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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Allow money donations for precise bugs
From:       Jason Keirstead <jason () keirstead ! org>
Date:       2005-03-12 13:47:16
Message-ID: 200503120947.16128.jason () keirstead ! org
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On March 12, 2005 09:01 am, Gábor Lehel wrote:
> I don't like the sound of all this 'guarantee' stuff. Why not just
> have plain old-fashioned bounties? Let people pledge a certain amount
> of money they would pay if the feature were implemented, and otherwise
> everything stays the same, the devs just have something else they can
> take into account when prioritising bugs/wishes -- it would work much
> like votes do now, except money speaks rather louder than votes do*.

The problem with bounties is what the parent is trying to fix.

For example - I have many features for me which I *really* want implimented, 
and have voted up. Many of them I would *gladly* pay some money to have 
implimented right now.

But I am not going to waste my money on bounties - why? Because I already know 
that the issues will *eventually* get addressed - it is not that the 
developers don't agree with my bugs,  it is just that they have different 
priorities. I would only be willing to pay money if it increased my issue to 
priority 1 or 2 - as in, if I could be guarenteed that Y feature would be 
available by Z date. If the date can't be guarenteed, then the bounty is more 
like a pledge. It is not as much of an incentive.

> the fundamental one: it may have a rather negative affect on code
> quality if people start doing ugly hacks just to claim the money. is
> there any way this could be avoided?

This issue is easily avoided - see how the GNOME bounty program works. That 
is, anyone can work on a bounty - but the project maintainers must approve of 
all patches that are applying for the bounties. Only once the patch is 
integrated into the main tree by the maintainer is the bounty awarded.

The area is a bit more grey when the maintainers themselves are implementing 
the bounty. But hopefully the maintainers are all mature enough in the 
project that they wouldn't sacrifice code quality for a few bucks :P

-- 
Jason Keirstead
http://www.keirstead.org
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