

Ask HN: Review our startup (bitloot) - drewcrawford
http://www.bitloot.com

======
catone
I would be careful using PayPal. Another bounty site - microPledge - recently
shut down because using PayPal to hold money in Escrow is against their TOS.

I wrote about it here: [http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/09/open-source-
fundin...](http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/09/open-source-funding-site-
micropledge-calls-for-help/)

I'm sure there are a lot of project owners from microPledge looking for a new
home, but using PayPal might just lead your down the same path.

~~~
drewcrawford
This is top on our list. We decided it was better to launch and start
responding to market feedback immediately than delay launch while we
integrated with a (more-reliable) payment provider.

It's good to see this getting such attention here, because it's something we
discussed at some length internally as a potentially really big problem, and
it validates that we're spending time talking about the right things.

~~~
benhoyt
Hi, Ben from microPledge here. Hmmm ... it's not that PayPal is an
"unreliable" payment provider. We found them to be pretty reliable. It's that
we (and you, by the looks) are contradicting their ToS in quite an up-front
way. We didn't know this at first (i.e., we didn't read the fine print
carefully enough.) It's partly holding money in escrow, and partly collecting
money on behalf of other "traders" (the developers).

As soon as they catch a whiff of that, they'll shut your account down, and
lock your money in for 6 months.

It's not very pleasant, to put it mildly, and if I were you I'd switch to
AlertPay or some other provider ASAP. Sorry to be negative about this ... but
I'm commenting so you hopefully _don't_ have to go through what we at
microPledge did. :-)

(Edit: Oh, just curious, how much did you know about microPledge before you
launched? I wouldn't be surprised either way, and certainly good on you for
trying ... but your descriptions of the site on Bitloot sound awfully
familiar. :-)

------
rw
Cool.

UI crits: 1) Try browsing without javascript enabled (cough). 2) Try using the
back button in any project-specific page. You have to hit it multiple times,
quickly, to go back.

~~~
breily
Seconding these criticisms - they make it very difficult to browse the site. A
related problem is that you can't right click links to open them in their own
tab from the browse page. All in all a cool idea though (not sure I see the
business potential though).

~~~
fendale
> A related problem is that you can't right click links to open them in their
> own tab

That is THE most annoying thing a web developer can do to a user if you ask
me!

~~~
Hexstream
Personally I always use CTRL-click for that...

------
clay
I recommend adding as many ideas as you can and even fund stuff out of your
pocket. I click browse and all I see is "test" and "wordobe test"...

------
jhickner
As a developer, wouldn't it seem odd to do the work up front, and then have a
group of people you don't know vote on whether or not you should be paid? I
can't imagine that would be very attractive.

~~~
drewcrawford
If they vote no, you can always take the project somewhere else. Contributors
are voting on demos or samples, not on the real code. We don't release that
until the election passes.

The hope would be, of course, that developers would resolve their differences
with the contributors. But if they don't, developers can walk and take their
code with them (shareware it, say, or take it to a third party)

~~~
tsetse-fly
It's shareware except you've made it much more complicated. What happens if I
vote yes and the other contributors vote no or vice-versa? Does the vote need
to be 100%? That sounds like a pain in the ass -- I want my software, now.

This is also not very good for the developer. They have to perfect the
software to please all the contributors before getting paid. How long until
everyone agrees that it's ready? Where am I supposed to take it if I walk? I
just wasted all this time writing code, thinking I was going to get paid and
now I have to try and sell software that I didn't even come up with the idea
for. At least with Rent A Coder, I don't have to please a group of random
people.

~~~
drewcrawford
The amount of votes required is definitely not 100%. That would be way too
hard for any developer.

Our election algorithm looks at a lot of metrics before deciding whether to
pass a project. Our goal is to pass projects that have broad community
consensus that they meet the project requirements. We obviously want to fail
projects that have obvious stability problems, or that don't do what the
proposal says. We're working hard to make it difficult to game the system, and
I'd be interested in any thoughts you might have to make things more fair.

~~~
tsetse-fly
What happens if I vote 'no' but the project still passes? Do I still have to
pay even though I wasn't satisfied?

If a bunch of contributors vote 'no' and pull their money then how do I
improve the project and get them onboard again if it's going to be OSS? With
shareware, I can improve the product and catch them on the next release.

~~~
drewcrawford
If the project passes, the developer gets paid. If there's some sort of
dispute, we can manually arbitrate. Again, our metrics are for broad consensus
and having the shipped product match the original proposal. If those two
conditions are met, I think in all fairness, the developer should be paid.

Contributors can only pull money if it's been more than 30 days since they
made the contribution. After that 30 day holding period, they can walk. We've
considered playing with that number, or letting it be variable.

Contributors don't have great incentive to let an election fail; if it does,
they don't get any software (other than whatever demo the developer posted).
While I'm sure there will be cranky contributors here and there, hopefully we
can factor them out to some extent in our election process. At the macro
level, people are going to want the project they contributed to released.

------
tptacek
Why is this going to work where every other open source bounty site has
failed?

~~~
drewcrawford
Open source bounty sites are, in my experience, geared toward solving
developer problems. It's rare to see non-coders visit an OSS bounty site and
create a bounty.

We're geared toward normal people funding the software projects. Normal people
don't want to compile sourcecode; we provide developers incentives for
distributing binaries. Normal people don't use wiki markup to describe what
they want; we let them use a WSIWYG editor.

Normal people also use different platforms (mostly Windows and Mac). Making
binaries work across platforms (12 people want Windows, 5 people want Mac, 3
only care about the source...) and giving the developer the tools to field
those platforms (Is there demand for a Mac port? Is it worth my time?) is
something that hasn't been solved yet by any bounty system I've seen.

~~~
tsetse-fly
Who are these "normal people?" Can you give an example of software they would
be interested in funding?

I'm having a hard time imagining exactly who you're targeting.

How is this different than microPledge?

~~~
drewcrawford
* College kids who want a good, free game to play at a LAN party

* My mom, who wants a free alternative to MS Word that works well on Windows and is less intimidating than OO (and more powerful than Google Docs)

* People who saw an OSS tool running on their friend's Linux and want a port to their platform

* People who run existing closed-source software that they want to add a feature to, but can't

* People like me who code, but are too busy to learn to hack Platform X just to get Feature Y

I was a long-time mp user. Unfortunately they are no longer operating. As I
understand it, their model was more focused on funding (mostly closed)
software in an open way. Of course, it's difficult to convince closed-source
people that community funding is a good idea, and I think that was one of
several challenges they faced before shutting down.

Our focus is completely different. We want to connect people with OSS. A large
part of that is money (because money is a strong attractive force). We talk
about it a lot, because people start listening when you tell them they're
going to get paid. But there are other problems too--search (how do people
find OSS projects?), developer time (I have a week--what do I work on?). These
problems are far out of bounds of micropledge or other bounty or funding
systems.

~~~
natch
Does your mom know how to write a software specification document?

~~~
Hexstream
Does _anyone_ know how to write a _meaningful_ sofware specification document?

------
epall
I don't like the behavior of the tabs. When I wanted to back to browsing all
projects, I clicked on "Browse." That didn't work, so I tried my back button.
That didn't work either. Then, several minutes later, I noticed the "Back"
link. This was definitely not intuitive.

Also, once I click "Next" when browsing for projects, I see absolutely no way
to go back!

------
13ren
This strikes me as a market research tool - trying to find out what people
want, the needs, the problem to be solved, the pain to address. It's tricky
for users to make the connection between problem and solution (hell, it's
tricky for _anyone_ \- so why not users?)

Here's my suggestion: target developing knock-offs (copies of existing
products). There's a long and glorious tradition of this in open source
(linux, gimp, open office, samba, mySQL, etc). It works because users already
know they need it, and how to use it, it's already integrated into their
behaviour and their other processes and other software - and programmers have
a clear specification to work from. This narrowing the kind of project you
seek to fund (i.e. a _niche_ ) will help you in many ways, as any business
book will recommend (even though narrowing your options seems like a limiting
thing...)

But please don't use this to undermine good-guy programmers, who took the risk
of working to understand a problem, design a solution and get it accepted -
use your bounty powers for good, not evil. That is, use it to break monopolies
that are hurting customers in small industries. If they have any sense, the
monopolist will back down, and some good will be done (whether the open source
product is actually used or not). Sounds like good, heroic fun!

------
natch
So instead of a model built on trust, this is a model based on distrust.

It doesn't feel right to me, for various reasons, starting with the above.

Also it vaguely says that code must be "open source" but this is not a well-
defined term. The GPL (just one example of many possible licenses for open
source software) requires that GPL-licensed projects have the source code
available in the preferred format, an important distinction that is not
necessarily present in all open source licenses. A developer could provide an
assembler dump of their code, and claim that was open source, and walk away
with the payment.

Worse, of course, they could just do a slideware demo, or they could do a demo
using Microsoft Word, but claiming that it was software they had written.

Also you claim to be more centered on normal users, but normal users don't
know or care about open source. To them, they just want the program. Yes, open
source gives them benefits too, but they don't know that, nor do they really
want to know.

As a developer, I would feel hesitant about committing much time to a project
- it would be huge gamble. On a normal open source project, I could get things
started, get the code base maybe 80% done, and then when that last 20% needs
to be done (which in reality is actually 80% of the work ;-)) others typically
would be pitching in, to the point where I could even walk away and
development would continue without me, ensuring my initial work was not
wasted, and ensuring the project got done. But with your site, the developer
risks that the "normal users" will see any rough edges and deliver a total
rejection - binary thumbs down - and I won't get paid. So it forces me to do
way more work, and even then, the users can still say no based on some
arbitrary whim - "I like the OK button on the left, not the right, this
sucks!" - that's just an example; please don't bother trying to debunk it
unless you can address the more general point.

All that being said, I could be wrong! It's happened before! I'll be curious
to see how it turns out.

------
inimino
Nice idea. (Aside: I'm running some experiments on similar themes, the first
one is at: <http://inimino.org/pffs/experiment> )

As others have said, the site would benefit greatly from proper use of Web
standards and accessibility. Perhaps these problems are due to GWT. What you
have is probably good enough to test the idea, so I won't beat this into the
ground.

As for the model, I think users are much more likely to fund software that
they already know and use. Once software is actually released, it develops a
community of users, some of whom may be willing to support it. Asking the
small fraction of users with the foresight to anticipate using a program to
bear the entire cost of developing it may work for a few cases (e.g. device
drivers, or cloning existing software) but there are many other software
projects that would have more success if they can rely on donations after they
have been written and released.

A model that finds a way for developers to work on credit against donations
from future users would be interesting.

------
sanswork
I couldn't find the info on the site but how do you decide when to release the
funds to the developer?

I've developed a similar site in the past but never publicly released it as
there was a few flaws in the system that I couldn't work around. I've since
moved on but I'm wondering how you managed to get around them.

For my system you got votes based on the amount you contributed. This opened
the site up to people pledging just enough to get 51% of the vote then
accepting any solution even bad ones.

The other way where the creator of the bounty gets the final say also opens up
to people creating popular bounties then claiming them for themselves with no
acceptable solution posed.

Outside of automated solutions I suppose you could have staff review each
claim manually but I decided against this idea as it just couldn't scale.

Anyhow, curious to read your solutions to these problems.

~~~
drewcrawford
Voting algorithms are hard. If people game Digg and Reddit, you just _know_
they're going to be all over you when there's money involved.

We've got some pretty good metrics that we're looking at. The obvious ones,
like number of contributors, voting times, and so on. We also look at
activity, and construct minimum spanning trees for various subsets of users as
an automated "Someone should look at this" flag. Contribution times and rates
are also something we look at.

Probably the biggest single stopgap measure is decidedly low-tech: there's a
short delay (a day or so) between project release and release of funds. If any
real people at all are downloading the stuff they paid for and it doesn't
work, hopefully they'll shoot an e-mail off to us and we'll take a look.

~~~
sanswork
The last solution you mentioned was one I ended up implementing but I just
wasn't happy enough with the rest of the solution to work out better fraud
detection.

One other suggestion for going forward might be to implement none software
bounties as well. A large portion of my development was based on the idea of
community bounties. Say Bountyville wants their park cleaned up so their kids
can play they all chip into a bounty on your site. Receive proposals from
companies then choose the best one to do the job. This would help you get more
"normal" people involved in the site which might translate into these people
discovering the software side of the site as well.

The only difference you need for those are a two stage voting process where by
users vote on proposals before the action and also on the result after.

Anyhow, best of luck.

------
jackowayed
1st note: before I allowed scripts all I saw was:

Blog | Contact © 2008 Experiment House LLC

Blog and Contact were links, but that was all that was on the screen. Your
site isn't that shiny and fancy, so it has no reason to be so dependent on JS.

It's a cool idea though. I could see developing on it.

------
brk
Looks like a neat idea. Reminds me of <http://www.gimado.com/>, just more
targeted. I think these investment sites could be a very lucrative way to
raise money for small startup operations.

------
marketer
It's been tried before, check out <http://www.micropledge.com> . That site
doesn't seem to be active any more.

------
natch
1\. Have you (the founders) ever contributed to open source projects? It seems
to me you are taking the time resources of open source developers for granted.
2\. Is your project (bitloot) open source? 3\. Repository URL?

------
rokhayakebe
Great idea, what is your marketing plan?

I would suggest finding a few businesses that spend a substantial amount of
money every month on proprietary software. Then ask them to support the
development of a free and better version by pledging a small amount each.

The supporters can see it as a form of advertising for one. Every company
would love to have its name behind a piece of software that has the ability to
change the game. They also get to fix a problem and reduce future expenses.

Not only that, this new software will be constantly updated by talented people
who are passionated about the problem they are solving and they will not have
to pay a penny more for new versions.

~~~
drewcrawford
We've got a couple of companies we're in talks with, but of course we're
looking for more. If you can think of any, shoot me an e-mail (in profile).

~~~
rokhayakebe
I do not have any from the top of my head, but visit VCs website and search
their enterprise portfolio. Once you find a few companies you like, go to
their sites and see what the customers they target and email those guys.

------
jcromartie
You broke the back button. You should also add a feature to banish the
_really_ stupid ideas, like the one where someone wants to configure DosBOX to
launch Lemmings automatically.

------
JesseAldridge
This could be ridiculously awesome... if it actually works.

------
gojomo
See also 'BountySource': <https://www.bountysource.com/>

(Never used it, don't know much about it, just made a note of it when it first
got attention.)

------
alexkay
I like the idea, even though I'm a bit pessimistic about it kicking off...

A few glitches I noticed:

* The video takes awhile to load, while loading there's a black rectangle. May be use an image while the flash is loading, or bootstrap your flash with a preloader a la youTube.

* The "Help" form is behind the flash video.

* Consider dimming the background when the help form is open. Also, close it when the user clicks anywhere _not_ on the form or presses Esc. ThickBox, GreyBox, LightBox, Uservoice, etc all do that, it's something the users expect.

* As _clay_ suggested add some real content, no one is going to contribute to a test site.

~~~
drewcrawford
On what browser/platform is "Help" rendering behind the flash video?

~~~
alexkay
FF3 and Chrome running under Vista x64. Works fine with IE7 though.

------
dexter
Tone down the reverb on your demo video!

------
newt0311
Nice. Very similar to <http://schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html>

Nice to see some implementation of it.

------
cool-RR
This looks cool!

~~~
tsetse-fly
Is this guy a spambot?

