6 ms·

Bountysource Stole at Least $17,000 from Open Source Developers

67 points by internetter 2y ago

skissane 2y ago
A big problem here is BountySource was structured as a for-profit business. If someone pursued the same idea as a not-for-profit, this diversion of funds would be less likely. Not impossible: it isn’t as if no not-for-profit has ever misused funds. But the system is set up to make that less likely, and to have greater legal recourse when it happens
- donor20 2y ago
  This is false. For profit companies clear and custody billions per day successfully. Brokerages, banks, title and escrow companies, clearing companies. Crypto/web3.0 - for some reason I always end up trusting these folks LESS not more
  - skissane 2y ago
    > This is false. For profit companies clear and custody billions per day successfully. > Brokerages, banks, title and escrow companies, clearing companies. Those are all highly regulated industries. Some of them would love to put stuff in their T&Cs like BountySource’s “if the beneficiary doesn’t withdraw the money after 2 years we get to keep it” but the regulators would never let them. For a business like BountySource, that level of regulation does not exist
    - galaxyofdoom 2y ago
      [dead]
  - bombcar 2y ago
    It is also naive - non profits have bountiful ways of making money disappear into pockets in all sorts of legal manners. It’s an entire industry - and by being non-profit they can be almost entirely impossible to “control” once the board is captured.
    - skissane 2y ago
      I think you’d want the money to be held by an organisation which is respectable and has some backing and track record - e.g. the OSI, FSF, Linux Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy - orgs like that are unlikely to redirect the funds into something completely unrelated. There does need to be some flexibility however - e.g. if a project is defunct and nobody wants to work on it, it is stupid just to leave funding in a bank account forever. But if you give it to another open source project (preferably one in the same area) I think that is fine. Adding it to the coffers of a for-profit company isn’t And it might be reasonable for a not-for-profit to contract with a for-profit firm to administer such a funding scheme - but they should only be trustees of the funds (so if they go bankrupt the creditors can’t touch it) and they only get paid a defined percentage as a fee for service
    - xmodem 2y ago
      This obviously varies a lot by jurisdiction, but non-profits typically have much stricter transparency requirements than for-profit entities.
- arp242 2y ago
  There's fraud and embezzlement in non-profits all the time. Just entering that in a search engine shows tons of examples: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=fraud+and+embezzlement+in+non-profits https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=fraud+and+embezzlement+in+n... When I was involved in scouts this was a thing as well; not even always due to malice, sometimes also due to incompetence and/or inattention.
  - skissane 2y ago
    Yes, but the particular type of non-profit I had in mind – in a sibling reply I gave examples of the OSI, FSF, Linux Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy – do groups like those have a history of fraud and embezzlement? Evidence of fraud in other, very different non-profits – which I agree exists – doesn't really answer that question
donor20 2y ago
"In 2017, the project was purchased by the cryptocurrency company CanYa, and in 2020 it was sold to The Blockchain Group." Does the article need to say more?
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  or you can criticize individual companies in the blockchain space, like this article does about the founders of the blockchain group the government knows how to, but that’s why we have representatives, founding fathers figured the masses weren’t smart enough but you can prove them wrong, I believe in you
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    What are the legit block chain companies?
    - yieldcrv 2y ago
      you're not willing to discuss a company changing its terms of service to take unclaimed bounties solely for the enrichment of the two founders, because you think the sector itself isn't worth your thought? that's a "you" problem, and contributing to the problem you perceive, if people feel like they won't be individually criticized if they pivot to that sector. another way to think about it is if we paraded the behavior of every incorporated business around as international news - like we do for the crypto space - you would be asking if there were any legit businesses anywhere. its a representation problem. staying on topic: most blockchain companies do not change their terms of service to take unclaimed bounties solely for the enrichment of their founders. most are not in the business of bounties and that has nothing to do with whether you would find them "legit" or not.
      - nbdy 2y ago
        so you can't name any?
        2y ago
djbusby 2y ago
Super unfortunate. And worse: it taints the whole space. The "Bad Apple" if you will. I'm in a different space and it has some dodgy actors. Which means everyone has their guard up - and that increases the burden for the honest actors.
justinclift 2y ago
Do I just need more coffee, or does that list of figures add up to more than $20k+, rather than $17k+?
- internetter 2y ago
  Hmm your right, good catch, I'm the one who needs more of it :) Unfortunately I cannot change the title here, but I've fixed it in the article
  - justinclift 2y ago
    No worries. ;)
daghamm 2y ago
Reminder that librapay exists, and their developers are only paid from user donations, just like anyone else on the platform. https://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/ (I only wish their CC costs could be reduced a bit to make micropayments viable)
- internetter 2y ago
  That's cool and all, but as the blog author I have a Liberapay account. It's provided me with $800, which is about $800 more than I expected to make. It has not provided me with an appropriate level of income for the effort I put into this site. Since instantiating my account, I've recieved 871,000 views on my website. That means I make $1.1 per 1000 views. That means that if, theoretically, I wanted to do this part time, I would need to be getting what... 50 times the amount I'm getting right now? If I wanted a wage of $20/h (that's not even a living wage where I live) for the time I've spent doing writing related things, I'd need something like 5-10x more? Asking people for money isn't working. Maybe I should offer ad slots to corporations? Daring Fireball somehow makes 500k a year just doing this. Except it hasn't worked: https://boehs.org/sponsor https://boehs.org/sponsor Is it the platform I use? Maybe people are scared of liberapay. So I try kofi — nothing. Maybe its because I'm not established? Maybe the Substack model works, where you aggressively push it on people. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to sell out. Maybe I publish my posts at LWN, which is paid and can offer $400 as a starting per article wage (I have 4 "possibly LWN eligible articles", so maybe with the pay scaling I'd get 3x more with the 2 week exclusive agreement?) But anyway, my point is that if you give something for free and then ask for their generosity, it won't make you a whole lotta money. That is fine I guess for my website, really, as its mostly writing about my curiosities. But it could be more. And the bountysource model makes sense, because you are no longer giving something for free. You are automatically a contractor of sorts. People pay you to do work.
  - daghamm 2y ago
    You can see how much projects and developers make on librapay. It's up to a few hundreds a week. This is definitely not FU money, but maybe enough to keep them motivated or pay their computer expenses.
samyar 2y ago
communism is a nice promise that will never succussed.
thebigspacefuck 2y ago
Bountysource has been offline for a bit. Does anyone know of an alternative?

67 points by internetter 2y ago

A big problem here is BountySource was structured as a for-profit business. If someone pursued the same idea as a not-for-profit, this diversion of funds would be less likely. Not impossible: it isn’t as if no not-for-profit has ever misused funds. But the system is set up to make that less likely, and to have greater legal recourse when it happens

donor20 2y ago
This is false. For profit companies clear and custody billions per day successfully. Brokerages, banks, title and escrow companies, clearing companies. Crypto/web3.0 - for some reason I always end up trusting these folks LESS not more
- skissane 2y ago
  > This is false. For profit companies clear and custody billions per day successfully. > Brokerages, banks, title and escrow companies, clearing companies. Those are all highly regulated industries. Some of them would love to put stuff in their T&Cs like BountySource’s “if the beneficiary doesn’t withdraw the money after 2 years we get to keep it” but the regulators would never let them. For a business like BountySource, that level of regulation does not exist
  - galaxyofdoom 2y ago
    [dead]
- bombcar 2y ago
  It is also naive - non profits have bountiful ways of making money disappear into pockets in all sorts of legal manners. It’s an entire industry - and by being non-profit they can be almost entirely impossible to “control” once the board is captured.
  - skissane 2y ago
    I think you’d want the money to be held by an organisation which is respectable and has some backing and track record - e.g. the OSI, FSF, Linux Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy - orgs like that are unlikely to redirect the funds into something completely unrelated. There does need to be some flexibility however - e.g. if a project is defunct and nobody wants to work on it, it is stupid just to leave funding in a bank account forever. But if you give it to another open source project (preferably one in the same area) I think that is fine. Adding it to the coffers of a for-profit company isn’t And it might be reasonable for a not-for-profit to contract with a for-profit firm to administer such a funding scheme - but they should only be trustees of the funds (so if they go bankrupt the creditors can’t touch it) and they only get paid a defined percentage as a fee for service
  - xmodem 2y ago
    This obviously varies a lot by jurisdiction, but non-profits typically have much stricter transparency requirements than for-profit entities.
arp242 2y ago
There's fraud and embezzlement in non-profits all the time. Just entering that in a search engine shows tons of examples: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=fraud+and+embezzlement+in+non-profits https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=fraud+and+embezzlement+in+n... When I was involved in scouts this was a thing as well; not even always due to malice, sometimes also due to incompetence and/or inattention.
- skissane 2y ago
  Yes, but the particular type of non-profit I had in mind – in a sibling reply I gave examples of the OSI, FSF, Linux Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy – do groups like those have a history of fraud and embezzlement? Evidence of fraud in other, very different non-profits – which I agree exists – doesn't really answer that question

donor20 2y ago

"In 2017, the project was purchased by the cryptocurrency company CanYa, and in 2020 it was sold to The Blockchain Group." Does the article need to say more?

yieldcrv 2y ago
or you can criticize individual companies in the blockchain space, like this article does about the founders of the blockchain group the government knows how to, but that’s why we have representatives, founding fathers figured the masses weren’t smart enough but you can prove them wrong, I believe in you
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  What are the legit block chain companies?
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    you're not willing to discuss a company changing its terms of service to take unclaimed bounties solely for the enrichment of the two founders, because you think the sector itself isn't worth your thought? that's a "you" problem, and contributing to the problem you perceive, if people feel like they won't be individually criticized if they pivot to that sector. another way to think about it is if we paraded the behavior of every incorporated business around as international news - like we do for the crypto space - you would be asking if there were any legit businesses anywhere. its a representation problem. staying on topic: most blockchain companies do not change their terms of service to take unclaimed bounties solely for the enrichment of their founders. most are not in the business of bounties and that has nothing to do with whether you would find them "legit" or not.
    - nbdy 2y ago
      so you can't name any?
      - 2y ago

djbusby 2y ago

Super unfortunate. And worse: it taints the whole space. The "Bad Apple" if you will. I'm in a different space and it has some dodgy actors. Which means everyone has their guard up - and that increases the burden for the honest actors.

justinclift 2y ago

Do I just need more coffee, or does that list of figures add up to more than $20k+, rather than $17k+?

internetter 2y ago
Hmm your right, good catch, I'm the one who needs more of it :) Unfortunately I cannot change the title here, but I've fixed it in the article
- justinclift 2y ago
  No worries. ;)

daghamm 2y ago

Reminder that librapay exists, and their developers are only paid from user donations, just like anyone else on the platform. https://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/ (I only wish their CC costs could be reduced a bit to make micropayments viable)

internetter 2y ago
That's cool and all, but as the blog author I have a Liberapay account. It's provided me with $800, which is about $800 more than I expected to make. It has not provided me with an appropriate level of income for the effort I put into this site. Since instantiating my account, I've recieved 871,000 views on my website. That means I make $1.1 per 1000 views. That means that if, theoretically, I wanted to do this part time, I would need to be getting what... 50 times the amount I'm getting right now? If I wanted a wage of $20/h (that's not even a living wage where I live) for the time I've spent doing writing related things, I'd need something like 5-10x more? Asking people for money isn't working. Maybe I should offer ad slots to corporations? Daring Fireball somehow makes 500k a year just doing this. Except it hasn't worked: https://boehs.org/sponsor https://boehs.org/sponsor Is it the platform I use? Maybe people are scared of liberapay. So I try kofi — nothing. Maybe its because I'm not established? Maybe the Substack model works, where you aggressively push it on people. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to sell out. Maybe I publish my posts at LWN, which is paid and can offer $400 as a starting per article wage (I have 4 "possibly LWN eligible articles", so maybe with the pay scaling I'd get 3x more with the 2 week exclusive agreement?) But anyway, my point is that if you give something for free and then ask for their generosity, it won't make you a whole lotta money. That is fine I guess for my website, really, as its mostly writing about my curiosities. But it could be more. And the bountysource model makes sense, because you are no longer giving something for free. You are automatically a contractor of sorts. People pay you to do work.
- daghamm 2y ago
  You can see how much projects and developers make on librapay. It's up to a few hundreds a week. This is definitely not FU money, but maybe enough to keep them motivated or pay their computer expenses.

samyar 2y ago

communism is a nice promise that will never succussed.

thebigspacefuck 2y ago

Bountysource has been offline for a bit. Does anyone know of an alternative?