alt Hacker NewsThis is an evergreen internet comment right here. Condescendingly proclaiming "This problem could be easily solved by [significantly worse solution that had 1/10th the thought put into it as the actual solution by people with a stake in actually solving the problem rather than making quippy armchair comments]".
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I know it's against convention to comment on downvotes, but really? Really? This is controversial? The OP came up with an elegant solution that cleanly solved their problem without subjecting contributors to anything more than a captcha. Then somebody comes along and says "oh, it's so easy, just charge $10". You're going to set up payment infrastructure, incur administrative overhead with human support managing refunds, and deter 99% of actual humans from contributing, and then call that the easy solution that OP is so stupid for not thinking of first? Give me a fucking break. This site really is just Reddit-lite, anyone who thinks about engineering problems seriously would realise this does not stand up as anything beyond a pithy internet solution with three seconds of thought into what actually implementing it would entail.
Github already has the payment infrastructure.
Polar.sh is already doing things that are a lot more complex in this space.
If you are in a civilized country which allow direct payments (i.e, anything but North American nowadays) and you don't want to deal with Github or any external system, there is always good old "make a M-PESA/SEPA/Pix/UPI transfer to account XYZ")
> the thought put into it as the actual solution by people with a stake in actually solving the problem
Let me flip your argument: think of how much time and thought is poured into problems like this one by people who don't even try to implement a Pfand system beforehand.