Open source bounties

Most readers are probably familiar with the fact that companies or organizations sometimes post “bounties” for open source products, or features, that they would like to see developed. Implement the thing to their satisfaction, you get the bounty – and the community gets the code. Sweet.

A while back I started gathering references to these things, thinking I’d start a site that listed them, made connections between coders and sponsors, etc.

I’m never going to build that site, so here are all the links I gathered. Some will probably be dead or irrelevant now; some seem to be doing something similar to this central-index idea and may want to just slurp all these up. Go for it!

Bounties and bounty lists

• http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/tasks
• http://bountycounty.org/
• http://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/WindowsCompileBounty
• http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/efc9c1f83323f99f
• http://iwantmyopenid.org/bounty
• http://launchpad.net/bounties
• http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2007-April/004186.html
• http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2007-August/011210.html
• http://live.gnome.org/Bounties
• http://open.neurostechnology.com/node/562
• http://pastie.caboo.se/
• http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/Code_Bounties
• http://www.funambol.com/opensource/codesniperprogram.html
• http://www.horde.org/bounties/
• http://www.libsecondlife.org/wiki/Bounties
• http://www.limewire.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bounties
• http://www.mozilla.org/security/bug-bounty.html
• http://www.netflixprize.com/index
• http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html
• http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html

Interesting to consider

• http://efficientsoftware.pbwiki.com/
• http://knaddison.com/drupal/rfc-security-bounties-open-source
• http://micropledge.com/
• http://osel.oregonstate.edu/OSU_Winter_of_Code
• http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1592643.html
• http://www.bountysource.com/
• http://www.fundable.org/
• http://www.in.redhat.com/community/rhscholarship.php
• http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/bug_bounties_ar.html
• http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/awards/
• http://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/

Success stories

• http://blogmatrix.semantic.blogmatrix.com/:entry:blogmatrix-2006-06-19-0003/
• http://sc.tri-bit.com/dswfb
• http://www.fundable.org/groupactions/getpaid/

Cautionary

• http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/06/18/crowding-out-of-intrinsic-motivations-aka-the-bounty-problem/

About brain crack

“Brain crack” is a term coined by internet personality Ze Frank to describe the addictive nature of holding tightly onto ideas instead of sharing them. I’m at risk. I have lots of notes and ideas for side projects sitting around, and a very busy life and day job.

So this is the first in what I hope is an occasional series of posts designed to get these things out of my head (or, in this case, my private Trac) and out into the world. I’m just glad to be getting that brain crack monkey off my back.