The Problem With Bounty Software

Anonymous Piglet writes "Graydon Hoare has written a well thought-out essay on the problems with the bounty software model being promoted by organizations such as the Free Software Bazaar, sourceXchange, and CoSource. " Update: 06/11 12:23 by H : Norm J sent this tidbit our way: Cosource.com founders Bernie Thompson and Norm Jacobowitz have posted their responses to Graydon Hoare's Essay on the Problem with Bounty Software . It is available at the Cosource.com site.

Comments

Counterpoint

[bgarcia]

I've already posted a counterpoint to his article on Freshmeat. The original is here

But I'll reproduce it here as well:

Now, I don't believe that the bounty model is going to take the world by storm as the open-source model has, but I do think it'll survive as a niche.

I think there are two flawed assumptions made in this essay:

1) That software developed in this model is only developed in this model.

2) That open-source software must start out that way in order to be of high quality.

Point-by-point:

1: It's Not The Community Model

As Eric Raymond stated in The Cathedral and the Bazaar:

It's fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode.

That is, software can start being developed (indeed, must be developed) in some other model before being released into the bazaar. It must first be a runnable, testable program before people will come along and turn their eyes to it.

The new bounty model is a model that fits just this first step. The program gets written. After the bounty has been collected, the program is now open source, and has all the benefits that any other open source program has.

2: It's Not The Inspired Developer's Model

3: It's Not The Annoyed Developer's Model

That's right - it's a new model. While we have seen that the Inspired and Annoyed Developer models can work, that does not mean that other models don't work. Many problems in the world are solved by people who need something fixed, but don't have the skills or time needed to do it. So they pay someone else to do it. It's a time-tested model that works.

But again, once the program has been created and released, these Inspired and Annoyed Developer models will start to be applied, as people start to use the program and fix the things that bother them, re-write the things they believe could have been done better, and add functionality that will make the program even more useful.

5: It's Technically Difficult

It's funny that you called this your weakest point, but I actually believe it was your strongest. This model has never been tried before, and the logistics are going to take some time to iron out. It could fail simply because people are too afraid to make changes needed to make use of this new model.

Another Approach

I don't believe your forum model would work all that well. In your model, many developers will state what they wish to work on. Some will go ahead and do it anyhow. Others might simply be blowing hot air. Businesses will not want to wade through the hundreds of postings on such a site to see if anything comes close to matching their needs.

In the bounty model, there are fewer posts, because only a few companies that are seriously interested in seeing a project completed will post projects. Some developers will undoubtedly look through this list, and even though they aren't currently interested in something, might find something that sounds interesting and want to give it a shot.

99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...