Interesting idea that is gaining traction in the open source community is bounty based development. Github themselves launched https://github.com/sponsors .
Another approach is https://issuehunt.io/ where features can be voted on with $, developers collect by fulfilling features.
This seems like an idea that would fit in well with the Blender community. Lots of ideas from users and an excited userbase willing to contribute to blender development fund, but with them “voting” on where their contributions go towards instead of a general development fund. Thoughts?
Here’s my personal issue with bounty systems: if I were to take part in a bounty system as an artist, I would be a hypocrite.
As artists, we are often dissuaded from working on spec or participating in design “contests” (like for logos). The argument is that the organization holding that contest is getting a bunch of artists to work for free and they only ultimately have to pay one of them (if they pay at all).
As a community of artists and designers, we generally look down upon that behavior when it’s done to us. If that’s the case, then why are so many of us endorsing the same behavior when it’s directed at developers?
A bounty system is no different than a logo design contest or a poster contest. Sure, both can be effective at getting work done… but if I can’t support one for ethical reasons, then I can’t in good conscience support the other.
B.Y.O.B
(Node Preview and LuxCore Addon Developer)
4
I can’t say much about it yet, so far we only had two github issues with minor bounties on them. In one case Dade (a core developer) solved the issue, in the other case an external developer supplied a pull request and was awarded the bounty, however I still had to rework his solution a bit afterwards.
We have an open bounty on the port of our addon to Blender 2.8: https://github.com/LuxCoreRender/BlendLuxCore/issues/166
The idea is to use this like a small fundraising campaign, let’s see how it goes. It’s definitely easier than setting up a kickstarter campaign or so for each issue, if the project already uses a bounty platform.
My understanding is that a developer first has to mark the issue, to tell everyone else that he’s working on a solution. So nobody else spends work on it. Of course the bounty platform should support this feature.
Totally get that point of view for artists, but I’m not sure the analogy is 100% equivalent. As @B.Y.O.B said it’s not exactly a “contest” of 100 people working on one issue. A better analogy would be a company putting out an open bid for work to be done. Except the “company” in this case is the community.
At any rate I agree with @B.Y.O.B that a kickstarter for each issue is too onerous, but the current Blender developer fund could be more targeted and perhaps get more user excitement by having funds targeted at features.