Pledging money for features

[Jan de Visser]

On Friday 01 September 2006 14:11, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> It is an issue I have been thinking about for some time, and I'm curious
> if it has been discussed amongst the developers before.
>
> So, there is a feature I really want, and I have filed a wishlist bug
> for it and all (Bug #107302, specifically), but of course, I fully
> recognize that every developer has ideas of his own that he wants to
> pursuit, that there isn't enough time to hack up every idea that comes
> by and that it is probably best in the long run that whoever writes the
> code gets to decide what to work on.
>
> So, if my ideas are to be implemented, I have to be prepared to pay for
> it too. Now, I live off a normal salary too, so a contract to pay the
> total costs for a given feature is beyond my reach, but say that I
> say "I pledge to pay €100 to whoever gets the feature in Bug #107302
> into KDE". That's not a lot of money, but if the right guy sees that he
> could probably do it in a reasonable amount of time after several
> people have made similar pledges, then perhaps it could work?
>
> Now, this introduces a lot more complexity in the social fabric of a
> free software project. All kinds of things could happen: I might not
> feel that the feature fulfilled my intention behind the request and
> decide not to follow up my pledge, and the guy who then had spent the
> time might feel cheated. We might both be content with the new feature,
> but then, it might not make to the official branch. All this would
> probably call for regulations and bureaucracy, and lawyers... *shrug*.
> It would be a long discussion.
>
> OTOH, it could help a lot more people making a decent living from
> writing free software, so it might be worth thinking about. Have you
> people thought about it?

Don Sanders has:

http://www.kontact.org/shopping/sanders.php

Don't really know how it worked out for him; Don seems not very involved in 
KDE development anymore.

But there is precedent.


>
> Cheers,
>
> Kjetil

jan

-- 
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Jan de Visser                     jdevisser at digitalfairway.com

                Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu!
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