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Bounties for developers

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Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Sat Dec 17, 2011 9:19 pm

Hey :),

I'm also pretty active in the Asterisk world and there we have a bounty system.
If somebody would like a specific feature implemented, it will be posted in the wiki (because there is no forum). Then if somebody wants to take on the development, they can start it and if they feel they have fulfilled the requirements, they submit the project to the person who is offering the bounty.
If it is a feature that many people want, quite often more people are adding to the bounty and then each person decides individually if the result fits their ideas and if they want to pay the bounty.

Here you can have a look at the asterisk bounty page: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+bounty

Has there ever been something like this for FG? I think, it's a very good idea because that can really motivate people to take on development.
Are there any reasons that would stand against bounties for FG development?
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 18, 2011 11:31 am

You may want to run a forum/mailing list/wiki search for "PayPal", "GSoC", "donation", "non profit".

Bottom line being, there have been plenty of talks like this - but so far nothing has materialized, there have been various people trying to foster this for years, but that's all about it that I am aware of.

The developer portal mentions http://www.nlnet.nl as one possibility to easily get funding for OSS projects - but I don't think anybody ever actually tried that yet (might be the lowest hanging fruit though).

Apart from that, there was recently a discussion on providing a PayPal donation link, so that people could donate money and provide some comments on its preferred use (i.e. multiplayer, scenery, aircraft, AI etc).
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:41 pm

I did NOT mean an unspecified donation to "the project". A bounty is a specific amount of money for completing a specific task which can be claimed by an individual or group which completed that task.
If you check the asterisk bounty page, you'll find that for some things that many people wanted, quite big amounts of money came together.
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 18, 2011 2:15 pm

Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Sun Dec 18, 2011 2:50 pm

None of your links has anything to do with bounties. There is only talk about donations to flightgear in various ways.
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:07 pm

I responded to your PM. I still think, that I do understand what a bounty is about - I don't need to be pointed to the Asterisk project for that. There are numerous other examples for that, i.e. "crowd funding feature requests". You can get a very first impression on the feasibility of that, by referring to the links I posted.
Seriously, I applaud you for your enthusiasm - and I absolutely wish you the best of luck implementing your idea(s), especially "bounties". I am just being skeptical and pointing out earlier discussions and issues. Honestly, referring to your PM: if you think that my responses are not at helpful at all, I really don't mind not responding to you any longer - it will save both of us quite some time, I'd think. No offense meant or taken. Good luck!
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:20 pm

As I said in my PM, it's just a matter of being used to something.
Being pretty active in the online world for well over 20 years (yeah, I actually used 1200 baud modems and UUCP once), I am in the habit of used the search function of a forum before posting a question. And I post a question usually only if I didn't find any answers at all or if I didn't find any answers that fit my question precisely enough for my taste.
So in this case, I wanted to specifically know if there ever has been a bounty system (and only and specifically that) or plans for one and if there is anything in the FlightGear culture that would speak against starting something. The latter question because some open source projects are very radical about being free and thus reject the idea of bounties plus because I had somthing in the back of my mind that I didn't want to talk about in detail before knowing the climate.
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby Hooray » Mon Dec 19, 2011 8:54 am

sgofferj wrote in Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:20 pm:So in this case, I wanted to specifically know if [...] there is anything in the FlightGear culture that would speak against starting something.

certainly not per se - in fact, there are many people obviously interested in the underlying idea of funding project development.

The latter question because some open source projects are very radical about being free and thus reject the idea of bounties plus because I had somthing in the back of my mind that I didn't want to talk about in detail before knowing the climate.


The mailing list certainly is the better place to discuss this, or maybe even get directly in touch with Curt.
My own impression is that you'll find LOTS of people interested in this, but next to none interested in implementing, maintaining and administrating this.
This may even apply to yourself, too?

Seriously, there's a certain "bureaucratic" effort required to get these things going. Just as an example, once you check out the mailing list archives or the wiki, you'll find DOZENS of people interested in the GSoC idea itself, pushing things each year. Yet, none of this has ever really materialized at all. FlightGear is not formally "led", there's no real project coordinator who's taking care of these things or delegating this stuff. The people driving the project are the "techie" guys, who get itchy skin rashes when they hear about "taxes", "office burdens", "paperwork" and pretty much anything that they're not interested in. So, don't hold your breath... Obviously, if you have come here to offer handling all this, they might be all open ears.
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Mon Dec 19, 2011 5:16 pm

I don't see what's much to administrate about bounties. That's why I posted the link to the asterisk wiki as an example. It's basically self-administrating. I will be happy to create the corresponding wiki main page but the bounties themselves are "administrated" by the people offering the bounty and the developers which want to claim the bounty then.
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby stuart » Thu Dec 22, 2011 10:23 am

I think this is something best done with a "suck it and see" approach.

If you want to offer a bounty for a particular feature, I would suggest just posting to the mailing list and seeing if you get any reaction. Even if it's on the basis of "I'll provide $20 if someone else will provide another $20".

That way you could see if there was anyone else interested in offering bounties, and anyone interested in developing in such a way as to collect them.

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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:55 am

@Stuart: By your command :).

I created a Wiki page, a category, even an infobox template and I already started 3 bounties... Let's see...
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby stuart » Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:18 am

Great!

Could I suggest that you publicize the bounties on the new newsletter? http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Newsletter_January_2012

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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby sgofferj » Thu Jan 05, 2012 11:18 am

They are already there under "new articles". ;)
I'll see what I can do but I don't promise anything.
Sometimes, I'd actually like to just fly a bit ^^.

Edit: As there is a category "Bounty", can't you just make another "New ..." section?
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby Hooray » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:56 pm

I agree with stuart, this needs to be advertized. Probably not just in the upcoming newsletter, but rather in ALL upcoming newsletter (can be easily done by adding to the newsletter template here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Talk:Next_newsletter ), but probably also in the forum (sticky announcement) and on the main FG web page.

So I added a short intro to the newsletter here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... nty_system

This is just copied/pasted from the forum. Feel free to rework/improve the paragraph.

Like I said previously, I think it'd be better to delegate all the management to a crowdfunding platform like http://www.kickstarter.org, that will get rid of some work for us.

If this turns out to be successful, we can obviously set up a new sub forum here.
Also, there are a bunch of "ideas" in the wiki already, many of which were originally meant to be GSoC projects.
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Bounties for developers

Postby adrian » Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:11 pm

happy new year guys,
Hooray, for some reason kickstrater.org takes me to a russian site with motorbikes, I think you meant kickstarter.com :)
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