Re: Bounty for Bugs in Open Source Projects?

On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 04:30:24PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Users don't want to pay a developer $10k for what may be 3 months
> work.  They want to pay $20, with 499 other users doing the same.
> 
> But on the old bounty sites, I remember seeing things like $50 dollars
> offered for writing a modem driver that might take a month or several
> months to do properly (with testing etc.) - unfortunately, without the
> necessary 100s of other users offering the same amount for the same task.

This is the root of another faulty assumption with bug bounties.

Since one user won't spend $10,000 to fix a single bug, the middleman
needs to find 500 users paying $20 each; bugs get fixed, developers
get paid, everyone is happy.

But if 500 users want to fix a single bug, chances are pretty good that 
someone will just scratch that itch (or at least the itchiest part of
that itch).  

If only one user wants a single bug fixed, it'll probably cost ~$10,000
to get a developer to fix it.  At that point, the user is probably
better off contracting directly with a developer instead of going
through a middleman who adds little to no value in the process.

It's the old time-vs-money issue.  If it really matters to you to fix a
bug, you'll pay.  If it's only worth $20, you're better off waiting, or
finding a different solution entirely.

-- Adam