The fix for tipjoy IMHO: Instead to tip contents you can already see turn this into "you can download after this minimal tip amount" for free software, ebooks, ...
A lot of opensource developers will be happy to make it possible to generate some little earning per download (even 20 cents is enough sometimes). This is going to fix a huge problem, but how it is today tipjoy is not going to fix nothing.
Example, Visitors (http://hping.org/visitors) is an open source web log analyzer I wrote some time ago, it is free for Unix users, but the Windows binary costs 8 EUR, still people constantly purchased it in the latest two years. Now immagine that instead I could get 20 cents from everybody is downloading the latest version both for Unix or Windows while I take all the past versions free. This makes sense, you can try the product very well using past versions and 20 cents is very cheap still will probably be the same as a 8 EUR payment for the windows binary.
Also this forces developers to put something cool inside every new release.
Now if tipjoy don't want to introduce this form of payment somebody else should do this prodcut: take in mind that it is absolutely vital that the service will host the file and make available it for download automagically when the use pays. No work from the point of view of the developers, no APIs, it's not like paypal, it's a different thing.
We call this "gated" content. I'm sure as we generalize a micropayments API, we'll support this.
But, I think this fails to help spread our service. Today, people expect to see something before they pay for it. The net effect of gating content is to remove at least an order of magnitude from your user base.
I do think Tipjoy will be used to help support free software though. I'm excited about that.
A lot of opensource developers will be happy to make it possible to generate some little earning per download (even 20 cents is enough sometimes). This is going to fix a huge problem, but how it is today tipjoy is not going to fix nothing.
Example, Visitors (http://hping.org/visitors) is an open source web log analyzer I wrote some time ago, it is free for Unix users, but the Windows binary costs 8 EUR, still people constantly purchased it in the latest two years. Now immagine that instead I could get 20 cents from everybody is downloading the latest version both for Unix or Windows while I take all the past versions free. This makes sense, you can try the product very well using past versions and 20 cents is very cheap still will probably be the same as a 8 EUR payment for the windows binary.
Also this forces developers to put something cool inside every new release.
Now if tipjoy don't want to introduce this form of payment somebody else should do this prodcut: take in mind that it is absolutely vital that the service will host the file and make available it for download automagically when the use pays. No work from the point of view of the developers, no APIs, it's not like paypal, it's a different thing.
My 20 cents ;)