[akerl_]

At least in my experience, I donate to groups that do good work but aren't getting paid for it. I wouldn't donate to people who are being paid (quite handsomely, in this case) for their labor. Especially when he's already clarified that GitHub paid him more than he thought his time was worth.

[homakov]

95% of my security research is not paid. I fix gems, libraries, websites etc. Donated money go right there, through beers and coffee I need.

[orblivion]

Perhaps you could clarify that part in your future posts, to appease the Internet haters on both sides. "I do paid contract work. However I also spend lots of time fixing open source stuff for free. If you want to encourage me to keep doing the latter, here's how to donate."

[akerl_]

Agreed. If it had said that, I'd not have been concerned by it in the first place.

[avenger123]

This makes sense then for sure.

You are giving people that you have helped an opportunity to pay you without having any kind of contract with them.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

[raganwald]

Donate or don't donate, that's your call. But why are you complaining about him asking for a donation? Why try to "shame" him? What is he doing to harm you?

[kmfrk]

Start-up idea: let Hacker News users pay to berate you for x minutes.

There's a clearly huge market.

[MarkTee]

Although you'll have some competition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

[nealabq]

plus.inyourfacetwit.com, where you have 140 chars to berate anyone, and a whaling-wall for when you really need to get it off your chest.

Ad supported. Abusive ads berating potential users are encouraged.

[Intermernet]

20 hours later, domain still not registered...

Get on that before someone filches it!

[akerl_]

Not sure why you're viewing my comment with such hostility. I was mistakenly under the impression that most of his work is contracted / bounty. He's already clarified his reason for accepting donations below, and I understand. I just think the placement/wording was less than ideal.

[raganwald]

Raganwald! Downvote or don't downvote! Why are you trying to shame akeri_!?

Point, set and match.

[justinsteele]

Luckily, he is not forcing you to donate, so you can choose not to. :)

He also commented on his site that he "is poor", so it could be that he simply hasn't landed enough gigs @ $400/hr to be in good financial shape yet.

[bfish510]

He's also providing this blog post. Something he doesn't have to do and has taught me something as I try to improve myself.

[ics]

I doubt Egor is being paid for posting these summaries to his own blog for all of us to see. Even if he weren't contributing code to various libraries and applications, these write-ups are a great benefit to everyone else who has yet to be a target.

[patcon]

Some people actively try to think of money as a proxy for appreciation ;)