Re: Bounty for Bugs in Open Source Projects?

Adam Turoff wrote:
> 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).  

Not really, if it's a non-trivial bug or feature request that a
developer would charge $10,000 for, there's a high chance that none of
the users will have the time, even if they have the skill.

Bugs and features vary enormously from the sort that takes 5 minute to
the sort that takes several people months of full time work.

> 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.

It's not simply time-vs-money, because it's possible to pay $20 for
proprietary software with that amount of development work put in - for
the simple reason that proprietary software is sold to large numbers
of users and all the users get the exact same mix of bugs and
features.  The proprietary sales model consolidates the desires of
users, by offering many users something chosen by the developers,
instead of letting each useer request something tailored to their
unique wants.

In that case, people _do_ pay their $20 or so.  Example: VMware
Workstation (a proprietary program which emulates a PC at close to
native speed).  Lots of people wanted similar speed in Bochs (a free
program which is similar but much slower), and several developers
wanted to do the work and had the skill, but never had the time to do
it for nothing.  Meanwhile, VMware are making plenty of money because
people are willing to pay for that feature - even on GNU/Linux.

We're missing an opportunity here.

-- Jamie