I don't know. I find gittip's model mostly rewards popular coders.
Where as tip4commit, rewards are not influence by popularity. I do see how fluff pulls could drain the pool. One needs to ask: Is changing a typo worth $4 dollars? Is it worth my time to do it? Maybe I should just click that merge button.
In my opinion bountysource is the best reward system, as it gives context, popularity is a boon, and it shouldn't generate fluff.
Gittip is certainly going to help more popular coders at first. But that's true with any platform in its early growth phase.
When Gittip is more well-established, anyone who wants to should be able to put a "Gittip button" on their project page. When Gittip itself has more name recognition, an unknown coder who creates a widely-used project should be able to rapidly pick up meaningful support through Gittip.
Not only that, Gittip's project pages allow funds to be distributed to the entire team. So even if you're not well-known, if your project is, you can still get some.
Where as tip4commit, rewards are not influence by popularity. I do see how fluff pulls could drain the pool. One needs to ask: Is changing a typo worth $4 dollars? Is it worth my time to do it? Maybe I should just click that merge button.
In my opinion bountysource is the best reward system, as it gives context, popularity is a boon, and it shouldn't generate fluff.
Just my two cents.