3 ms·

What about bounties for boring tasks nobody is excited to do or where the main team lacks competency in the given area?

wakeupcall 3y ago
From by my own experience, you'll have to review/test the boring task from a one-time contributor, which is also not fun. You don't need to do that as often if the contributor is going to stay, but you're not attracting this sort of contributions with bounties. The last point is also similar. If I get a significant contribution in area where I'm not competent, I might take it, but is it going to maintain or fix problems to it in the long term? I'd rather not include a feature which I know I can't maintain long term.
patmorgan23 3y ago
Grants/Sponsorship still exist. Andrew is not arguing against people paying for specific features/work. He is arguing against 1) not coordinating that work with the core team 2) competitive 'first correct submission wins'
- MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
  I wish the original post had explained this better. It seemed to bash bug bounties without offering any alternative, except “employing well-designed business management processes.” Which is not a helpful statement unless you already agree with the authors.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    I feel its unfair to expect people to have a solution just because they are discussing a problem. Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean a fix is obvious or one even exists.
  - eatonphil 3y ago
    > It seemed to bash bug bounties To the contrary, the article explicitly called out bug bounties as making more sense.
bawolff 3y ago
In my experience its rare for there actually to be boring useful tasks in open source. Everything is interesting to someone. Sometimes things are boring because nobody really is interested in the results, but i think that is a diferent kind of boring. Sometimes maintainers are overworked and cant do everything, but that is also a different sort of problem.

From by my own experience, you'll have to review/test the boring task from a one-time contributor, which is also not fun. You don't need to do that as often if the contributor is going to stay, but you're not attracting this sort of contributions with bounties. The last point is also similar. If I get a significant contribution in area where I'm not competent, I might take it, but is it going to maintain or fix problems to it in the long term? I'd rather not include a feature which I know I can't maintain long term.

patmorgan23 3y ago

Grants/Sponsorship still exist. Andrew is not arguing against people paying for specific features/work. He is arguing against 1) not coordinating that work with the core team 2) competitive 'first correct submission wins'

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
I wish the original post had explained this better. It seemed to bash bug bounties without offering any alternative, except “employing well-designed business management processes.” Which is not a helpful statement unless you already agree with the authors.
- bawolff 3y ago
  I feel its unfair to expect people to have a solution just because they are discussing a problem. Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean a fix is obvious or one even exists.
- eatonphil 3y ago
  > It seemed to bash bug bounties To the contrary, the article explicitly called out bug bounties as making more sense.

bawolff 3y ago

In my experience its rare for there actually to be boring useful tasks in open source. Everything is interesting to someone. Sometimes things are boring because nobody really is interested in the results, but i think that is a diferent kind of boring. Sometimes maintainers are overworked and cant do everything, but that is also a different sort of problem.