A New Way To Fund Open Source Software Projects, Bug Fixes and Feature Requests 52
Lemeowski writes "Open source software projects are seeing some success on fundraising sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. But Warren Konkel believes open source software needs a better funding model that's more aligned with how software is built. So Konkel, who was the first hire at LivingSocial, teamed up with his friend David Rappo, a producer for games including Guitar Hero and Skylander, and founded Bountysource, a crowdfunding and bounty site specifically designed to help developers raise money for their OSS projects, bug fixes and feature requests. In this interview, Konkel talks about how he recently snagged a $1.1 million investment in Bountysource, gives developers tips on launching a fundraising effort for their OSS project, and more."
Tighter integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be cool to have bounty collection integrated with issue tracking, where after creating a new issue or finding that one that I need implemented I could put my money on having a resolution with just a couple of keystrokes.
Re:Tighter integration? (Score:5, Interesting)
Github, are you reading this? Go for it!
It would also make it legal to fund projects in Finland, where donations are illegal (without cumbersome permits etc). One can't give money without compensation like work, or product or service. But giving money for fixing issue would be legal.
Re: Tighter integration? (Score:1)
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Can you give a cite for that? It's hard to imagine any country deliberately banning all charity, especially one as enlightened as Finland.
Javascript needed (Score:4, Informative)
Inspirational webdesign makes me want to donate money.
Re:Javascript needed (Score:5, Funny)
You could put out a bounty for making the web site viewable without JavaScript. :-)
Re:Javascript needed (Score:5, Funny)
You could put out a bounty for making the web site viewable without JavaScript. :-)
No he can't. He doesn't have JavaScript enabled.
Re:Javascript needed (Score:5, Funny)
You could put out a bounty for making the web site viewable without JavaScript. :-)
No he can't. He doesn't have JavaScript enabled.
And obviously, he cannot enable it for that single website because that would be a crime against humanity.
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Hereby done for him: https://twitter.com/GNious/status/380362658752380928 [twitter.com] ....
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I'm throwing money at the screen, but nothing's happening.
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Could you enlighten the rest of us with what was it that turned you away from enabling javascript?
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-1 Offtopic. Yeah. Right. Sure. It's not like anyone else had the same problem or anything...
Slashdot...I tell you what...
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That's what some web "developers" don't get. By making their web page JavaScript only, they hide not only from users browsing without JavaScript, they also hide from search engines. Which rarely is intended.
It's pretty trivial to provide content that only search engine web crawlers can see whilst building a more interactive browsing experience using javascript.
One question for all those javascript-off-by-default peoples. Do you use video streaming sites like youtube, netflix, amazon instant video? If so, what makes you think they're any safer than wewillstealyouridentity.com? Their primary interest is making money, not providing a secure system for users to access safely...which means their admin passwords are
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I don't know why I'm replying to an AC, but I just hate to see illogical reasoning.
One question for all those javascript-off-by-default peoples. Do you use video streaming sites like youtube, netflix, amazon instant video? If so, what makes you think they're any safer than wewillstealyouridentity.com? Their primary interest is making money, not providing a secure system for users to access safely...which means their admin passwords are probably 8 characters or less...
"Their admin passwords"? You're saying that the only thing standing between me and full control of YouTube itself is an 8-character password?
What is wewillstealyouridentity.com supposed to represent?
You're conflating the use of JavaScript at all with giving personally-identifying information to random web sites.
You are being irrational.
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You think the only reason to disable JS is because of paranoia? How about BLOAT? How about 12 external scripts loading 15 more external scripts before the page will even finish loading? How about bloating memory usage from a few megs for a page to 50 megs because of all the JS? How about heating up my laptop and killing its battery life because of running JS in the background just so I can be a statistic on some graph?
Security is an issue with JS, but it's the least of my reasons for disabling it.
Synfig (Score:2)
The current synfig (2d vector animation software) crowdfunder has an option to influence development direction.
Absolutely nothing new about this (Score:2, Interesting)
OSS definitely needs to find a better way to get users to part with their cash to fix the bugs that actually take work to fix (instead of it just being "fun", like most less-mature OSS projec
Re:Absolutely nothing new about this (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunately, despite the name, it seems BountySource also supports fundraisers aka Kickstarter-style schemes aka "assurance contracts". We know from Kickstarter that this model can scale to very large investments, when the project leaders are credible and there are lots of people who want something done. Unfortunately Kickstarter has a very narrow focus, so it's really great to see someone step up and create a competitor focused on the open source world. If I didn't already have a job I'd definitely consider experimenting with funding myself this way.
Re:Absolutely nothing new about this (Score:4, Interesting)
Bounties have been tried over and over again with open source software. They don't work.
If this is the case, do you think that maybe it's simply a matter of visibility? How many people do you know (ie how many fecebook friends do you have) that would even be aware that some form of bounty-open source kit exists? Are the bounties something they will perceive as valuable? I'm guessing not.
You've got to make it attractive to aunt Suzy, and that's where the problem lies. Suzy doesn't really care about this stuff and so it never gets put under her nose. Do a promotional live cd as a reward. Have it play a promo video that's simple and mimics Google's ad motif while also touting the benefit of open source in general. Maybe offer some form of outstanding support as a reward.
If you're too specific with bounties, there's no greater incentive for someone to donate. Bundle your fixes up and try and fund it as a leap from 0.95 to 1.0. With all the version creep going on today, people might be inclined to see something go 1.0 (however arbitrary the version scheme actually is).
Re:Absolutely nothing new about this (Score:5, Insightful)
And who in their right mind is going to do that, when they could get paid to do something else?
This, pretty much. People who only do things for money will want as much money as they can get.
People who are doing it for love don't really care about the money.
This is just another bunch of leechy entrepreneurs wanting something they can collect an eternal cut from.
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Bounties have been tried over and over again with open source software. They don't work. You end up getting like five people chipping in $10 to try to solve some problem that would take a team of engineers a week to solve. And who in their right mind is going to do that, when they could get paid to do something else?
Fundamental problem: People start OSS projects because they think it's a cool idea or they want to use it when it's done. Not to get paid. (If you start an OSS project to get paid, then your project has already failed.) Finding a way to fund the development is nice but these projects are started by people who already are paid to do something else.
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Too many crowdfunding sites. (Score:2)
Hmm, there are too many crowd funding sites. :(
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1 privately owned company should have an exclusive monopoly on how crowdfunding should work, what the fees should be, how payments are made and what projects are suitable. Any project that dares uses a different crowdfunding site should be ridiculed for being different.
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Competition produces inefficiency, as efforts are duplicated and people work to destroy each other rather than cooperate to produce the best possible set of options.
Of course, 1 privately owned company should not have a monopoly on anything, whether it's called a corporation (as in the US) or a government (as in the USSR).
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Well there are two big sites most people have heard of. Kickstarter seems to have been verbed (verbing weirds language, mind you), but relatively popular and used in contexts where the crowdfunding site is NOT kickstarter.
The other one is Indiegogo.
They have their pluses and minuses. For Indiegogo, a plus can be a project doesn't have to reach i
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I used a GPB paypal account to pledge to the USD ubuntu edge indiegogo, and was refunded the exact amount in GBP that i pledged. no fee was taken.
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I think the problem is more on my side, there are too many to keep up with.
Bounty Source is over 7 Years Old (Score:3, Informative)
Looking at my e-mail archives, I've had an account on BountySource since September 2006. It isn't new.
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History is the propaganda of the salesman.
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They quit in 2008, and restarted recently.
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Reminds me of an old Dilbert strip (Score:3, Funny)
Bug fixes (Score:2)
Don't agree with the bug fixes bit, but feature requests seem fair enough...
If you get people to pay for bug fixes, then people will intentionally write buggy code. Also if i paid for a feature request, i would be very unhappy to be given a buggy implementation of that feature and then asked to pay again for bug fixes.
Similarly while a developer who's developing code for their own use, they have an incentive to fix bugs that affect their own use, but they have no direct incentive to fix features developed f
This again? (Score:2)
Ugh, again? Seems like every two months there's another "revolutionary" company that wants to bring bounties to open source. And every time they have to learn the hard way that bounties are a TERRIBLE way to do software development.
Can someone please just write a big, heavy book about how stupid this bounty idea is so that next time some moron suggests it we have something to hit them with?
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A cynical person might think that BountySource exists to make the owners a 10% non-refundable commission on top of every amount of money that changes hands and whatever they can make selling accumulated data to Twitter, Facebook and GitHub and others. They do not give a tinker's cuss whether it is an effective way to do anything except that.
This cynical person might think that if he could see anything at all on their web site.
Attracting devs to abandoned projects (Score:2)
This could be a (partial) answer to sunday's Ask Slashdot [slashdot.org] question, "Attracting Developers To Abandonware?":