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Bribe Devs To Improve Open Source Software

Posted by Unknown on from the five-cents-for-two-years-of-work dept.

mikejuk writes "Bribe.io announces itself as: 'A super easy way to bribe developers to fix bugs and add features in the software you're using.' Recognizing the fact that a lot of open source projects are maintained by developers working alone and in their spare time, the idea is to encourage other developers to by specifying a monetary value to a bug report or feature enhancement. Once an initial 'Bribe' has been posted others can 'chip in' and add to the financial incentive."

9 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. not a bribe by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's not a bribe, it's a contract. how is this news?

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  2. What a great name! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "bribe |brb| verb
    persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement"

    I bet they really thought that one out. As a professional developer myself, the last thing I would want is someone googling my name and seeing that I "accept bribes" or something stupid. Given how HR departments work these days, they probably wouldn't even bother going to the website to see what it's actually about, and your resume would go into the trash can without a second look.

    Of all the words they could have picked, they went with the one that is associated with illegitimacy or dishonesty. Talk about a Web 2.0 fail.

  3. Appealing to the inner pirate ... by perpenso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's not a bribe, it's a contract. how is this news?

    Its not news its marketing. Open source hobbyist devs are too rebellious to go for contracts, bribes are more appealing to their inner pirate. ;-) Its a way to make minimum wage pay for software development sound cool.

    1. Re:Appealing to the inner pirate ... by Vintermann · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In that case, wouldn't "ransom" or "bounty" have been better? There have been projects like this before. As I recall, there was even one before Kickstarter came and made everyone talk about "crowdfunding" - but it didn't catch on.

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    2. Re:Appealing to the inner pirate ... by perpenso · · Score: 4, Funny

      Have you picked out a color for that minivan yet? :-)

    3. Re:Appealing to the inner pirate ... by Lennie · · Score: 4, Informative

      Obviously, many services already exists which provide bounties for open source development:
      https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+bounty

      So really, from first glance this doesn't sound new in any way.

      The writer of the article thinks the 'voting system' (multiple people pledge to pay for a feature/bugfix) is a novel idea though. I've not looked at the others, it might be.

      Sounds a bit like kickstarter as well.

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      New things are always on the horizon
    4. Re:Appealing to the inner pirate ... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In other news, people who think bribery is cool are small-minded morons. Case in point:

      "One of the things I have always found troubling about Westerners doing business in emerging market countries is that they sometimes take an almost perverse pride in discussing payoffs to government officials. It is as though their having paid a bribe is a symbol of their international sophistication and insider knowledge. Yet, countless times when I am told of the bribe, I know the very same thing could almost certainly have been accomplished without a bribe."
      --Dan Harris, chinalawblog.com

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      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. In the rest of the world... by Reeses · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that's called issuing a paycheck.

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    Reeses
  5. The problem this has always had in the past... by tlambert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem this has always had in the past is that what people want to pay for is generally not actually a bug, it's editorial control over some aspect of the product which they dislike. This may or may not have an impact on "fitness for purpose" of the person who is willing to supply the "bribe".

    A good example of this is the lack of Cairo back end rendering support in xpdf, which will only get included over the primary maintainers dead body, according to at least 3 GNATS database bug reports by third parties who would desperately like to see Cairo support, and have even provided code to implement it.

    Only they are not SO desperate for this support that they are willing to fork the project and shoulder the same burdens shouldered by the current maintainer. So it seems they are willing to pay a "bribe", it's just not a sufficient one for them to get their way. And so it remain unsupported.

    I really don't see this site going any farther than the half dozen sites that have tried the same thing in the past, and also failed to provide the editorial control over the product that the people supposedly footing the bill want.

    The last pay-for-feature/pay-for-bugfix business model that worked is centralized control of the product by a nominal support organization, which acts as a barrier to entry for other people trying to get into the "we want to be maintainers too!" business. This was the Cygnus model for gcc, and it's the current Codeweavers model for Crossover Office as a commercial WINE variant. It only works because the barrier to entry for third parties is so high that there isn't competition occurring in the market.

    So once again: nothing to see here.