After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn

MikeCapone writes "Slashdot had an article about the GNOME bounties a few days ago, but now, thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation (created by Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who went into the ISS as a Soyuz cosmonaut a couple of years ago), the Mozilla project also has some monetary incentives. The budget for 2004 is USD$100,000."

Comments

Independent Contractors?

[FortKnox]

Why not just hire contractors to do this if you have the cash? That way you have a better timeframe and knowledge of how the job is done, instead of waiting on a contest with no idea what will be done and what won't be done?

Re:Independent Contractors?

[Saint Stephen]

Dude, this is like so little cash. This is roughly the salary of one person for a year. In exchange for that, you get hundreds of worker bees.

Re:Independent Contractors?

[Stile 65]

$100K for a year will hire maybe two contractors or one really good contractor. Contractors don't usually charge per task, either, but per hour - so you don't have any guarantee this way that the code will be done either.

Re:Independent Contractors?

[Anthracks]

Unless it's a contractor who is already intimately familiar with the Mozilla codebase, you'd be paying for all the time learning it. Depending on the component you're hacking on, there's some hairy stuff in there :). You're paying for the work that got done, not that plus the time the contractor spent learning and messing up before coming up with a workable result.

I am still waiting

[mental_telepathy]

for a good tool for combining people who want to same software and are willing to pay. Like sourceforge and paypal rolled into one.
My dream software - a decent open source fantasy sports dollar based draft solution. And I know I'm no the only one.

Re:My Mozilla bounty

[Ianoo]

I don't think per-site patches are any way to fix a site with bad HTML and JavaScript. Mozilla follows the standards, adding a custom patch just for hotmail.com would be a bit silly. Before long we'd have a patch for every non-conformant site on the Internet.

Re:My Mozilla bounty

[Boing]

I don't think per-site patches are any way to fix a site with bad HTML and JavaScript

No, the problem is not hotmail, it's that the "one browser window" idea that tabs were supposed to make possible is not possible with respect to javascript-created windows. That has nothing to do with standards conformance, since "tabs" in themselves are not part of any web standard. They're just an adaptation of the "window" model into a better organizational system.

Re:Cevelopers vs Contributers

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. I can't believe I so failed to make my point. The one project I developed was done as a hobby, but all the other work was done as part of my job. So I don't agree that the community is largely hobbiest, unless you ignore most of the community.

Re:Python

[An Anonymous Hero]

"I don't see how Python would benefit everyone."

Well it's this guy's bounty, not yours, is it? And he most clearly explains the benefit he sees:

Many of my favourite tools are already scriptable in Python. (...) This would accelerate the learning curve of someone who has already learned to script one app in Python, when they try to learn to script another.

"It should handle not only Python, but also (etc.)"

And the word "should" should only be used to prescribe what oneself, not others, "should" be doing.

Re:Alright!

[Evil Pete]

I know this might seem like an obvious thing to say but looking at the guy's website don't you think he has the coolest job ? I mean here he has been in space, does lots of python, has lots of money to support open source and interest in it and has some nice ideas.

Apart from that the money incentive is fun. I mean I remember years back working on posed magazine programming problems that had nominal cash rewards ... but the race and the reward were so appealling I put lots of effort into it. $50 is plenty to get this kind of interest.

Re:And it scales even better...

[pavon]

This is an interesting idea, one that I hadn't thought of. I am glad that additional methods of paying developers is becomming popular. But it does have it's problems.

With headhunter bounties 'success' is easy to measure - did they bring person in, and is he alive if required. Software is not so easy. Often times Linus and other maintainers will turn down patches because they are ugly, even though they work. The reason for this is that clean code saves more time in the long run than you would save banging something together quickly. However with software bounties people would be inticed to bang something together quickly so they can submit it before anyone else. Then the poor maintainers are stuck having to make the subjective decision of wether it is worth the bounty. Concidering how much strife has been caused by disagreements on code with nothing on the line but ego, imagine what could happen when money enters the equation.

Another way to get the same effect is if the bounty holder just paid one of the current developers, who has proven himself, to write the code. Alot of people already do this - and while it may not have the romance of bounties, it does have the added benifits of less conflict and knowing that you have a paycheck coming for the work you are doing.

Still bounties are a cool idea if for nothing other than the romantic aspects. I could see a bounty being the deciding factor between "I might get around to contributing a patch to them someday" to "cool, I'll get on that tonight". I could also see it being the deciding factor between "I'll donate money to that project someday" to "Argh I hate this bug, I'm putting up a bounty". It would certainly add some spice as long as people treated it as fun and didn't get too bent out of shape.

Re:Here is a suggestion...

[otrebmuh]

This is already possible in Mozilla/Firebird...there is a property browser.block.target_new_window or something...I love this feature!!

Re:Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be flamebait. But why would be put a bounty on putting Python everywhere?

Because he's a Python user and fan, and it's his money.

I would personally advocate the attentions be placed towards better financial management software or to focus on Evolution to make it faster, lighter, and leaner.

Fine. Open your wallet and then we'll see what happens. Or start writing your own code...

Don't forget international developers

[original_nick]

A few in this thread have mentioned a few times that the total amount offered for bounties is barely a salary for a good developer. Two points to remember - chasing bounties isn't necessarily to be a lucrative bounty, it's more about providing some motivation to the guys who were going to do this anyway; secondly, don't assume that the best developers for the job are American - Mark comes from South Africa where US$100k would hire quite a few world-class developers (not that he is hiring teams).

Re:Alright!

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I know this might seem like an obvious thing to say but looking at the guy's website don't you think he has the coolest job ? I mean here he has been in space, does lots of python, has lots of money to support open source and interest in it and has some nice ideas.

Most people are nothing more than economic slaves under capitalism. The best one can do is to free themselves. Mark Shuttleworth has freed himself :) It's time for the rest of us to do so...

Once you have freed yourself, you can do whatever the hell you want. Going to space is overrated (no, I'm not jealous :) ) but there are a ton of other things that are just as cool.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Interesting Idea..

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I used to be an open source advocate until I realized how unemployable I really was. Meanwhile, I see countless job listings for the latest Microsoft technology. .NET sucks, but it pays the bills. Linux and other F/OSS is fine for at home where the budget it thin or as a hobby toy. It was a fun journey, but now it's time to get back to the real world.

I've been pondering the impact of OSS on employees for a while. I don't think there is anything concrete to go either way. You may be right; or you may be wrong. I don't know right now. NO one has done a thorough study (at least one I've seen).

I do know one thing though. Your example is irrelevant. Just because there are a ton of jobs in proprietary technologies doesn't mean OSS is bad for workers. The reason there are a lot of jobs in the proprietary field is because that was--and is--the dominant market. OSS is new so your observation is meaningless. Even the successful stories in OSS (say openoffice, mozilla, linux, etc) are pretty new.

Your original thesis (OSS negatively impacts workers) remains to be proven.

All I can say is that OSS SHRINKS the size of the market. I remember the Red Hat CEO saying that his goal is to convert something like a $10billion market into a $1billion market (I don't remember the exact numbers; I just made them up). This happens because of free labour. The question then is, is this good or bad?

Since we live under capitalism, we need to get a capitalist to answer this. Some of them claim OSS is communist (it's actually a cross between anarchism and socialism but let's not get into that) and we can ignore these. How about others? What do other capitalists think? I'm not sure. The typical capitalist argument is that lower costs are GOOD because your businesses, consumers, etc are more efficient, save more, etc (this is basically the argument in favour of free trade and outsourcing). I'm not sure if that reasoning is applicable here...

Sivaram Velauthapillai