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I know a guy working on a related idea. Instead of funding people, his system works by funding issues. The link is http://www.freedomsponsors.org http://www.fre

I know a guy working on a related idea. Instead of funding people, his system works by funding issues. The link is http://www.freedomsponsors.org http://www.freedomsponsors.org The workflow, as I understand it, goes something like that: 1) There's an issue on a project you use that's getting no love. 2) You go to freedomsponsors register that you'd like some issue solved, so much that you'd be willing to put your money where your mouth is. Also, you'll probably want to put a link to freedomsponsors on the project's issue tracker. 3) When one or more people solve the issue, the sponsor pays them (if more than one person has worked on the issue, the sponsor can distribute the money in anyways).

esbwhat 14y ago
so basically sort of a reverse kickstarter for open source. That's brilliant. I love it. I would sponsor someone fixing moving selections in gimp. I cannot figure out how to do it. There has to be a more intuitive method.
- reginaldo 14y ago
  I'll tell him to put a giant Sponsor button on every screen. First you'll have to click the tiny "Login with google" button in the upper right corner, then the "Sponsor new issue" button. Then you paste the link to the original issue. After that, the site will guide you a little bit better.
  - esbwhat 14y ago
    is there a way to sign up for an account, or is that planned? I don't like signing into things with google/whatever
    - reginaldo 14y ago
      Currently there's no other way to sign up. I believe he'll add other ways to sign up soon.
      - tonylampada 14y ago
        > So I'm gonna create a new topic and answer questions there... Turns out I can't do that with a newly created account. Bummer.
    - tonylampada 14y ago
      We will add more ways to signup: facebook, twitter, yahoo and github, at least. I'm not a big fan of owning users' passwords, so unless people really really ask for it, we probably won't add a "create login/pass" functionality. Also, there is the concept of reputation - Sponsors that pay their offers as promised will have good reputation. For reputation to mean something, we need to know something about the user, and I believe linking with a social account is our best option for that. Anyway, talking about FreedomSponsors on GitTip's thread is probably not good for MY reputation here on HackerNews (right? I don't really know, I just signed up). So I'm gonna create a new topic and answer questions there... Thanks for your insterest!
      - 18pfsmt 14y ago
        What about using Mozilla's Persona (formally BrowserID), instead of those commercial services you mentioned?
        tonylampada 14y ago
        I didn't know about that untill now. I'll look more into it. But the main idea behind the way accounts work on FS is that the user should have some sort of online presence before he can sign up. So if Mozilla's Persona doesn't offer a way for the user to publish some sort of online profile, then we probably won't add it as a primary form of signing up on FS. Linking an existing account to authenticate later is ok. But we do want to make it more difficult to create completely "anonymous" profiles. At least that's our thinking today anyway.
- tonylampada 14y ago
  Whoa, I just noticed a huge spike in access count from Google Analytics coming from here. So this is what happenned... Hi everyone. I'm Tony, creator of FreedomSponsors. You're absolutely right @ebswhat. Sorry about that. The layout and webdesign still have major room for improvement - we're working on that. Functionality is pretty stable though. To sponsor an issue, just do like @reginaldo said. Gimp is not registered yet so you'll need to fill in more details about it: "Where does the bugtracker live?" and "What's gimp Home page?" Would you please let me know about you usability experience in the Feedback section?
rhizome 14y ago
Kind of a neat twist on those third-party support sites like Fixya and that GreatSomething one, but that domain name isn't very good. I'd look more towards a "bug bounty" type name.
- tonylampada 14y ago
  Too bad I didn't came up with that name before. It sure has a nice ring to it.
gcb 14y ago
i'm totally split on that and i can't make my mind... just like everyone, i hate when my bug reports get no love and I usually take the time to write a patch if it impacts me much. people that can't just write a patch, or if i'm drowned in other stuff, may benefit from this. basically pay someone to write a patch for your issue. on the other hand, as a maintainer, i'd hate if a issue that is a wont fix for some reason would get only one person with lots of resource bugged, and he/she would proceed to offer some bounty on it. and all of a sudden that irrelevant issue would turn out to be the most popular on the project with a dozen government-contractor-quality patches being submited by the dozen by people that couldn't care less for the project. i honestly can't decide if those initiatives are good or harmful.
whit537 14y ago
Cool, I've seen people asking for things like this and now I have somewhere to send them. :-)
j_s 14y ago
There's a lot of drama around some issues... here's a the most recently crowned canonical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584635 I look forward to seeing what happens when people start promising money to the various bikeshed construction crews...
datalus 14y ago
A similar website: http://gun.io/open/ http://gun.io/open/

esbwhat 14y ago

so basically sort of a reverse kickstarter for open source. That's brilliant. I love it. I would sponsor someone fixing moving selections in gimp. I cannot figure out how to do it. There has to be a more intuitive method.

reginaldo 14y ago
I'll tell him to put a giant Sponsor button on every screen. First you'll have to click the tiny "Login with google" button in the upper right corner, then the "Sponsor new issue" button. Then you paste the link to the original issue. After that, the site will guide you a little bit better.
- esbwhat 14y ago
  is there a way to sign up for an account, or is that planned? I don't like signing into things with google/whatever
  - reginaldo 14y ago
    Currently there's no other way to sign up. I believe he'll add other ways to sign up soon.
    - tonylampada 14y ago
      > So I'm gonna create a new topic and answer questions there... Turns out I can't do that with a newly created account. Bummer.
  - tonylampada 14y ago
    We will add more ways to signup: facebook, twitter, yahoo and github, at least. I'm not a big fan of owning users' passwords, so unless people really really ask for it, we probably won't add a "create login/pass" functionality. Also, there is the concept of reputation - Sponsors that pay their offers as promised will have good reputation. For reputation to mean something, we need to know something about the user, and I believe linking with a social account is our best option for that. Anyway, talking about FreedomSponsors on GitTip's thread is probably not good for MY reputation here on HackerNews (right? I don't really know, I just signed up). So I'm gonna create a new topic and answer questions there... Thanks for your insterest!
    - 18pfsmt 14y ago
      What about using Mozilla's Persona (formally BrowserID), instead of those commercial services you mentioned?
      - tonylampada 14y ago
        I didn't know about that untill now. I'll look more into it. But the main idea behind the way accounts work on FS is that the user should have some sort of online presence before he can sign up. So if Mozilla's Persona doesn't offer a way for the user to publish some sort of online profile, then we probably won't add it as a primary form of signing up on FS. Linking an existing account to authenticate later is ok. But we do want to make it more difficult to create completely "anonymous" profiles. At least that's our thinking today anyway.
tonylampada 14y ago
Whoa, I just noticed a huge spike in access count from Google Analytics coming from here. So this is what happenned... Hi everyone. I'm Tony, creator of FreedomSponsors. You're absolutely right @ebswhat. Sorry about that. The layout and webdesign still have major room for improvement - we're working on that. Functionality is pretty stable though. To sponsor an issue, just do like @reginaldo said. Gimp is not registered yet so you'll need to fill in more details about it: "Where does the bugtracker live?" and "What's gimp Home page?" Would you please let me know about you usability experience in the Feedback section?

rhizome 14y ago

Kind of a neat twist on those third-party support sites like Fixya and that GreatSomething one, but that domain name isn't very good. I'd look more towards a "bug bounty" type name.

tonylampada 14y ago
Too bad I didn't came up with that name before. It sure has a nice ring to it.

gcb 14y ago

i'm totally split on that and i can't make my mind... just like everyone, i hate when my bug reports get no love and I usually take the time to write a patch if it impacts me much. people that can't just write a patch, or if i'm drowned in other stuff, may benefit from this. basically pay someone to write a patch for your issue. on the other hand, as a maintainer, i'd hate if a issue that is a wont fix for some reason would get only one person with lots of resource bugged, and he/she would proceed to offer some bounty on it. and all of a sudden that irrelevant issue would turn out to be the most popular on the project with a dozen government-contractor-quality patches being submited by the dozen by people that couldn't care less for the project. i honestly can't decide if those initiatives are good or harmful.

whit537 14y ago

Cool, I've seen people asking for things like this and now I have somewhere to send them. :-)

j_s 14y ago

There's a lot of drama around some issues... here's a the most recently crowned canonical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3584635 I look forward to seeing what happens when people start promising money to the various bikeshed construction crews...

datalus 14y ago

A similar website: http://gun.io/open/ http://gun.io/open/