Re: It says sorry no bounties, but do bounties have to mean cash or a tshirt?

[Sean Plaice <splaice gmail com>]

On 6/16/05, Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net> wrote:
> Thanks for the update on Bugzilla voting. I didn't know it was
> restricted to a number of votes. I thought about a fixed amount of pints
> that one can spend in integer units on whatever is listed in bugzilla or
> a general task manager.
>
> Now just add the possibilities to earn pints by fixing bugs,
> translating, writing articles, or doing support, and you got an basic
> economy working - including the positive, and some of the negative
> effects. :)

I think consideration of an alternative to the bugzilla votes should
be considered. Bug and bounties are not necessarily the same thing,
and while bugzilla is a good bug tracking system it will bring the
burden of trying to work around making a bounty a bug.

So a bounty isn't a bug? Not really, a bug could be a bounty but I see
complications in trying to make it work both ways. I think best way to
draw people in would be to present the bounties almost as a work
order. A project maintainer creates a bounty, that could be for
anything, fix a bug, produce a creative, anything that is "needed". I
would stress that a project maintainer be the only person to create a
bounty (unlike a bug in bugzilla which can be posted by anyone). This
provides a level of authority and authenticity, and value to the task
of the bounty. As such I not being anyone of any importance in the
GNOME community could create a bug, and have someone else fix the bug.
Where is the fame in that I am just some guy, how important was that
bug? There is plenty of grey area to this but I think that to maintain
a value to credit given the bounty should be presented by someone that
really has that stature within the project to asses the value of the
bounty.

That being said we also don't want to have a huge list of bounties
like bugs in bugzilla, information overload will scare off potential
contributor's. So for example a maintainer might say "Damn there are
these 10 simple bugs in bugzilla in stable branch that should be
addressed, but I need to keep working on X feature for in the
development branch, I need someone to get these guys done". The
maintainer would create a bounty that would be full filled upon
completion of the 10 bugs listed in bugzilla, and weight the value of
the bounty in pints/etc based on the value of having the bugs
completed.

Another reason to do this outside of bugzilla (though you might be
able to do this in bugzilla i am no expert with it), is so that people
can create teams. People can team up and acquire bounty pints for
themselves and for their teams. What is more fun then being the top
ranked bounty pint individual? Being part of the top ranked bounty
pint team... I could easily see the team aspect generating a level of
friendly competition between teams ala gentoo gnome hackers vs. ubuntu
gnome hackers etc. Maintainers could be part of teams, but not able to
acquire points from projects they maintain.

> Btw, it may be a weird idea but what's the alternative? Trying to manage
> a few hundred contributors by knowing each of them? This is beyond the
> possibilities of a gift (or pure exchange) economy.

I agree, though I think this system would be less apropo for managing
contributors but more as a hook to draw in contributors, and to raise
attention to needed contributions. The more I think about it though we
might not want to limit the bounties to just virtual 'pints'. The
creation of a system were people can donate micro payments, or other
things of value towards a bounty would be good. The bounty creator
could leave a bounty open to have micro payments added to the bounty.
People could then submit say via paypal or some other method to a
bounty fund for that bounty. The person that full fills the bounty has
the option of taking the money or donating the bounties micro payments
back to a general GNOME fund for bounties. There could be some sort of
multiplier applied to the bounty pints, if the money is not taken and
put back into a general fund. The only reason I suggest this is
because I have become less stingy personally with my age, I am more
then happy to throw in say $1.00USD to $20.00USD if I get something I
really want out of it. It would also let other entities such as
corporations put their money where they see value, say Immendo, or
Google, or redhat etc... This could pay off well especially if the
bounties become popular to contributors that live in an area of the
world that can take advantage of the value of currency exchange. There
are tons of Chinese that play online MMORPG's mining materials to sell
online for USD, and it works because the compensation they receive due
to currency exchange is much greater then the amount paid.

They could also put up T-shirts, or other shwag that they want to
entice participation. The more open the system is the more avenues of
enticement to contribution can be followed.

This would be a complex system since we would actually be dealing with
cash, though I am sure the GNOME foundation could figure out the
semantics of it.

I think I went on sort of a tangent for following up to a reply,
either way it flowed from me so I figured I would run with it.

-- 
Sean