Re: [talk] suggestion: redesign "sponsoring" page.

[Federico Bruni]

Il 10/11/2012 11:04, David Kastrup ha scritto:
> Federico Bruni<address@hidden>  writes:
> > I suggest putting a link to the list of bounties:
> > http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/list?can=2&q=label%3ABounty
>
> I think the idea of "Bounty" was pretty much retired.  I don't think any
> have been proposed in the last year, and it is very much questionable
> that any remaining listed bounties will be easily collectable.

Collecting money is an issue, I understand.  Maybe a developer who 
decides to work on a bounty feature could contact people who offered 
money and set some conditions before the work starts.

For example, I know that two developers (that I respect and trust) will 
probably work, in the coming months, on a feature really important for 
me.  I'd be happy to pay in advance and whatever the final results will 
be.  Which means: even if they won't be able to cover all the possible 
situations, I'd still be happy to see implemented all the basic features 
related to that area.


> I tried collecting on a number of "low-hanging" or not so low-hanging
> bounties probably a year ago or so, and it has been my experience that
> the process of trying to collect the bounties (even though I eventually
> managed to get about 75%) amounted to a disproportionate effort and,
> quite worse, was a major turnoff.  It turns out that even a bounty of
> €25 or similar throws many people into "bill-paying" mode where they
> question every achievement by default, delay payment until they have
> have found time and leisure to corroborate that the stuff does what they
> think they wanted to have (partly different from what they specified
> they wanted to have) when they were still using LilyPond etc etc.

That's sad..
Well, keeping this experience in mind, you might consider trying to work 
again on a bounty and ask people to accept your conditions before 
starting to work on it.  If they accept it, fine; otherwise, it's ok 
anyway, at least you've tried.

> So it has been at least my experience that with regard to the balance of
> motivating and demotivating experiences, the bounty system was not
> working out.  I'd recommend against linking to the remaining bounties.

I think that any user will be happier to invest some money on a specific 
feature he/she really wants rather than on "general development".
Why wasting this opportunity?