Yesterday I discovered Flattr, a new micro payment cloud service that went to open beta recently. I have to admit, I really like the idea of Flattr: Spend a fixed amount of real money every month to honor the efforts of others who provide articles, blogs, software, music, video, etc. Let’s say you would like to spend $5 per month (minimum for Europeans is 2€). If you flattr just one thing, the owner will get a great portion of your 5$ (Flattr itself takes a little fee). If you flattr 50 things, every owner will get 1/50 = 10 cent. This does not seem to be much but all flattrs will add up.
In the past, I was just too lazy to donate something to open source projects or authors of great blogs and tutorials (like Tom Schindl, Lars Vogel and others). But now, I can easily recognize their work with just one click!
If you want to get more information about Flattr, just visit www.flattr.com and take a tour. If you like it, an account is created very quickly and easily.
If you provide something to the community, especially the Eclipse community, that others find helpful, you could get some recognition for your work by other Flattr users easily.
For example, if you are the owner of an open source project where you put effort in your spare time, just put it as “Software Thing” into Flattr, tag it, and put a Flattr button on the project web page (Shameless plug: I did this today with my Eclipse/OSGi related OSS projects MP3 Manager and Person Manager).
Or, if you blog, you could easily put Flattr buttons in or at the end of your blog. There are many plug-ins available for WordPress and probably other blogging systems.
In summery: I think Flattr is a great way to recognize people who provide helpful/interesting content and I am looking forward to flattring you if I like the content you provide.
BTW, if you like this blog post, you could flattr it: Just click on the Flattr button below in the original post (If you read this post from Planet Eclipse, just click on the post’s title to open the original post from my web site, then you should see a Flattr button at the end of this post).
Have Fun
Kai
Thanks for the post.
Indeed, micro-payment may be an interesting way to help and promote open source projects, and Flattr simplifies that way.