This is a topic regarding how the site functions as well as features contained. Please keep all related comments within this thread.

Keep in mind that none of the following is in cement, waiting on ideas/comments of this community..I wrote most of this last night when I was tired, there may be ideas written about that I may have written in a poor matter or just phrased badly. Also, I just spent the last three hours getting my computer to boot..(yay windows)..I also probably forgot to mention a few things (most likely in the site features, but also in the set up of the site).

Some notes before you read the following, this is mostly a compilation of ideas by myself, timofonic, and some other community members in another thread. Tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like, tell me what YOU WANT from this site.

Also note that the site is currently in design stages, development

Thanks for your time.

Currently the plans of how the site will function are as follows:
1) There will be an administration/moderation team that will oversee the creation and management of all bounties.
2) Anyone can request a bounty for anything they want and give a promise donation of whatever they wish, money will not be taken at this point. Once this project has been deemed valid (should be pretty much anything, this stage is mostly to filter out stuff that might have already been written for MorphOS), the user will be asked to donate to a PayPal account (which will be managed by a trusted community individual(s?) nominated by you people, I'm new here, I don't know anyone really..) Once the money has been collected, the bounty will be added to the site by the administration team.
3) Anyone can donate extra money to any bounty to increase it's incentive or just to support the author's work.
4) Once a project has been finalized it will be posted for public testing/use. Donations will be witheld for a designated time (two weeks?) for the program to be tested as well as competitors to submit their products. Any bugs reported must be fixed before money is given to the author. This will not increase the two week period, however, the two week period will be extended until the bugs are fixed (meaning other authors can still submit).
5) All donations will require a deadline that they are valid. This is so people can get their money back for unanswered requests. These timeframes will be available for public viewing. THESE ARE NOT PROJECT DEADLINES. It will only act as a project deadline if there is only one single donation to a project.
6) There will be a huge document to cover legal things such as if you donated you know that you're not getting your money back unless your donation deadline has been reached.
7) There will be no private bounties, all programs will be available for all of the public.
8) As far as source code, I go through a bit of that in the possible ideas section below. However, full source code will be required when it is the requirement of a license (GPL..).
9) On the occurence of multiple submissions on a bounty, the winner will be selected by having the public rate the software, this will also rely on bugs found being fixed.

Possible ideas regarding how the site will function:
1) Possibly require source code on all projects since they are paid by donators, this is so fixes to bugs are guaranteed. Source codes will not be published unless the original author backs off of a project (or wants it published). They will be held by trusted administration only (but everyone on the administration should be trusted). Code for projects must be commented WELL.
2) Projects can receive donations even after it has been fulfilled to encourage updates and/or bug fixes. How this would function is as follows: All donations added after a project is finished and there are NO FOUND BUGS will go straight to the author. After a bug is found all new donations are witheld until the bugs have been fixed, at which point they are again sent to the author. The author will have a designated period of time to update the code, after which point the code will be released to interested authors (form of control yet to be determined). After bugs have been fixed, donations will be dispersed in some percentage and/or flat amount action. Bug fixes will most likely be an undecided amount of donations witheld, with other donations going to the original author for their work. If source code is indeed released to new authors it will be under a license (GPL, LGPL, I dunno much about licenses..).
4) Developers can post what they can develop and for how much (this may require a project deadline however).
5) Projects will be followed by a producer of sorts to oversee the development, this is primarily for testing purposes.

Site features (a few things I ain't mentioning include user authentication, site management, and site stats..basic site stuff):
1) Bounty statistics (popularity, value, new ones, close deadlines, anything to do with dates)
2) Bounty list, navigatible using filters and orders, etc etc..
3) Portal (news, top bounties by popularity, value, new, closing, etc..)
4) Comment system for all projects as well as news entries.
5) Rating system for all projects and perhaps even developers? Do you want to be able to rate developers?
6) Just regular site management stuff..nothing specific.
7) Possibly using the same userbase as MorphZone so that no one needs to double register, this is currently being looked into. Benefits of this could be just plain easier management as well as possibly even being able to be notified of bounty updates via PM.

Good stuff Posure! Lots of great info in that. I think its just about
ddead on! Anyone else agree?

I think this is quite unrealistic in real life practice. After I quickly peeked over your text the first thing that came into my mind was 'are we back in third reich with dicators ?'. At least something like that was rushing through my head.

But back to reality. I do appreaciate some sort of software development sponsoring (money is always a fine thing) but the way you propose your stuff is more causing the opposite. Your methodes are not motivating developers to keep developing or joining your donation stuff - it's depressing them. Here an example:

Quote:

The remaining 100 developers on the Amiga plattform can't be treated like that. Software development takes a lot of time and the return for these people is quite minimal if nothing at all. What do we people maximal get from this service ? 10 USD ? 50 USD ? But we are forced (from your perspective) to work 10 - 20 hours to maybe fix a bug (which in real life costs 100 - 500 USD or even more) to only recieve a part of the donation ? This is more than depressing and demotivating.

The software offered to you is no privilege for you to receive. It's a free gift from ourside which we spent a lot of work into it. A volunteer work which you can't calculate in money. If you want to help us developers to stay motivated and help improving the software then you should do it in a way that clearly keeps us motivated. E.g. by sending us some cash knowing that you might receive a new version or nothing at all.

I tell you something and this is not meant to be of bad criticism since I haven't signed anything with you or others (no contract or something). I for my own better forget about your donation program rather than joining it and I tell you why. I for my own do programming just for fun and I like being free of my own decision and knowing that I don't owe anyone anything rather than getting myself chained and most likely demotivated by such a service.

I'm already planning to add a PayPal donation button to my webpage in hope that some more realistic people sponsor the one or other penny. It doesn't have to be much but I know they sent them to me because they do like me as person, they appreciate the efforts from my side to offer something to this community and a symbolic sign so I might get out to the next carnival and buy a beer or something. Still knowing in my back that I do not owe anyone anything and that I am not forced to work my ass off for some tiny cash.

Well no bad feelings but you asked for opinions and here you have my opinion about it. Maybe someone else more qualified should handle these things and I think about 'greenboy' here. Would be nice if you get in touch with him since his visions about doing a donation program is far more realistic and a good thing for both sides.

A professional programmer these days costs quite some money. Some OpenBSD people received a few hardware and nearly up to 5000 USD/Month for development (this is just a tiny example but I doubt it looks any differently on other places). With that money you might expect something from them but not with 10 - 20 USD donations.

As someone in #morphos said. You work 2 years porting KHTML for a bounty of 20 USD and then you are 6 months late and due to the rules you receive nothing.

greetings

oGALAXYo

hmmm... two words come to mind, crack pipe.

I have a better idea.. lets let people do what ever the hell they want. While were at that.. lets all stop being such self important pricks. And oh maybe the greatest idea of all.. man.. don't #### when its free. Sorry but you guys do allot of complaining about software thats free and not allot to help. And then what happens, some jackass (you) comes along and thinks he knows how to motivate coders.. whatever. You wanna motivate them.. send them money.. hell better yet send them beer even, something. No instead you offer ####ing them over when there is a bug, which are just part of code thsee days bugs will hapen. One th ing is sure, any coder who would work under this sort of crap is insane.

Polyhead:
Maybe you didn't read the entire text..These are IDEAS. It's not necessarily how the site will function, hence why this topic was created was to discuss what would be the best way to manage this site. Come up with some ideas of how to make the system fair before you flame. Hell, it's even in the "Possible ideas" category.

oGALAXYo:
First of all, thanks for your input. As said in my proposal, nothing is in stone. The very reason for this post is to get your opinions on how the site should function and be managed. I myself am a Software Engineering major and I know how much time it takes to program and most often, the bounty isn't really worth it, its moreso just a bonus. Note that all of those things are just in the "ideas" section and I think they are topics that deserve attention. I agree with you that it would be unfair to "force" someone to update their software because of a bug. Nevertheless, if it is a major bug there should be either some way to motivate the author (or someone else to fix it) and thats the best I could come up with when I was tired.

Well, after reading the proposed bounty-system, I have only two remarks:

1) As Galaxy pointed out, the group of developers on MorhpOS isn't really big, and they tend to be loyal to the system, so I wouldn't worry too much about forcing them to release the sourcecode, or bugfixes before they get their (well deserved) bounty.

2) Great stuff Posure ! I'm really looking forward to the finalization of the site!

You know I'll put my oar in here and say I agree with Polyhead and oGALAXYo - you have to be on some really good drugs to expect developers to accept bounties on those terms.

http://thenostromo.com/teamaros/bounty_rules.html

You should read those: strip the one that says that all bounties must be Open Source, and make it more flexible, and THERE you have your rules.

Neko

- severe testing ...... YES
- forcing a hand-over of sources .... NO!!!
- accepting "must be open-source"-bounties .... YES
- deadlines ..... NO

Remember that none of these bounties will ever get close to be acceptable pay for the work done, just a small reward.

These bounties may proove to be the starting-point of some bigger apps, which might turn commercial with later version, but that whole point is destroyed when the developer is forced to hand over his sources to people he doesn't really know.

Hmmm, Neko's suggestion about using the AROS-bounty rules (- the open-source one) isn't half bad :)

Its like I told you in our AIM chat, the sources should be kept by the author and not forced to give them out unless they want it an open project. Lok at the AROS rules, they are real good and can apply to this new site.

Quote:

Yes. I'd consider something like that very important.

Quote:

*cough, cough* There are so many definitions of "well-commented code" out there, everyone has his own. Mostly in practice it comes down to "aww, I'll comment the stuff when I'm done".

Most of the time, code is badly commented.


What do you expect to do when a project is done but code uncommented?

Also, you'll need to clarify the code copyright issues (for new pieces of software).

Actually, I'd still say it'd help developers and their project more if for original software of non-trivial complexity a small team would be put together, e.g. someone experienced in software design / programming to supervise code (possibly comment) quality and structure, and someone to do the specification of the application. More than a bounty. But this has probably nothing to do with this discussion here.

I should also mention that I believe there should be some very strict guidelines and rules for even opening up a bounty. I certainly do not want a bounty system interrupting other freeware development! This also relates to watering down the bounties (many little bounties and no 'big' bounties).

1) Instead of having the same rigid rules for all the bounties, let each bounty have tailored rules that are spelled out on the page for that particular bounty.
2) Limit the number of bounties to a small number like five or eight so as not to dilute the donation pool.
3) Have a "bounty czar" who has final say on who has successfully completed a project and gets the bounty.
4) Accept money orders, not just Paypal, and accept actual funds, not just pledges. Find a trusted figure to keep the treasury.
5) Get a consultant from the MorphOS programming team to review the bounties and make sure they are not already doing something.
6) Suggest a bounty for an open-source "installer" port for MorphOS.

All good ideas, I think the site is shaping up quite nice. The one
thing I most agree with is the limit on the number and types of
projects that will be posted. It would be a realy bad idea to have
bounties poping up all the time and nothing getting done. You dont
want to overwhelm any potential coders!