I just came across bountysource.com, that uses the (currently disabled) github issues tracker to list issues and allows people to pay $X as a bounty for an issue to be solved. Then an interested developer can either accept the bounty or set a target amount for interested funders to reach. Here’s the automatically created page for Discourse - Bountysource (It seems that the issues that were still open when the issue tracker was disabled are still there and maybe should be deleted?).
I’m wondering what @codinghorror, @sam, @eviltrout etc think of using this website for issues that are “blessed” by the development team, like the ones in the “Features / Spec” category? (I’m not sure if there’s a way to allow just discourse github collaborators to post issues on the github issue tracker? That might be a good place for the “Features / Spec” issues only if that is possible.
Other bounties can be added manually without having them be in the github issue tracker it looks like too. So it would be possible for anyone to add a bounty even if it wasn’t “blessed” by the dev team.
I think it’s good because all the bounties will be open sourced, and I think there are some smart developers here (not me, lol) that are looking for ways to make some money from their interest in Discourse.
PS - I know I’d chip in to see a few features added, eg: having your Facebook profile picture automatically become your Avatar in Discourse if you login/signup with Facebook - anyone??
If people want to approach and sponsor features (these would be fairly large sponsorships, think $5k minimum), I think there should be a dialog about it here first.
I have seen bounties in the crypto - currency space called quite often…the mercenary coder met the basic criteria claimed his prize and bolted. Later the devs, ready to expand or build out something had to go back and rewrite the code as it was un-maintainable crap.
This post is by a guy named Warren he is the full time dev for Litecoin.
You can do it, we do it on Stack Exchange, it just takes a very specific set of circumstances with tight and well thought out rules – and crucially no money was exchanged.
I actually love an idea like this to acclerate feature development on Discourse.
Perhaps this is something the users can drive by identifying features like “advertising plugin” with a specification - and put it onto some sort of reverse crowdfunding site.
I don’t know if this exists - but what would be ideal is if one of us ( i.e. a forum manager) could put up a request/feature spec and say that they’d pay X$ for it. Then a developer could respond by saying he or she would do it for a total of $Y - and then when you get a critical number of user’s willing to pay each $X so that the total is $Y - the developer builds it.
For example - I’d pay $300 for this advertising spec: (and if you get a developer to bid on this project for say $10,000 - you’d need something like 30 people to get it moving.
So - what i’m imagining is a user-driven Kickstarter like site where we could request developers to “BID” on a new feature request and we say how much we’re willing to pay - then we recruit other forum managers here to help fund it. I would love this type of thing.
