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> competition at the expense of cooperation We've seen contributors author PRs together and split bounties. Also contributors in the Zig thread were actually t
by zcesur 3y ago
> competition at the expense of cooperation
We've seen contributors author PRs together and split bounties. Also contributors in the Zig thread were actually trying to collaborate on a solution (comments were deleted)
> Instead of scouting for a suitable candidate
Open calls have faster turnaround & lower overhead
> clear contract ... payout
Sometimes design & implementation is not decided and spec'ed in advance and multiple perspectives & sometimes PoCs are required, at which point the maintainers can choose a plan of action and assign a developer without much duplicate work. That's classic OSS dev with or without bounties.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37543536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37543536 there's more replies here that I agree with
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I also suggest you checkout the discussions deleted by Zig for a full perspective https://pastebin.com/nDA0LD3N https://pastebin.com/nDA0LD3N
As a matter of fact the initial convo on the thread proved contrary to the every point made regarding competition and "battle royal dynamics" as people attempting the bounty were actually collaborating. We've seen quite a few cases where people authored PRs together and split the rewards on Algora.
In addition there was no "pressure on the development team to accept the winning submission" it was explicitly stated that the work did not need to be merged upstream, and that the sponsorship would be awarded as soon as the technical requirements were met.
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Ultimately, bounties are a tool. It's in maintainers' discretion whether or not to use it.
The optimal design for a bounties platform is still a work in progress. We're two bootstrapped founders (one developer) figuring things out along the way, trying to give folks a good experience and trying to learn.
- kristoff_it 3y ago> > Instead of scouting for a suitable candidate > Open calls have faster turnaround & lower overhead I think your perspective is made perfectly clear if you believe that having 10 people do duplicate work is less overhead than having one manager do some managerial work.
- zcesur 3y agoCan you show me the 10 people that made duplicate work?
- kristoff_it 3y agoYou can see in the archived thread you yourself linked that 3 people are working on it in parallel while a 4th who was interested in doing the work states that they don't want to participate in a battle royale. Add to this some discussions that I've had in private and we get to 10 pretty quickly. Are you sure it's wise to argue that feature bounties don't result in competition and duplicate work when presented to a healthy-enough OSS project? This bounty was publicized by Wasmer as "the first developer that adds support" is the one who gets the money: https://twitter.com/wasmerio/status/1701168305103331701?s=20 https://twitter.com/wasmerio/status/1701168305103331701?s=20
- zcesur 3y agoI don't think people discussing approaches, asking questions & looking to collaborate is battle royale. In healthy-enough OSS projects that happens with or without bounties Also some sort of acceptance criteria have to be in place, and "first viable solution gets the reward" is reasonable enough People have agency to make decisions such as trying to solve a bounty (to get experience, feedback from peers/maintainers & maybe a reward) but you decided to shut them down, delete their comments and get offended on their behalf You're not obligated to entertain, review or merge code you don't approve and it was your right to shut down the initiative by Wasmer
- ayewo 3y agoI think there are 2 dynamics that Andrew Kelley alluded to that Algora / Wasmer could have addressed better: 1. Consulting with the Ziglang leadership before creating the issue that kicked off the bounty. Doing it this way would have allowed them to provide some input on perhaps splitting the bounty, improving the acceptance criteria and other logistical stuff, rather than allow them find out later when the comments were devolving into personal attacks. 2. Splitting the bounty. Offering three bounties: $2500, $1500 and $1000 increases the likelihood of producing different approaches and rewards skill as opposed to one $5000 bounty that rewards the fastest person, to the detriment of others working on it. The amount spent is the same but the outcome is less of a battle royale. 3. If splitting the bounty is not an option (because the intent is for the high-ticket $5000 on offer to fuel Wasmer’s marketing), then at least more thought should go into how the bounty is administered by working with Ziglang leadership so that it doesn’t create unhealthy competition or at least draw people with the right skills. Zama runs a big-ticket bounty program that is worth emulating in how it is run https://github.com/zama-ai/bounty-program https://github.com/zama-ai/bounty-program
- fdjsfasdhkj 3y agoHave you ever heard about transaction costs?