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I think this is inherently limited to small, low-effort issues, for a number of reasons. If I was to set a bounty for an issue that would be laborious and ther

I think this is inherently limited to small, low-effort issues, for a number of reasons. If I was to set a bounty for an issue that would be laborious and therefore expensive to fix, I'd want to be able to withdraw my funding in case the issue does not get fixed in a reasonable amount of time. Leaving money tied up on the service indefinitely is not really an option when you start talking about the kind of money that would actually motivate someone to do a lot of work. This creates a problem where it's really risky for a developer to take on any hard problems. If funds can be pulled at any time, you might not get paid. Also, of course, there's duplication of effort- someone might beat you to closing the issue, meaning you get nothing and have wasted your time. This, in turn, means that pricing on the service must be very high to account for the risks of non-payment, or be so low as to be insignificant. There are some mitigation strategies available. Funding could have an end date, after which the funds are returned to the funder. This still leaves the issue of parallel effort, which seems harder to solve. Preregistering to close an issue by some deadline might work, but likely would result in a lot of issues going unsolved, and now you need some kind of ranking system for developers on the service...

CameronNemo 6y ago
Ideally parallel effort could be rewarded and combined. Have frequent communication between requestors and aspiring resolvers. The requestor could release a portion of the funds in exchange for the two developers publishing their wip and exchanging ideas. Both would get paid.
themanmaran 6y ago
> Leaving money tied up on the service indefinitely is not really an option when you start talking about the kind of money that would actually motivate someone to do a lot of work. This is something that I've been going back and forth on for a while. I've considered having the money be a 'pledge' like Kickstarter. Where people pledge the funds and pay out when the issue gets resolved. But that can add some technical concerns (keeping track of peoples bank details to charge them) as well as less assurance that the developer will get paid. And I especially don't want to have a platform where a developer puts in the work and doesn't earn the bounty. Parallel effort is another tricky one to solve. And I see it all the time even without funding involved. Someone comments that they're working on an issue, and then everyone else drops it for 6 months only to realize that person dropped it too. I think that splitting bounties could be a good solution. Have multiple people contribute towards a branch, and the funding gets distributed evenly.

CameronNemo 6y ago

Ideally parallel effort could be rewarded and combined. Have frequent communication between requestors and aspiring resolvers. The requestor could release a portion of the funds in exchange for the two developers publishing their wip and exchanging ideas. Both would get paid.

themanmaran 6y ago

> Leaving money tied up on the service indefinitely is not really an option when you start talking about the kind of money that would actually motivate someone to do a lot of work. This is something that I've been going back and forth on for a while. I've considered having the money be a 'pledge' like Kickstarter. Where people pledge the funds and pay out when the issue gets resolved. But that can add some technical concerns (keeping track of peoples bank details to charge them) as well as less assurance that the developer will get paid. And I especially don't want to have a platform where a developer puts in the work and doesn't earn the bounty. Parallel effort is another tricky one to solve. And I see it all the time even without funding involved. Someone comments that they're working on an issue, and then everyone else drops it for 6 months only to realize that person dropped it too. I think that splitting bounties could be a good solution. Have multiple people contribute towards a branch, and the funding gets distributed evenly.