account data from Gratipay using the authorization code and updates its database.
  6. Liberapay shows the user what has been migrated and what is still missing:
    • The basic identity information that Mangopay requires: full name, country of residence, nationality, and date of birth.
    • If the user is a donor, their credit card number.
    • Any other data that either can't be migrated or simply doesn't exist in Gratipay's database.
  7. Liberapay tells Gratipay that the migration was completed successfully, Gratipay closes or deactivates the account.
techtonik commented 6 years ago
  1. Let me throw another thing. Got Gratipay on a public blockchain. After what FinCEN did to us I don't have any belief in that credit card and banking industry. It wastes my life doing closed source stuff for rich people for food. I've tired to prove to full time employed governments and those legal fear factories that I am not a criminal. They should do their job themselves.
mattbk commented 6 years ago

Have you looked at gitcoin.co? They reached out to us last week (Freshdesk).

Changaco commented 6 years ago

Any feedback on the envisioned migration process?

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Is your process the same for users and projects (teams)? Or will teams need to be recreated? Trivial for most users, since only the Gratipay project has TWYW anymore.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

I'm thinking teams would be recreated automatically when the user who owns them migrates.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Right now we process up to $795.73/wk (about 18% less in any given week due to charging in arrears) for 159 people.

Two of the receivers are getting $100 from a single source each, whom they presumably know and could coordinate with on moving to a different platform. That takes us down to $595 overall and I'll bucket them below based on their remainder after the $100/wk is taken off the table.

Gratipay itself accounts for about $75 and 9 of us + Gratipay itself, so we can take that out which brings us down to 520/wk for 149 people.

Looking at the remainder of our users, there are 13 people making more than $10/wk, up to about $50/wk. There are 136 taking less than $10 including 47 taking less than $1/wk.

I guess I'm looking at this and wondering whether the demand here justifies the development time to build a migration pathway. Most folks won't even bother.

And the heart of the matter is, how are we going to get credit card numbers over to Liberapay? Gratipay doesn't even have those. We'd either have to give Liberapay access to our Braintree account(!) or involve Braintree and MangoPay in migrating card numbers.

mattbk commented 6 years ago

I guess I'm looking at this and wondering whether the demand here justifies the development time to build a migration pathway.

I can see this point. Considering how simple it would be for people to manually migrate, I think it might be easier to just point them to Liberapay.

Most folks won't even bother.

How would you even know this?

Changaco commented 6 years ago

Right now we process […] for 159 people.

Why are you only counting users who receive money?

I guess I'm looking at this and wondering whether the demand here justifies the development time to build a migration pathway.

Unless we know for sure that very few people would appreciate having a migration pathway then I'm leaning towards implementing one.

And the heart of the matter is, how are we going to get credit card numbers over to Liberapay?

I don't think they're the heart of the matter. In fact I didn't propose migrating them.

techtonik commented 6 years ago

@mattbk first thoughts about gitcoin.co

  1. whitepaper is not public
  2. code is AGPL (Gratipay is mostly Public Domain)
  3. single contributor/owner/founder
  4. need to pay transaction fee (gas), but no calculator/information how much
  5. need software (metamask) installed to work properly
chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Unless we know for sure that very few people would appreciate having a migration pathway then I'm leaning towards implementing one.

I'm willing to review and merge PRs to gratipay.com for this, but I'm not ready to do the development work itself.

aggsol commented 6 years ago

Why not ask them if they want a migration pathway? Resources on Liberapay are scarce, no need to waste them.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

@whit537 Okay.

@aggsol The work on the Liberapay side won't be wasted, we'll be able to reuse some of it to implement importing data from other platforms (https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/259).

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

The simple answer: If the check was issued in the United States and you can't find an owner whose last known address is in a foreign country, report and remit the unclaimed property to your company’s (holder's) state of incorporation.

http://www.unclaimedpropertyspecialists.com/blog/where-do-you-report-unclaimed-property-when-an-owners-last-known-address-is-in-a-foreign-country

http://www.unclaimedpropertyspecialists.com/ 🤔

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Oooh! Satellite office in Pittsburgh! :D

http://www.unclaimedpropertyspecialists.com/contact

https://www.google.com/search?q=MarketSphere+pittsburgh+pa

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

(P.S. No answer from https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/1196#issuecomment-335950742.)

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

If we had enough income to cover expenses, I'd vote for putting Gratipay into 'maintenance mode', like Bountysource did.

Fwiw, we could probably trim expenses to fit within income.

Changaco commented 6 years ago

How much money can't be either refunded or paid out exactly?

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Approximately $100,000.

mattbk commented 6 years ago

Today is the day. 😔

Changaco commented 6 years ago

I suggest November 1st for the shutdown announcement, that gives us one week to get everything ready.

I've been working hard on upgrading Liberapay to support US dollars in addition to euros, it's not quite ready yet but it might be next week.

I'm going to start working on the account migration process today or tomorrow.

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

I second the motion to: "dissolve Gratipay on December 31, 2017."

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

@whit537 I also would like to seriously recommend investigating escheatment as an "easy" solution for getting off the hook for the money in escrow. For US citizens at least, if we know their name and state it should be straightforward.

I'm not sure how the shutdown will go, but I'm accepting of anything that is painless for the users.

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

Up at https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/1196#issuecomment-335955083:

I propose we:

  • stop processing one-time payments (i.e., through the homepage) as soon as possible,
  • stop processing weekly recurring payments by December 31, 2017 at the latest, and
  • dissolve Gratipay, LLC as soon as possible on or after December 31, 2017.

October 25 is when this vote closes.

Alright, @clone1018. As @mattbk says, today is the day. You and I are the two voting co-owners of Gratipay, LLC. What's our decision?

chadwhitacre commented 6 years ago

I vote in favor of the proposal.

clone1018 commented 6 years ago

I vote in favor of the proposal.