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I remember some time ago, when we were discussing about a potential Ideastorm-like website for FOSS, someone I don’t remember came up with the idea of cumulative bounties: I put a five-euros bounty of a idea, someone else put 10 dollars on the same idea, and so on, and we end with great prizes for highly demanded features.

I think it is a pretty good and bad idea. Let me explain.

First, let’s start with the assumption that the cumulative-bounties website will be well implemented and publicized (not like these Canonical attempts). People can put bounties, developer can register, website admins decide when the bounty is complete and transmit the money. Conditions applies on the bounty such as : it must be accepted by the targeted software maintainer, and the code must be integrated. If no one claim the bounty within a given period, it will be given to wikipedia/gnome/… This is just a rough draft.

On such a website, I have no doubt there will be lots of bounties. People are really willing to support what they like/want. See the Amarok fundraising of 5000 euros, which succeeded. I too would be ready to give a few euros to correct some issues. And just look at all the “I-want-that-feature” posts on the distribution forums.

Now look at these websites : the busines model exists and the offer is here. “Freelancers” (mainly firms) are here to answer the demand. And some prospective developers will probably join too.

So basically we have a strong demand, and the offer is here. So what’s wrong?

• Money. Wherever there is money, there is trouble.
• It could poison the FOSS spirit. Current and prospective FOSS developer could be attracted to work only on bounties instead of joining FOSS projects. And there may be clashes between software maintainers and bounty developers. The maintainer targets a good quality software, involves himself deeply, and has long-term plans and ideas for its software, whereas the bounty developer wants the bounty money, and will not care about the durability and implications of what he is doing. Still, we can minimize this argument by hoping that the competition between bounty developers will increase the quality of their work.

In the end I have a mixed feeling over this. It will let users contribute to FOSS development, it will attract more developers, and it will help to address some demanded bugs/wishes, but at which cost for the FOSS spirit?