OSS Projects Offer Bounties For Features 261
jtowndot writes "The market for open source developers seems to be heating up. Asterisk, Gnome, Horde, and Mozilla all have bounties for desired features. Recently, Lime Wire updated its wish list to include bounties on open source development work! Similarly, i2p also released a bounty list. Is it time to consider quitting my day job to do open source development full time?"
WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:5, Funny)
"We got the Feature. He's holed up over on the South side of the partition. Better bring your compiler."
Re:WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:5, Funny)
The quicker picker-upper? Captain Bligh?
Re:WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:4, Funny)
Boba Fett: He's no good to me non complient.
Darth Vader: He will not be permanently proprietery.
Re:WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:3, Funny)
The CEO in a row boat.
Re:WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:2, Funny)
Some times you feel like a nut... (Score:3, Funny)
...some times you don't.
For those of you who don't get this, it's a reference to an old TV commercial for Bounty/Mounds chocolate candy.
Re:Some times you feel like a nut... (Score:2, Insightful)
-9mm-
Pulp Fiction (Score:2)
Vincent: How many up there?
Jules: Three or four.
Vincent: That's countin' our ap?
Jules: Not sure.
Vincent: So that means there could be up to five aps up there?
Jules: It's possible.
Vincent: We should have fuckin' shotguns.
Re:WANTED: Dead or Alive (Score:3, Funny)
you forgot mark shuttleworths... (Score:5, Informative)
Not going to quit mine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of the projects offer very little money for what they require.
What is needed is a bounty system that users could pay into easily so the bounty could grow over time.
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Interesting)
This would keep the severe problems at a higher dollar value than all but the most popular of feature requests...
Justin Dubs
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:5, Funny)
I'll give you $50 to do that.
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:2)
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Informative)
Ask and ye shall receive... [dropcash.com]
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:3, Interesting)
Users love this idea, but FLOSS developers generally hate it. I develop my project for fun in my spare time; I don't want users dictating what I must do with my project. Don't get me wrong; I love getting ideas from users, and more often than not, I implement them. I like my hobby, I don't want it to be a job.
Anyway, there was a huge thread [kde.org] on kde-devel on this very topic a few weeks ago, in case you
Public Software Fund? (Score:3, Informative)
-russ
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like a perpetual bug creating system to me.
I might understand bounties for particularily tough programming challenges, but not for everyday bugs.
Besides, once a price is set for open source coding, who's going to do it for free anymore?
Paying money for everyday OS coding is switching the carrot, which has dire consequences.
Open source works because the people who code do so, because the want to. Put a price tag on that and it does weird things to peoples brains. Basically, it changes the game.
There was a psyc study about this kind of thing I think it was paying for grades or something, and the students lost interest once they figured out that it wasn't worth their while monetarily-wise and they stopped caring.
When I volunteer for something, often times I find myself working harder and with more dedication than at work. I think the same thing happens with OS.
Hey but it sounds like an awesome idea to kill off open source and it's ideals once and for all!
Bad idea, all around.
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:2)
You care to flesh that out a bit more? I got your point until you threw that little buttnugget out. Here is a practice version:
"As an added bonus, by not allowing [Office] to be written by programmers actively working for [Sun], you wouldn't have to worry about it being full of 'stolen IP'!"
Why would Sun want to steal code from
Slut!!! (Score:2, Funny)
On the flip side (Score:2)
But it could be a nice bit of money for a student or someone just interested in the codebase and a good learning experience. I always find I learn a lot better if I'm trying to accomplish something in code rather than just browsing. That's part of the reason code reviews don't work as well as they should.
Re:Not going to quit mine (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like OSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Looks like OSS (Score:2)
Agreed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Agreed (Score:2)
Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
You are free not to accept it, keep it as memorabilia, or donate it to charity, as many have done in the past. People who found flaws in Knuth's books kept their $2 checks as a token of their work, rather than cashing it in.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
OSS bounties are not supposed to feed you, they're supposed to be a gift-reward for your "free" work on OSS projects.
wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] has had "open bounties" (anyone can set a bounty for a feature or an implementation) for quite a long time now BTW
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Professional? I figured this was aiming to get some work out of high school or college students who could use it as a way to earn cash on the side and possibly credit.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise, some kid right out of school would have done it already.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
What can I say to someone who misspells the word "genius?" Some of these projects are difficult, but many are just not cool or high profile enough to attract coders. Some of these projects will doubtless provide beer money for college students who otherwise may or may not have contributed to a project. They are a nice bonus for people who contribute to areas that really
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
In a word, yes. Most clients I have tried to pick up on the side have balked at what custom software REALLY costs in terms of labor and time.
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
"Sure i'll pay you $50/hr. 100 hours?!?!? I can just keep doing it in excel for that..."
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
While not similar work, I find this all the time in the graphic design field. You find a lot of people who ask for a "custom logo for my new website" and will pay paltry sums ($20, $200) when the real value of a logo (or a good designer's time) is worth a lot more than that.
I would imagine that putting low bounties on something is going to backfire. To someone who earns a living doing task X, spending 20 hours of their time helping out on OSS Project Y is going to be just difficult whether or not you pay. These projects need to un-monetize the incentives. Offering $100 for something that takes a lot of hours isn't going to be a big draw.
Of course, the bigger the project the less of a monetary incentive might be necessary. Ask me to create a logo for your company and get paid $50, I'll pass. Ask me to do the next logo for Firefox 1.5, and I don't need $50, I'll do it for free. (Note I am not comparing my work to Burka & Desroches, or saying the logo needs a replacement, just using Firefox as an example).
Of course, even with an OSS project, you can use free market concepts. The "price" of your product is people's time and resources as they download & learn your product. If you have informed a good number of people about your product and they are not willing to give their time to learn it, it may be because something better already exists. That's one reason why someone's new CD ripper project may not be that popular, or why your Java tetris clone is not being downloaded. It's not really "needed". Or at least, not yet.
I really don't mean to troll or flame, and I don't see a problem with people getting together on something for the sake of learning and/or collaborating. But before your five team members pool together $500 to take your project to the next level, take some time to consider if it is really realyl worth it.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Pro bono law work revolves around this: the hours the lawyers _don't_ bill are worth plenty plenty to the firm, but if the pro bono lawyer billed at rate the client could afford (e.g. $50/hour) the whole thing would be a loss to the firm. If you get down to token, "frame and put on your wall" or "have a nice dinner on us" amounts, then it's still perceived as essentially volunteer work. $50 bucks sounds ot me like you'll get something like:
a) a college student of unknown quality and follow-thru
b) an enterprising Indian or Chinese coder for whom the value of $50 is different.
c) somebody desperate or out of work
Note that Mark Shuttleworth is offering small but legitimate money for specs ($500), and real money for implementation (~$10000, and he's in S. Africa, ain't he?).
It's nice to think that you can have a range of incentives, but the reality is that you have to be very, very careful mixing volunteer work with paid work, or people start wondering what your motivations are.
As for LimeWire going in for this kind of work, it reinforces my impression that they don't have a clear business model. Hiring out for a couple hundred bucks (and no spec!) at a time for some bag o' features says to me that the plan is "let's make something really cool and it will sell itself", which is almost always a recipe for bankruptcy, and doubly so in a sector with an established track record of nobody making money on cool things that have already been invented.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is everybody complaining about the rates? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kjella
It's nice, but (Score:2)
If you can afford the time, help the projects out and, politely, refuse the reward. If you're hard-pressed for cash and have the skills to provide them a solution... yo
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that sounds like one of the more reasonable requests. I could probably whip out a web frontend over the weekend. The real issue is the lack of info. What criteria have to be met in order to accomplish the goal? Would I end up wasting about 30 hours of my time to build a GUI, only to be told I won't be paid because it's missing sub-feature X? They need to have something more concrete than "Build a web fro
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there any special rules? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are there any special rules? (Score:2)
Fast Food Industry Not Working Out For You? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't quit your day job yet.
Re:Fast Food Industry Not Working Out For You? (Score:2)
Re:Fast Food Industry Not Working Out For You? (Score:2)
I will offer $5,000 for the first person to build me a full scale fully functional DeathStar. I don't have the time or expertise to tell you how to do this so just watch SW and figure it out. To claim this bounty please deliver said DeathStar to low-earth orbit. BTW, I will also need a ride up there as my space cruiser is in the shop. I would like this no later than the end of this year.
If you accept this bounty but fail to deliver on time, I will use the power
Re:Fast Food Industry Not Working Out For You? (Score:2)
So not trying to be an ass here, but I'd still think fastfood may be the way
And by doing so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a smart move.
Bounties & 'Scratching an Itch' (Score:5, Insightful)
In some cases at least, it seems as if these bounties are used to deal with the relative lack-of-glamour inherent in implementing some features in pieces of OSS. For the most part, its the cool hacks and features that people need individually that grab attention and get worked on. Bounties seem to redress that balance of developer attention towards less glamourous but key pieces of functionality & improvements which aren't imminently required. (although for the most part, it seems like a different class of hackers are attracted to the bounties within projects)
Of course, putting money into OSS through these kind of means is a great use, since similar amounts spent on commercial products has a minimal/neglible effect on their development. Its also a great way for those people who cant code to contribute to the software they use, and get features they'd like to see implemented.
Re:Bounties & 'Scratching an Itch' (Score:5, Insightful)
And I am not talking only about Help Files, I am talking about Analysis and Design documents (anyone care to say what is the average of the OSS projects that have a reasonably good Requirments Document Specification or Design Specification Document.
As a software engineer I know those are one of the things programmers really do not like to do... but they are really necessary and helpful.
Well, Money talks (Score:2)
There's probably a few things on there that someone could bang out in a weekend. The cash might me the needed incentive.
Although I wonder how long the project list has sat open. Maybe none of the projects were getting finished because of the lack of incentive.
Re:Well, Money talks (Score:2)
Search for quoted phrases, for instance "LimeWire Rocks" would find only results with "LimeWire Rocks" and not find "LimeWire on the Rocks"
My coding is limited to things like PHP and ASP, but this sort of search feature is a pretty common thing and not hard to implement in web scripting at least.
Not trolling, just asking.
reasonable bounties (Score:2)
I certainly don't mean that any coder should quit his day job and only work for OSS bounties. The work isn't realiable or regular. And probably the amount he'll make, on a $/hour basis, is not as much as he could make in a normal job or
Re:reasonable bounties (Score:2)
Sorry at $500 a bounty you would have to do two a week to make "reasonable" money.
These might be good for a high school or college student that would like to do it anyway.
Not that I think this is a bad idea. It is more of a gift than a paycheck.
This is the future of software development. (Score:3, Interesting)
In a way consumers have always been able to vote on features in a natural selection sort of way (lousy software dies off, the best stuff gets a year or letters next to the title). But this allows much more direct feedback while still allowing the project leaders to control what direction the software is developed in.
Additionally, it will perhaps put egos in check to see what users want and to be able to say you're giving them what they pay for, instead of getting upset when they feel they have a legitimate gripe about bugs in a free product and you feel they should be thankful for what they've got already (video game emulation community?)
And on top of that maybe it would allow even stronger claims to be made if a company violates your licence -- those users aren't paying for features to be appropriated by someone who's going to steal work and close the source.
Make sure you agree to what is wanted! (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope they coordinate the work. (Score:5, Insightful)
A bounty program is great. But if it creates a thousand independent bolt-on features, it will suck. Perhaps some high-level architect in each project can create some stub classes or documentation that define exactly what the bounty-earning feature must do and how it should conform to a set of UI guidelines.
Re:I hope they coordinate the work. (Score:2, Funny)
As opposed to Open Source, where consistency between applications is very poor and each feature seems to have its own UI logic, limitations and behavior.
Bounties Always for Adding Features (Score:5, Insightful)
Tasks like removing dead code, simplifying existing code, etc are tasks that the commercial world seldom does with its software ("if it ain't broke...") but it's something that keeps open source code maintainable. It might be a good idea to set up some of these bounties in terms of rewards, such that projects could once a year give something to people who not only added features to a project, but who improved the quality of a project. The bounties going out now are great, but expanding them to support quality and innovation would be really, really great.
Re:Bounties Always for Adding Features (Score:2)
Projects have to accept code though (Score:2)
Because It Makes Economic Sense For The Sponsors (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because It Makes Economic Sense For The Sponsor (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have to disagree wi
How about a pledge drive instead of a bounty? (Score:2)
I'm thinking of a pledge drive where I put my credit card down for the pledge and when enough money is pledged, all the pending pledges are "fulfilled" (to use the commercial sales nomenclature).
A pledge drive like this has the benefit making me more likely to pledge, since I know my money will
Re:How about a pledge drive instead of a bounty? (Score:2)
Nlnet recently dropped 70 grand on the Perl Foundation for work on Parrot.
I don't think paying for individual features is really what you want. If the developer didn't have it in their roadmap, chances are the app wasn't design
First come, first claim? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm assuming this is an attempt to speed development of some features, nothing more
A Few Questions About This (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) How do the taxes on these "bounties" work out? Are you considered an independent contractor with your own 1199, or do payroll taxes kick in?
(2) Can CS grads who can't find jobs now use open source projects as a basis of experience, and can they not put the experience on their resume? Before, saying "I helped program XYZ chunk of Firefox" didn't really seem to mean too much on a resume, since there was no one over there you could ask to verify this. But now, if someone over there is willing to pay you cash, is there now a paper trail involved? i.e.: Can you now put down ABC's name on your resume as a reference if his payroll office paid you to build that XYZ chunk of Firefox? If you now could, this option could definitely help a lot of the unemployed CS people gain valuable experience.
Granted, I may not know what I'm talking about, but I'm just wondering. A lot.
Re:A Few Questions About This (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A Few Questions About This (Score:2)
How hard do you feel like working?? (Score:2)
The answer is obviously: Depends how many of those damn bounties you intend to earn!
Seriously, don't let us talk you out of it. If you can pay your mortgage with bug/feature bounties, then millions of people will surely thank you.
Freenet style (Score:2)
Wanted Poster (Score:2, Funny)
Wanted Dead Or Alive
Fugitive Name: Clippy
Bounty: $10,000
Details: For causing the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was a period of er, depression, among PC users. Clippy was known to smirk and annoy users who required genuine help. Many of the victims suffered brain damage and voted for George W. Bush. Clippy is known to travel naked and was last seen on Microsoft Windows (see Bill Gates wanted poster).
Along the same lines with MythTv (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Along the same lines with MythTv (Score:3, Interesting)
The bounty system isn't in place yet, but I'm personally looking forward to it. It'll let me make a little extra money on projects I already invest a lot of my time in, as well as hopefully bring in more help for those things I won't have time/desi
Missing the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me the biggest lacking in OSS is not the featureset, it is the usability of that featureset. Take gimp for example. It's an excellent image editor. It has every feature I need. And yet I keep getting drawn back to photoshop when I need to get real work done, because gimp is such a PITA to use (less so than it used to be admittedly, but still not anywhere near what it could be).
This pattern for me is repeated over and over in almost all OSS projects. The few open source products I use on a daily basis and like are all centrally designed, with one person, or a few people, dictating the entire user-visible interface, like with firefox.
The total lack of usability progress in the vast majority of OSS projects is what made me give up on linux on the desktop. Yeah, it's fine to tinker, and yes, it does anything you need. But to get real work done it just gets in my way.
I don't mean to flame-bait, but that's my honest opinion. And I think if someone really wants to promote open source software, they are better off investing their resources in convincing projects to appoint design czars who have absolute control over the user-visible part of the software. Even a poorly done single-person design is still better than a methodically executed design by committee. These bounties for me are missing the point, and won't really matter in the end.
Anyway, imho ofcourse.
Re:Missing the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
However, things are stumbling along torwards better usability. I find Mepis linux very usable, partly because KDE is _nothing_ like it was a couple of years ago. So I would say there is hope.
I think part of it is because usability requires a large amount of "grunt programming" that is a lot of work and takes a while to get done. And there is not a
contradiction? (Score:2)
Isn't the idea of a bounty perfectly consistent with the points you make or imply:
1. The UI needs improvement.
2. I {can't be bothered}/{don't know how} to improve it myself.
One obvious response: Offer an incentive to make the necessary improvements: A bounty! Seems like you're describing the premise and failing to see a fitting solution.
You also omit mention of the massive neg
Re:Missing the point? (Score:2)
When creating software, you basically have two choices:
1) implement all the features, and worry about bugs, usability, etc later; or
2) implement a subset of features, but get them perfect before moving on to add new features
My experience is that 1) is more common than 2), but that 2) generally results in better software.
This seems like a good idea for these companies (Score:2, Insightful)
to answer your question (Score:5, Funny)
One word.....YES!
On a totally unrelated note, could you please provide me with the contact info for your company's hiring manager?
xbmc project offers $1800+ for dvd menu support (Score:2)
Oct. 29 2004,16:31 (Post by Gamester17)
Donations for DVD-menu in XBMC campaign
We have had this idea in mind for a while and were planning to kick of this campaign at a later date but after a recent post in mplayer-dev mailing-list we have decided to bring forward the announcement. The 'donations for DVD-menu in XBMC campaign' basic concept is to encourage XBMC end-users to make donations (via PayPal) into a fund in order to motivate the XBMC developers to prioritize programming DVD-Video menu/navigation
Features for GNOME = KDE (Score:2)
It already exists. It is called KDE.
Check out http://fundable.org ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This really is one of the most interesting things I've seen developed on the 'net in a long, long time.
It has, of course, heaps of utility beyond just funding development of pet projects...
Public Software Fund! (Score:3, Informative)
-russ
A real language (Score:2)
Re:time to make me some money! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Its more a nice congratulatory thing rather than something you do to pay your way
Also come to think about it , in some parts of the world these rewards are a rather hefty insentive
Re:No (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:Just to be clear (Score:2)
Well, I guess that the completed work will be reviewed by the paying party before accepting the work and paying the bounty. Besides, I think that the motivation to do a good work is equally high or even a bit higher than just contributing to an open source project without receiving any monetary compensation.
I think that this is a great way to reward voluntary work, which will benefit open source projects.