8 ms·

BountySource suspended from GitHub

67 points by styfle 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago
Quite sad to see it go. I do hope there will be other, more successful attempts at making OSS sustainable.
- _jomo 9y ago
  There is BitHub, although it's slightly different and doesn't focus on sponsoring particular bugs. https://signal.org/blog/bithub/ https://signal.org/blog/bithub/
  - zaarn 9y ago
    It seems this only accepts Bitcoin. Bitcoin still has a lot of friction which would lower the potential income of OSS developers. I would rather prefer something which can accept atleast a Bank transfer...
- Vinnl 9y ago
  OpenCollective seems to be reasonably successful: https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/
jaspervdj 9y ago
Explanation in this comment: https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1147#issuecomment-345923247 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1147#issuecommen... On July 27, we reached out to Bountysource in response to a complaint we received from a user. During our investigation and discussions with members of your team, we found that your organization does not have a mechanism for responding to removal requests from users, which is required by our Terms of Service. Specifically, Bountysource does not "respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and 'do not contact' requests from GitHub or GitHub Users." Over two months later, you have not made any changes to your platform in response to our requests. Therefore, we have suspended your application until you create a process for actively responding to all personal information removal requests, including those related to projects and issues. In order for us to remove the suspension, we would ask to see two things: 1. Confirmation from you that you have a process in place for responding to takedown requests about all areas of your website. 2. Inclusion of a public notice to your users stating how to request the removal of information. That notice can be included in your documentation or other legal notices. Once you have that process and public notice in place, we'll be happy to review your site and consider lifting the suspension. Sounds like it's (hopefully) not permanent.
- wonderous 9y ago
  For mobile users [1], quote above: “On July 27, we reached out to Bountysource in response to a complaint we received from a user. During our investigation and discussions with members of your team, we found that your organization does not have a mechanism for responding to removal requests from users, which is required by our Terms of Service. Specifically, Bountysource does not 'respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and do not contact requests from GitHub or GitHub Users.' Over two months later, you have not made any changes to your platform in response to our requests. Therefore, we have suspended your application until you create a process for actively responding to all personal information removal requests, including those related to projects and issues. In order for us to remove the suspension, we would ask to see two things: 1. Confirmation from you that you have a process in place for responding to takedown requests about all areas of your website. 2. Inclusion of a public notice to your users stating how to request the removal of information. That notice can be included in your documentation or other legal notices. Once you have that process and public notice in place, we'll be happy to review your site and consider lifting the suspension.” [1] Please don’t use CODE-SNIPPET formatting to quote text, it is unreadable on mobile.
  - jordigh 9y ago
    > Please don’t use CODE-SNIPPET formatting to quote text, it is unreadable on mobile. I don't use mobile, can you show us what does it look like? Is there a maximum width that works? HN doesn't offer a lot of markup and indenting text for monospacing is about the only tool that they offer for code snippets.
    - kbrosnan 9y ago
      Using your browser's responsive design tools should be able to display the problem.
    - haikuginger 9y ago
      It looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/6Zw2fyr_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium https://i.imgur.com/6Zw2fyr_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f...
ComputerGuru 9y ago
Straight from the comments: “Even with a $25 bounty attached to it, nothing is happening” That is why I detest BountySource. FOSS users already have a ridiculous feeling of entitlement. Let them “sponsor” a bug fix at one-one-hundredth the going rate, and that obnoxious sense of entitlement gets dialed up to eleven.
- maxaf 9y ago
  The bargain-basement nature of BountySource is probably also the reason why the founding team couldn't make the financials work out.
- paulus_magnus2 9y ago
  Let's bring in corporate practices / scrum-agile. How about a maintainer would estimate cost of implementing the feature (say $2500) and then we do a mini kickstarter and wait until 1000 people pledge $2.50 or a big user offers $2.5k disclaimer: my personal politics / ideology It's really unfair to the community (society) when corporation use FOSS in production and still claim 100% of the profit is theirs only. EDIT: getting downvoted but no comments. Can someone counter argument?
  - fundamental 9y ago
    The difficulty with moving to realistic cost estimates for open source software is partially that people aren't willing to put up a fair wage for many bugs/features and that open source developers often don't have the flexibility to address things immediately. Consider what happens when the funding doesn't reach the desired amount? Does the fundraising stay open frustrating users without the functionality and users who have already chipped in? Does the developer lower the amount and get it taken care of? Is development sustainable when a funding goal is missed? Are donations going to be repeatedly available when discussing fine grained technical issues (a subset of the userbase is likely affected by each issue)? Even if a project obtains funding, unless you have a team of people working on the software as their job it is difficult to predict how long it will take to implement something. Non-FLOSS work/life will end up taking priority in an unpredictable fashion and that would frustrate both the donors as well as the developer who doesn't have enough available hours to address problems that users are willing to pay for. Some projects have gone the route of fixing the time issue by fixing the problem and holding the new code hostage, however that can result in a lot of frustration if funding doesn't go smoothly. The users will think "Why don't they just release the functionality, it's done already?" "Why do they even need the money if they already did it?". The developer will think "Why did I waste my time doing XYZ? Not many people see to care." All and all, users currently don't expect to regularly fund FLOSS and this makes it difficult for FLOSS to consider a by-the-feature funding method a reliable technique. (some projects may have some success, but in general funding FLOSS is a difficult unsolved problem) (per the downvotes, they seem to be used in a "I disagree" sense rather than a "this doesn't contribute to the discussion sense" IMO)
Ascetik 9y ago
You mean it's not a place you go to buy paper towels?
ishanjain28 9y ago
Tried it a few times now and then and it was pretty much dead. No wonder they didn't replied to Github.
jgaa 9y ago
Why would anyone put mission-critical features like login in the hands of a 3rd party in the first place? Not to mention that OAUTH itself is crap (https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell-8eec45921529 https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell-8eec45...), and should be avoided.

67 points by styfle 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

Quite sad to see it go. I do hope there will be other, more successful attempts at making OSS sustainable.

_jomo 9y ago
There is BitHub, although it's slightly different and doesn't focus on sponsoring particular bugs. https://signal.org/blog/bithub/ https://signal.org/blog/bithub/
- zaarn 9y ago
  It seems this only accepts Bitcoin. Bitcoin still has a lot of friction which would lower the potential income of OSS developers. I would rather prefer something which can accept atleast a Bank transfer...
Vinnl 9y ago
OpenCollective seems to be reasonably successful: https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/

jaspervdj 9y ago

Explanation in this comment: https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1147#issuecomment-345923247 https://github.com/bountysource/core/issues/1147#issuecommen... On July 27, we reached out to Bountysource in response to a complaint we received from a user. During our investigation and discussions with members of your team, we found that your organization does not have a mechanism for responding to removal requests from users, which is required by our Terms of Service. Specifically, Bountysource does not "respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and 'do not contact' requests from GitHub or GitHub Users." Over two months later, you have not made any changes to your platform in response to our requests. Therefore, we have suspended your application until you create a process for actively responding to all personal information removal requests, including those related to projects and issues. In order for us to remove the suspension, we would ask to see two things: 1. Confirmation from you that you have a process in place for responding to takedown requests about all areas of your website. 2. Inclusion of a public notice to your users stating how to request the removal of information. That notice can be included in your documentation or other legal notices. Once you have that process and public notice in place, we'll be happy to review your site and consider lifting the suspension. Sounds like it's (hopefully) not permanent.

wonderous 9y ago
For mobile users [1], quote above: “On July 27, we reached out to Bountysource in response to a complaint we received from a user. During our investigation and discussions with members of your team, we found that your organization does not have a mechanism for responding to removal requests from users, which is required by our Terms of Service. Specifically, Bountysource does not 'respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and do not contact requests from GitHub or GitHub Users.' Over two months later, you have not made any changes to your platform in response to our requests. Therefore, we have suspended your application until you create a process for actively responding to all personal information removal requests, including those related to projects and issues. In order for us to remove the suspension, we would ask to see two things: 1. Confirmation from you that you have a process in place for responding to takedown requests about all areas of your website. 2. Inclusion of a public notice to your users stating how to request the removal of information. That notice can be included in your documentation or other legal notices. Once you have that process and public notice in place, we'll be happy to review your site and consider lifting the suspension.” [1] Please don’t use CODE-SNIPPET formatting to quote text, it is unreadable on mobile.
- jordigh 9y ago
  > Please don’t use CODE-SNIPPET formatting to quote text, it is unreadable on mobile. I don't use mobile, can you show us what does it look like? Is there a maximum width that works? HN doesn't offer a lot of markup and indenting text for monospacing is about the only tool that they offer for code snippets.
  - kbrosnan 9y ago
    Using your browser's responsive design tools should be able to display the problem.
  - haikuginger 9y ago
    It looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/6Zw2fyr_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium https://i.imgur.com/6Zw2fyr_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f...

ComputerGuru 9y ago

Straight from the comments: “Even with a $25 bounty attached to it, nothing is happening” That is why I detest BountySource. FOSS users already have a ridiculous feeling of entitlement. Let them “sponsor” a bug fix at one-one-hundredth the going rate, and that obnoxious sense of entitlement gets dialed up to eleven.

maxaf 9y ago
The bargain-basement nature of BountySource is probably also the reason why the founding team couldn't make the financials work out.
paulus_magnus2 9y ago
Let's bring in corporate practices / scrum-agile. How about a maintainer would estimate cost of implementing the feature (say $2500) and then we do a mini kickstarter and wait until 1000 people pledge $2.50 or a big user offers $2.5k disclaimer: my personal politics / ideology It's really unfair to the community (society) when corporation use FOSS in production and still claim 100% of the profit is theirs only. EDIT: getting downvoted but no comments. Can someone counter argument?
- fundamental 9y ago
  The difficulty with moving to realistic cost estimates for open source software is partially that people aren't willing to put up a fair wage for many bugs/features and that open source developers often don't have the flexibility to address things immediately. Consider what happens when the funding doesn't reach the desired amount? Does the fundraising stay open frustrating users without the functionality and users who have already chipped in? Does the developer lower the amount and get it taken care of? Is development sustainable when a funding goal is missed? Are donations going to be repeatedly available when discussing fine grained technical issues (a subset of the userbase is likely affected by each issue)? Even if a project obtains funding, unless you have a team of people working on the software as their job it is difficult to predict how long it will take to implement something. Non-FLOSS work/life will end up taking priority in an unpredictable fashion and that would frustrate both the donors as well as the developer who doesn't have enough available hours to address problems that users are willing to pay for. Some projects have gone the route of fixing the time issue by fixing the problem and holding the new code hostage, however that can result in a lot of frustration if funding doesn't go smoothly. The users will think "Why don't they just release the functionality, it's done already?" "Why do they even need the money if they already did it?". The developer will think "Why did I waste my time doing XYZ? Not many people see to care." All and all, users currently don't expect to regularly fund FLOSS and this makes it difficult for FLOSS to consider a by-the-feature funding method a reliable technique. (some projects may have some success, but in general funding FLOSS is a difficult unsolved problem) (per the downvotes, they seem to be used in a "I disagree" sense rather than a "this doesn't contribute to the discussion sense" IMO)

Ascetik 9y ago

You mean it's not a place you go to buy paper towels?

ishanjain28 9y ago

Tried it a few times now and then and it was pretty much dead. No wonder they didn't replied to Github.

jgaa 9y ago

Why would anyone put mission-critical features like login in the hands of a 3rd party in the first place? Not to mention that OAUTH itself is crap (https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell-8eec45921529 https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell-8eec45...), and should be avoided.