
Should Bountysource allow committers to delist their projects? - wkonkel
https://github.com/bountysource/frontend/issues/930?
======
serve_yay
Ugh, these people are so frustrating. You ask them to remove your project and
they "invite" you to "discuss" the matter. Garbage monsters.

~~~
jordigh
It's more nuanced than "your" project. If you're using a free license, that
license says it's everyone's project, not just yours. So if two people want to
take "your" free software and enter an economic agreement to improve "your"
free software in a way that benefits both of them, why should you have a right
to say "no"?

I can see a case for saying "no" in other ways or about other things, but
simply saying "nobody can collect money for this but me or the people I
approve" would make your project non-free and non-open-source. And if that's
what you want, then pick a different license.

~~~
maxerickson
The licensing is a sideshow.

If things get to the point where Bountysource is pointing at the terms of the
license to defend what they are doing, it's pretty likely they are also at the
point where they are significantly undermining the idea that what they are
doing is helping the project.

Attaching the bounties to specific issues does seem less fraught than tipping
every commit for a project.

It's a little discouraging that "claiming a bounty" only means you can use it
on Bountysource, as the likely reason to do that is for promotion (it sounds a
lot better to have a bunch of situations where you can say there is no fee and
only one where there is a fee):

 _Does 100% of the bounty go to the developer?

The developer who solves the issue will receive the full bounty amount in
their Bountysource account. These funds can be used to create more bounties,
donate to teams, or pledge fundraisers. If a developer wishes to cash out
their balance there will be a 10% fee.

What does it cost to claim a bounty?

Nothing. The amount displayed as the bounty total is the exact amount a
developer will receive in their Bountysource account upon payout._

Just inverting the order of those makes it seem pretty silly:

 _What does it cost to claim a bounty?

Nothing. The amount displayed as the bounty total is the exact amount a
developer will receive in their Bountysource account upon payout.

Does 100% of the bounty go to the developer?

The developer who solves the issue will receive the full bounty amount in
their Bountysource account. These funds can be used to create more bounties,
donate to teams, or pledge fundraisers. If a developer wishes to cash out
their balance there will be a 10% fee._

~~~
jordigh
> The licensing is a sideshow.

No, it is fundamental to why bountysource can even possibly exist, as well as
companies like Red Hat or Collabora. We built a system of free licenses since
the late 80's that allow this kind of business. If you don't want to allow
this sort of business, you need a different license. No Microsoft employee can
possibly use bountysource to fund a project to improve Excel, not even if they
wanted to. The license terms don't allow it.

> Just inverting the order of those makes it seem pretty silly:

I'm not sure I see the problem here. I suppose you object to the meaning of
"claim" not being the same as "cash out"? That does seem a bit problematic.

~~~
maxerickson
Your reply about the license doesn't address the point I made in the next
paragraph, that legalistic shenanigans probably aren't going to end up helping
any project.

For "claim" vs "cash out", yes, I was thinking the distinction is rather
artificial.

------
HarryHirsch
They are spammers, they talk like spammers, and they need to be treated like
the dregs of society they are. For starters, I see tht Bountysource is still
on Github. Why didn't they get chucked off already, the scumbags? As of now,
Github is enabling spam.

~~~
randallsquared
The reason that spam exists is the ability to impose costs on the receivers of
the spam while the sender pays far less than the total of those costs. From
what I can see, tip4commit (and maybe bountysource, with which I'm not
familiar) is exactly the opposite of spam: it introduces a way for those
shouldering the costs of open source software to be repaid to some degree by
the community.

------
chrisxcross
Bountysource should invite projects to their program rather than removing them
on request. As this discussion and previous ones have shown diffrent
communities, diffrent maintainer even diffrent project member have diffrent
opinios on introducing financial rewards into their projects and need to
firstly discuss it. Afterwards they can approve or reject getting the offer
listed on bs.

------
pjc50
A good example of why mixing financial rewards with intrinsic reward turns
into disaster.

~~~
jordigh
Yeah, I guess it's like Debian's dunc tank. Remember that?

[http://lwn.net/Articles/201488/](http://lwn.net/Articles/201488/)

It's every developer's dream to get paid to work on free and open source
software. But whenever someone really starts to work towards getting paid,
well, the root of all evil steps in.

~~~
zanny
It is a much worse evil to have software developers who would write free
software given the fiscal means to, when those means are available through
others, but are not exploited, and they end up either writing proprietary
software to eat or not writing software at all.

I commend tip4commit and bountysource and its ilk, not because individually
they are ethical or moral about it, but because it is attempting to solve a
real problem in the community, and someone is bound to get it right.

------
asadotzler
Bountysource should allow project owners to delist their projects. Not doing
so will simply lead to trademark and other infringement actions. Just because
the code is licensed as open source doesn't mean you get to use the project's
brand for your money making schemes.

~~~
dllthomas
There is no infringement, if they are not implying endorsement. Use of
trademark to refer to the product is explicitly okay, and there's no other way
to refer to that lump of code. If I want to pay someone to add a feature to
FLO software I use, that's my right, and the project trying to get in the way
of that is in the wrong - morally and possibly legally. The project, of
course, has no obligation to accept any patches generated.

