Don't use bountysource anymore!

Thanks!
I immediately changed it!

That is cool and seems Nextcloud Include diversity + mentioring is quite different from a bounty program for adding features and bug fixes. Are there any plans to add a different bounty program?

Hello :wave:

has the transfer worked for those who wanted to move their money over? :slight_smile:

I donā€™t think so. This concept has always been quite misleading. Like people posted bounties on something and expected magic to happen, like if someone else would pick these tickets up quickly and deliver code for a relatively low price. Over time the bounties grew as many people posted small amounts of money. In many cases a random bounty hunter picked up the ticket and sent a PR with a useless to mediocre implementation at best, leaving us with the work for the last 20%, which in turn require 80% of the effort as per the pareto principle because weā€™re the ones that have to maintain features for the upcoming years. At that point both the people that posted bounties as well as us, the maintainers and developers, become frustrated with the situation.

This is not sustainable.

From a psychological PoV youā€™ll be grateful if one of your features or bug fixes is values with a bounty. But on the contrary it will make your less motivated to do another feature/fix if there is no reward for that. Thus I personally am an opposed on a per-feature compensation. People should rather hire a freelancer for those jobs if they just need one thing changed. Then the rates will also be more realistic.

Alternatively organizations can have their own people work on Nextcloud, so we develop this platform together ā€“ collaboratively.

3 Likes

If a PR is not up to standards, canā€™t you simply decline to merge it? And giving the person sending the PR information on what they should improve so they can get it merged after fixing up everything? People probably expect this to work like the Linux kernel where the kernel developers keep everything compatible as soon as it is merged but as we know, they donā€™t accept every low effort patch below their standards.

So far the theory, yes. But in practice developers most often donā€™t ask about how to approach the problem at hand before they start coding. So Iā€™ve found myself in the situation where the PR was close to not acceptable, and then the hunters get frustrated because their quick solution was not accepted. This does not apply to all PRs that had bounties, but Iā€™ve seen a pattern.

If you then ask for changes it often takes ages. And if there is a bit of back and forth that takes longer than like a few days they lose interest.

Okay, but then they donā€™t get the money anyway? Maybe it is a bit of a steering effect then.

Yes, but the non-coders who post bountes do not always get why we donā€™t accept the solution. For them it looks like weā€™re arbitrarily blocking something.

Letā€™s not get too distracted with this here, after all this topic is just about how we can save some money from the sinking bountysource ship :wink:

Iā€™m happy to discuss this topic at another place. At some point I should really cast my thoughts into an extensive blog post because I feel like explaining my feelings on this over and over :upside_down_face:

1 Like

Problem is that some really would like to have a certain feature. For non-experts, itā€™s difficult to evaluate the effort it takes to implement something. Furthermore, it would be great if people can share the cost. If there is a feature you really like to have, the development costs perhaps 1000 ā‚¬, if you are not a company, itā€™s a high price. If there are others, whoā€™d like the feature as much, 10ā‚¬ each sounds reasonable.

Does Nextcloud have a network of associated developers open for freelance? There are also a few requests on the forum, not sure if they were answered. There are also some organizations that canā€™t afford a full subscription but could afford some money for a specific feature.

1 Like

Iā€™m new to this thread sorry, Iā€™ve read a fair bit of it but not everything.

I just wanted to ask as I assume some of you have used Bountysource more than myself, on July 1st BountySource Inc. was acquired The Blockchain Group, and the CEO changed to Xavier Latil.

Does everyone know this, and wouldnā€™t such an acquisition normally warrant a notification from Bountysource, I donā€™t see any news on the topic on their website, nor an update anywhere?

Just wondering about the legal side of it is all if anyone is aware, since I assumed that would be the case.

1 Like

afaik The concept behind bountysource (investing some money towards a fix or enhancement) is what will be missing going forward by re-focusing only on the diversity program. Both of these initiatives are important.

Committing to a fix / enhancement has been really successful over the years with some developers (Bookmarks app), so best to not call it a bunch of low quality work. This kind of funding as encouragement has worked successfully, even in conjunction with directly sending funds to the developer via paypal or similar.

Anyways, thank for reading. I simply do not feel my donations were all in vain and would rather believe at least some were helpful. :+1:

1 Like

I think the point of this thread was something elseā€¦ like bountysource apparently tried to claim older bounties illegaly with their new TOS. Which is a complete no-go. Right?

the general concept behind bountysource is a good one, though. But apparently it has some flaws.

noone claimed that, exactly. though there has been low quality work, apparently.

but due to some misuse (by bountyhunters, offering quick & dirty code) the general concept behind Bountysource got a bit biassed. - anywaysā€¦ the major point of this thread was the illegal behaviour of bountysource and the companies behind.

I created a topic to discuss alternatives so this thread doesnā€™t get too mixed up:

3 Likes

Now I understand why my mention of bountysource on GitHub was edited out :smile:.

1 Like

Bountysource is still listed as the donation option for some Nextcloud packages in F-Droid. Examples:



3 Likes

I see the funding was updated on github but f-droid config is possibly located somewhere else. @tobiasKaminsky could you look into this?

1 Like

There is already a merge request to change this in F-Droid.

cc @ChristophWurst

4 Likes

Fixed: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.nextcloud.client/

2 Likes