= Introduction =

Many OSS projects have developer bounty systems:

 * freeswitch
 * pfSense
 * Funambol

Here are a few links to bounty discussions elsewhere:

 * http://live.gnome.org/BountiesDiscussion lists some interesting thoughts.
 * http://nextsprocket.com/ looks like a relatively active site for opensource bounties in general.
 * https://www.bountysource.com/ 

= Origin of the idea =

This idea originated from ecrist and was discussed first in an IRC meeting. It was discussed on the -devel mailinglist soon afterwards:

 * http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.openvpn.devel/3707

= Summary =

Here is a summary of the ideas formed in the IRC meeting and the email exchange that followed.




 * '''Rationale'''
  * Would allow users to prioritize feature additions through compensation.
  * Would help achieve greater interest of developers in users' requests and needs.

 * '''Implementation ideas'''
  * Bounty funds would be setup and maintained by a non-developer (ecrist?) and held.  This assures payment upon completion and assures feature is completed before bounty is paid.
  * Multiple users could fund a bounty for intensive feature additions which may warrant higher payouts.
  * Developers setup up accounts and 'claim' tasks
  * After a specific timeout a task becomes available to another user, unless progress can be shown
  * Payment could be divided into multiple phases to motivate developers to maintain the code they've written. For example:
   * 50% payout for a commit to main tree
   * 25% upon release in production (provided bugs are fixed/etc)
   * 25% 6 months after release (provided bugs are fixed/etc)
  * The above would also guarantee the quality of the code
  * Handling monetary transactions
   * Could be handled through an external foundation / organization (e.g. http://www.spi-inc.org/projects)
   * We could establish our own foundation for the purpose
  * Licensing and copyright