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Bounties vs. Grants ? (Score:1)
Has there ever been consideration of posting bounties on specific Perl TODO list items ?
I suppose there are logistic issues to handle when 2 contributors show up with different solutions to the same problem. But at least it moves much of the bureaucratic burden from the developer to the TPF.
Frankly, as currently worded, the TPF grant application guidelines tend to discourage, rather than encourage, applicants.
What I see when I consider the guidelines:
Spend a lot of time on your pro
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Vienna.pm is intending to offer bounties on TODOs, as part of how it distributes the surplus from YAPC::EU 2007. domm posted the announcement here [perl.org], mailed it to perl5-porters [mpe.mpg.de] and has probably publicised it elsewhere. To date, zero comments, and the only TODOs submitted so far are two from me for the Perl 5 core.
Why is there no interest?
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get the money til after you do the work, and you don't even get to participate in determining how much money you get for that work.
I think when the bounties are really large (think X-Prize) they can be motivating, but I doubt they work well at the small scale.
It seems like it all comes down to money.
Re:Bounties vs. Grants ? (Score:2)
In the general case, I'd agree with you completely for the reasons you give - I certainly don't see small bounties as a viable way to sustain regular interest and make steady progress.
My hope with them, is that for tasks that can be done in an evening or so, they'd be a teaser to draw in new people, at least to do that task, people who might not otherwise have considered contributing. What is depressing me is the level of interest from project maintainers, who as I see it have little to lose by adding bounties paid for by someone else on existing bugs in their projects. Does it really cost that much effort to identify tasks to add? If they never get done, the loss is the cost of adding the task. If they get done, woohoo! Free work.
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