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We can make or own tools, sure, but there are two ways, it seems, most of them are made: 1. Commercial companies make tools they need. 2. Private individuals m

We can make or own tools, sure, but there are two ways, it seems, most of them are made: 1. Commercial companies make tools they need. 2. Private individuals make tools they think are interesting. The problem with this approach? There's no democracy. There's no way to know, currently, what the community actually wants or needs tools-wise. If I could donate a couple bucks to get some small tool I need made and put on Github with some basic standards (can download from maven central, for example), I most certainly would. There's just no obvious/easy way to do that right now.

garrettgrimsley 12y ago
With open source projects there is often a page of feature requests that anyone can contribute to. [0, 1] The problem is that often these are buried deep in a website, and the user has to dig through to find it. The up-side to this is that project maintainers are not buried in a dearth of feature requests. Though for popular projects I don't think it would be hard to find someone to volunteer to sort through the requests acting as a filter or curator. What if you could put bounties on specific accepted feature requests, like a targeted, more user-friendly BitHub?[2] You could even offer small bounties for submitting a feature request that is accepted and implemented. I think that this would be reasonable because the "idea person" is adding some value to the product. [0] http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Development/PluginIdeas http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Development/PluginIdeas [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues?labels=feature&page=1&state=open https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues?labels=f... [2] http://bithub.com/earnpoints http://bithub.com/earnpoints
canvia 12y ago
This seems like a good application for a model like CrowdTilt, as long as you are able to design and estimate the cost accurately. https://www.crowdtilt.com/ https://www.crowdtilt.com/ It would have to operate as more of a bounty system, maybe let programmers/companies bid on the project first to determine the $ goal. There could even be "stretch goals" with additional features added, or at certain contribution levels you get to request a specific feature. I am not sure how this could be turned into a "living project" in which people can continue contributing funds in order to have additional features added.

garrettgrimsley 12y ago

With open source projects there is often a page of feature requests that anyone can contribute to. [0, 1] The problem is that often these are buried deep in a website, and the user has to dig through to find it. The up-side to this is that project maintainers are not buried in a dearth of feature requests. Though for popular projects I don't think it would be hard to find someone to volunteer to sort through the requests acting as a filter or curator. What if you could put bounties on specific accepted feature requests, like a targeted, more user-friendly BitHub?[2] You could even offer small bounties for submitting a feature request that is accepted and implemented. I think that this would be reasonable because the "idea person" is adding some value to the product. [0] http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Development/PluginIdeas http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Development/PluginIdeas [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues?labels=feature&page=1&state=open https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues?labels=f... [2] http://bithub.com/earnpoints http://bithub.com/earnpoints

canvia 12y ago

This seems like a good application for a model like CrowdTilt, as long as you are able to design and estimate the cost accurately. https://www.crowdtilt.com/ https://www.crowdtilt.com/ It would have to operate as more of a bounty system, maybe let programmers/companies bid on the project first to determine the $ goal. There could even be "stretch goals" with additional features added, or at certain contribution levels you get to request a specific feature. I am not sure how this could be turned into a "living project" in which people can continue contributing funds in order to have additional features added.