OK to offer Bounty?
 

Hello all. I'm new here, new to the N810 and new to the tablet scene in general. It's a great device, and mostly that's due to the Free software community supporting it. I love using Free software, and I have a great respect for those who create, maintain and package it. However, I myself possess a thorough and complete lack of programing knowledge. I would like to offer a small bounty for a port of a GPL game that I really enjoy. Is it OK to do that here? If so should it be in the "games" thread, or the general thread?

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

First, welcome to the community.

There's nothing in the rules against offering a bounty, as far as I know. I would post it to either the games or development portion of the forum. Good luck.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Thanks!
:)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

I think it might be kinda neat for maemo.org to sponsor some sort of voluntary fund for this sort of thing.... thoughts?

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

How about getting Nokia to direct some funds for this sort of thing? Community voting determines the fund's allocation :)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

...and bounty schemes (especially on small platforms with a limited set of developers) have proven pretty much ineffective in the past :-(

Maemo developers, at the moment, aren't going to do something for $20; they're going to do it because they want it. You've just got to hope that the thing you've found is a) realistic and b) something they hadn't realised they wanted yet ;-)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Some development incurs cost.

When jolouis and I were testing network adapters on the tablets, we both put out some cash just for that purpose. I bought a few of different kinds just so I could document what chipsets/configurations worked and what didn't. I had the cash to spend at the time, but others might not... so some sort of pool *might* help.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

in fact... offer a bounty works more like a symbolic act to say "HEY, I REALLY WOULD LIKE SOMEONE DO IT"... it's a good way to catch the dev's attention (and maybe sympathy for your request)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

There is a website called arimaa.com that runs a very interesting board game. Many people there are actually researchers, studying this game, and we like people to play so we can build a large database of games to analyze.

The managers there set up a small prize given each month to the player that plays the most that month. I even got the prize a couple of times, it was very nice. :)

Of course it's something very different, but it serves as a success story for prizes inside an Internet community. ;)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

I reckon a simple list of things that people want, that others can vote on, so that then a wandering bored developer can go and take a look and see what to hack on (and something that's interesting *and* wanted by other people is the sort of thing they will want to do).

When I say list, the onus should be on the requester to make sure there is sufficient information about the app, screenshots, links to source etc., as there's nothing worse than someone asking for an app to be ported and just giving a name which returns lots of unrelated hits on Google.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

It surely is. In fact, I appreciate more the fact that he has shown he is really interested, the descriptive message of his request (including potential problems!), and the fact that he actually offers help for non-programming related things than the $20. Much better than your average request.

(On the other side, I'm sorry that port is not going to come from me)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

The problems with bounties (the idea has been brought up before), is that it discourages something the open source model encourages: collaboration. Instead of having a couple developers work together to get something done, they'll fight against each other to be the first to get it done and get the money. This leads to projects that are completed poorly, and leaves out the possibility for beginning developers to learn how to port. Where a new developer might be interested in helping you out, if you place a bounty on it, the more experienced developers would be less likely to help the young developer out.

I think a list where people can vote on what should be done is a better idea. Also, developers should add paypal donate buttons. If you like a project, donate to it! That's the best way to get more development done.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

I add a vote for a separate subforum for ports with bounties. I'm actually gonna go shopping right now for software I'd pay to see ported. There's been many a time I've come across something I've wanted and not been able to get to work (without scratchbox/porting that I'm currently incapable of)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Donation links are probably more feasible as TrueJournals said.

As Texrat knows first-hand, hardware-addon-related stuff has always been tricky. Does the dev ask to borrow hardware? Ask for donations? Come out of their own pocket?

I miss Google Answers (no, Yahoo Answers is no substitute, it's a totally different arena). People would pay for good, detailed answers to questions. I don't remember if they had software requests but that would have been nice (tricky to manage though).

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

there are some tasks and projects which just wont get done without some form of bounty.
take this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...7&postcount=68

its a feasible task, but complex.

having bounties for porting programs or whatnot doesn't make much sense and in that respect you would be right.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

I reckon that would be done without a bounty though, it just needs someone who knows how to do it. No bounty is really going to pay me enough to sit down and learn that stuff for a single project unless I'm interested, and if I'm interested anyway the kudos from doing the work is probably as good as/better than a bounty anyway. IMHO of course ;)

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

indeed, the example I gave is the hardest thing I have seen though and the few people who I do know with the skills and actual knowledge to get it running on their machine lose energy at the final difficult hurdle and leave the knowledge locked away in their install.
(perhaps because those same people are not so strong at creating a new package from scratch themselves and could do with talking with some folks that do?..)

Its not so much incentive to make use of their skills, it would just be a bit of a thank you to someone who went that little extra and made it available for everyone.

regarding kudos - thats a given, its the best part of community development :)
it would be foolhardy to not fully credit those that come up with cool things.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Wow, thanks for all of the replies. I did post it on Friday in the Games forum, but no responses yet. I can't figure out programming for the life of me, so unfortunately it's an itch I can't scratch for myself. Either way, Einstein is a fun little mind bender of a game. Give it a try if you have a little time to kill.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

I like the idea of bounties -- and, I don't think they discourage collaboration (especially if the bounty-provider wants to be a part of development). If everyone goes into a deal that keeps the open source philosophy in mind, there shouldn't (imho) be a problem. Sometimes, all a project needs is an expert. I don't see an issue with giving that person the bounty. (Sure, it might not be a lot, but it might be just enough to motivate someone to work on something they've been putting off.)

Tim

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

jaem took me up on it. He's almost done! check out the thread $20 bounty for Einstein port in the "games" forum.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Glad to see someone picked it up. Honestly, I was surprised.

I love this community.

Re: OK to offer Bounty?
 

Another model of finding the right "seller" for a "buyer" is the old Google Answers forum where people would put a pricetag on having others answer it. There are a number of other community sites which pledge bounties against project proposals--wonder developer communities might benefit from a similar clearinghouse?