[HN Gopher] Show HN: Rysolv - Fix open source issues, get paid
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       Show HN: Rysolv - Fix open source issues, get paid
        
       Author : themanmaran
       Score  : 231 points
       Date   : 2021-01-23 03:14 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rysolv.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rysolv.com)
        
       | m3nu wrote:
       | I'm afraid that those bounty programs may create an expectation
       | that all contributions need to be paid. If someone makes unpaid
       | high-quality contributions for a long time and then sees someone
       | else being paid for a minor fix, it will leave a sour taste.
       | 
       | On one of my own projects someone randomly added a bounty to an
       | issue that was mostly an upstream issue. Of course the original
       | poster had good intentions, but didn't fully understand this.
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | _I 'm afraid that those bounty programs may create an
         | expectation that all contributions need to be paid._
         | 
         | Why would that be a bad thing? Contributors _should_ be getting
         | paid.
        
         | canofbars wrote:
         | I can't imagine it working too well anyway. Valuable work isn't
         | done by drive by contributions very often. It usually takes
         | someone a very long time to become familiar with the project.
         | The first few contributions are likely wasting the maintainers
         | time but over time they become valuable contributors.
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | > over time they become valuable contributors
           | 
           | That's the hope is to bring some more people into OS
           | contributions who haven't tried it out before.
           | 
           | I have funded a couple issues at like $25 that were marked
           | "Good First Issue". And I've had people reach out saying they
           | were excited to have done their first pull request.
        
       | fesc wrote:
       | If I tap on an issue to view its details and then go back to the
       | results I am always at the first page and not where I left off.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Good catch! I went ahead and raised and issue for this:
         | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/18
        
       | themanmaran wrote:
       | Anyone can import an issue to the site and contribute towards the
       | bounty. Whoever submits a pull request closing out the issue
       | earns the bounty.
       | 
       | My main goal is to bring some more support into open source
       | development, and to encourage new people to contribute to
       | projects.
       | 
       | Would love to hear any feedback on the site, or bugs you find!
        
         | stephenr wrote:
         | What happens if someone "imports an issue" for a project you've
         | never dealt with before, and contributes funds to the "cause",
         | and then someone commits a fix for it, but you have no prior
         | engagement with that person?
         | 
         | i.e. How does this not become the Brave issue all over again:
         | taking funds from people without a confirmed way to pass those
         | funds on to the person they _think_ it 's going to.
        
           | em-bee wrote:
           | wouldn't the funds go to a developer that signs up at rysolv
           | and fixes problems, and not to a project that doesn't want
           | the money?
        
             | stephenr wrote:
             | The person who submitted the story, and ostensibly setup
             | the site, said this in the comment I replied to:
             | 
             | > Anyone can import an issue to the site and contribute
             | towards the bounty. Whoever submits a pull request closing
             | out the issue earns the bounty.
             | 
             | Imagine this scenario:
             | 
             | John files an issue on Project Foo, submits that issue to
             | Rysolv, and pays some money to "contribute" to getting it
             | fixed.
             | 
             | Joan sees the issue filed on Project Foo's issue tracker,
             | and submits a patch.
             | 
             | According to the statement from the parent comment I
             | replied to, that money would be paid to Joan. But Joan has
             | no existing relationship with Rysolv, and thus they have no
             | way to pay her for the fix.
             | 
             | So what happens to that money?
        
               | slaymaker1907 wrote:
               | That's an important detail, but in practice probably not
               | too bad. Might need some sort of third party separate
               | from Rysolv to hold funds until they either contact Joan
               | or hit some sort of expiry date.
               | 
               | The bigger question is how do you handle disputes. Who
               | decides that the issue is actually resolved? What if the
               | fix involves multiple people?
        
               | stephenr wrote:
               | Disputes and shares are definitely a problem too.
               | 
               | But "you took my money where did it go" is without doubt
               | a bigger problem - Brave had essentially the same issue,
               | and (rightfully) received a lot of shit for it.
               | 
               | If you don't have a confirmed contact/way to transfer
               | funds, claiming to collect on their behalf is bordering
               | on fraud IMO.
        
               | themanmaran wrote:
               | So far it hasn't been an issue. Even when people aren't
               | on the platform, they usually respond to the "Hey I want
               | to send you $50 email".
               | 
               | But this could definitely be a problem if the site grows
               | and I don't have enough time to track down people.
               | 
               | Another suggestion I've had for abandoned funds is to
               | redistribute across the repo. i.e. A $100 issue for OBS
               | was closed/abandoned/etc, so the $100 is split and the
               | remaining OBS issues get $100/n added to the bounty.
        
               | em-bee wrote:
               | it should remain in john's account at rysolv so he can
               | contribute it towards a different issue.
               | 
               | rysolv is holding money to solve a particular issue,
               | until that money is claimed. if the issue is never
               | solved, the money won't be claimed either. the problem
               | what happens with the money is the same as if the issue
               | is solved without anyone claiming it.
               | 
               | so presumably there needs to be a process for unclaimed
               | money regardless.
               | 
               | brave was collecting money to give to the project as a
               | whole for work already done. they didn't expect that it
               | would be rejected or remain unclaimed.
        
               | paulryanrogers wrote:
               | Many states have escheatment laws about this. So those
               | may complicate their plans if they're planning to make
               | interest off funds in limbo.
        
         | jrsala wrote:
         | Hi, good-looking site, I hope this works out!
         | 
         | Adding to this [1] bug report, when I change pages using the
         | numbered buttons at the bottom of the issues listing and then
         | press the Back button of my browser it takes me back to HN.
         | Navigating back should instead take me back to the previous-
         | numbered page of the issues list.
         | 
         | For usability, please also consider not requiring people to
         | scroll to the bottom of the listing to change pages.
         | 
         | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881867
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | Thanks for the head's up. I just raised an issue for this:
           | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/18
        
         | rebuilder wrote:
         | I think this is inherently limited to small, low-effort issues,
         | for a number of reasons.
         | 
         | If I was to set a bounty for an issue that would be laborious
         | and therefore expensive to fix, I'd want to be able to withdraw
         | my funding in case the issue does not get fixed in a reasonable
         | amount of time. Leaving money tied up on the service
         | indefinitely is not really an option when you start talking
         | about the kind of money that would actually motivate someone to
         | do a lot of work.
         | 
         | This creates a problem where it's really risky for a developer
         | to take on any hard problems. If funds can be pulled at any
         | time, you might not get paid. Also, of course, there's
         | duplication of effort- someone might beat you to closing the
         | issue, meaning you get nothing and have wasted your time.
         | 
         | This, in turn, means that pricing on the service must be very
         | high to account for the risks of non-payment, or be so low as
         | to be insignificant.
         | 
         | There are some mitigation strategies available. Funding could
         | have an end date, after which the funds are returned to the
         | funder. This still leaves the issue of parallel effort, which
         | seems harder to solve. Preregistering to close an issue by some
         | deadline might work, but likely would result in a lot of issues
         | going unsolved, and now you need some kind of ranking system
         | for developers on the service...
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | > Leaving money tied up on the service indefinitely is not
           | really an option when you start talking about the kind of
           | money that would actually motivate someone to do a lot of
           | work.
           | 
           | This is something that I've been going back and forth on for
           | a while. I've considered having the money be a 'pledge' like
           | Kickstarter. Where people pledge the funds and pay out when
           | the issue gets resolved.
           | 
           | But that can add some technical concerns (keeping track of
           | peoples bank details to charge them) as well as less
           | assurance that the developer will get paid.
           | 
           | And I especially don't want to have a platform where a
           | developer puts in the work and doesn't earn the bounty.
           | 
           | Parallel effort is another tricky one to solve. And I see it
           | all the time even without funding involved. Someone comments
           | that they're working on an issue, and then everyone else
           | drops it for 6 months only to realize that person dropped it
           | too.
           | 
           | I think that splitting bounties could be a good solution.
           | Have multiple people contribute towards a branch, and the
           | funding gets distributed evenly.
        
           | CameronNemo wrote:
           | Ideally parallel effort could be rewarded and combined. Have
           | frequent communication between requestors and aspiring
           | resolvers. The requestor could release a portion of the funds
           | in exchange for the two developers publishing their wip and
           | exchanging ideas. Both would get paid.
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | I had nearly the same idea a while ago, made some notes and
         | collected links to others, never built anything. I'm glad to
         | see another, this looks awesome and congratulations.
        
         | grncdr wrote:
         | There are a couple of things missing from your "how it works":
         | 
         | - Please clarify what happens to funds when a bounty isn't
         | claimed. - Is it possible to retract funding? - As another
         | commenter pointed out, what about situations where the involved
         | parties would rather _not_ use Rysolv? If a funded issue is
         | closed, what happens next?
         | 
         | Also it would be nice if I could fund in EUR.
         | 
         | Concretely, I wanted to list https://github.com/grncdr/otssh/
         | on there. I'm offering 500 EUR for the creation of a fairly
         | simple program, but I want to know what happens to my money
         | before in the above situations before handing it over to
         | Rysolv.
        
           | alexchamberlain wrote:
           | Out of curiosity, what's the use case for such a one time
           | shell?
        
             | grncdr wrote:
             | I just added a section to the README about this, but my
             | main use case is admin access to shells inside of
             | containers run in managed environments where `docker exec`
             | (or `kubectl exec`) is not available.
        
         | Zababa wrote:
         | It's a great idea, the site looks nice and works as expected!
         | However, I see that some people have "credit", and I fail to
         | understand how they work. They're not mentioned in the "Start
         | Here" [0] page.
         | 
         | [0]: https://rysolv.com/how-to
        
         | cheeseblubber wrote:
         | Thanks for building this! Love this version I think this would
         | work great for making and fixing bugs. I think automated tests
         | and chores as a category would actually be great to add to
         | this.
         | 
         | For our open source project (https://github.com/papercups-
         | io/papercups). We participated in hacktoberfest recently and
         | one problem we ran into is people submitting low quality PRs.
         | Which ends up taking up way more time to review than to merge.
         | 
         | I would love to be able to filter by users who have merged
         | multiple issues or some sort of quality bar for our bounties.
         | Obviously since you are just starting out your users won't have
         | too many issues merged. You might be able to work around this
         | by finding the number of Github issues an author have merged
         | previously to any projects that is greater than x number of
         | stars. This way you might be able to bootstrap some credibility
         | of the authors. Then a open source maintainer can gate on only
         | allowing some reputable contributors.
         | 
         | One inspiration I would recommend is taking a look at how
         | 99designs has different tiers of designers you can have a
         | bounty for your design. If you could build 99design for open
         | project that would be amazing. Best of Luck!
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | Thanks for the feedback! Right now we have a PR breakdown on
           | the user overview (Completed/Rejected). So that could be a
           | good judge of quality. And I could see pulling in stats from
           | Github (i.e. 'this user has contributed to 25 projects').
           | 
           | But I wouldn't necessarily want to block new developers from
           | being able to contribute to a project. I think it would be
           | best to have anyone able to contribute, but perhaps a flag on
           | the project owner side to see that user's rating.
        
           | lathiat wrote:
           | This is reminiscing of the reputation on some of the bug
           | bounty platforms. Like all good things it's not straight
           | forward though, just because a PR is rejected or even if the
           | project thinks it's low quality is not 100% directly related
           | to it actually being low quality.
           | 
           | Never the less something like this is likely needed. With
           | reference to the digital ocean free shirt pull request saga
           | :)
        
             | cheeseblubber wrote:
             | Oh yes I would love it if we can post swag bounties
        
           | bartvk wrote:
           | > great for making and fixing bugs
           | 
           | Are you joking here, or do you literally mean, that (besides
           | fixing) this would cause bugs? I hadn't thought about that.
           | 
           | > Obviously since you are just starting out your users won't
           | have too many issues merged
           | 
           | Sponsors may very well be looking for a temporary fix,
           | something that can last them a year, or one project. No
           | credibility necessary, just a fix.
           | 
           | Not really a problem, though; a sponsor can fork on Github,
           | then put a bounty and accept the PR even though upstream
           | would never merge it.
        
         | bambax wrote:
         | I think this is a fantastic idea and much needed, but it will
         | be difficult to make it work, for reasons mentioned in other
         | comments.
         | 
         | Also, is it limited to GitHub? There are a few bugs in Firefox
         | that I would pay to see fixed but AFAIK FF dev isn't on GitHub
         | for example.
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | Limited to Github right now. But planning Gitlab support
           | soon. Just wanted to really finish out the integration logic
           | with the Github API before porting it over to Gitlab.
        
       | pabs3 wrote:
       | Some more open source bounties sites:
       | 
       | https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#bounties
        
       | prepperdev wrote:
       | First of all, kudos for trying to find new ways to fund open
       | source. Those are needed.
       | 
       | This approach might work well for issues which require a lot of
       | thought, but produce a simple fix and can be easily merged
       | 
       | This might go horribly wrong if outside contributors try to
       | implement a major feature to a project which they don't have a
       | good mental model for, produce a large patch that may get
       | rejected by maintainers, or end up being rewritten-by-code-
       | review, which would cost such maintainers more time than if they
       | implemented the feature in the first place.
       | 
       | It would be interesting to follow!
        
         | waheoo wrote:
         | Got to start somewhere, remember that you can always specialise
         | on a project and pick up repeat work.
         | 
         | You could gatekeep certain jobs to certain experience levels as
         | well.
         | 
         | I agree this will be interesting to follow.
        
       | jonas_kgomo wrote:
       | Gitcoin has been doing this for a while now, crypto has had
       | success in this model. There hasn't been a lot of success with
       | fiat platforms like bountysource.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | And I'm interested to see why. Perhaps crypto people are just
         | more willing to part with money, since bits are less tangible
         | than tangible as cash?
         | 
         | I didn't discover bountysource until after starting on rysolv.
         | But from their stats page you can really see the rise and fall
         | of contributions on their platform.
         | 
         | They've been acquired a couple times. And I wonder if issues
         | came from changing ownership / poor marketing. Or if OS funding
         | is just inherently unprofitable.
        
       | Macha wrote:
       | It does not require consent of the repository owner:
       | https://rysolv.com/issues/detail/0c32204b-018e-4e55-b043-0fa...
       | 
       | This has caused serious contention over similar projects in the
       | past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969
        
       | raxrb wrote:
       | Great product and amazing UI. Congrats on shipping. You might
       | draw some lessons from the Codemill
       | https://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/03/14/codemill-monetizing-git...
        
       | systemvoltage wrote:
       | "Dude, you should checkout Rysolv, its a cool service!".
       | 
       | "What's it called again, doesn't show up on Google."
       | 
       | "It's spelled Rysolv".
       | 
       | "WHAT!??"
       | 
       | "R Y S O L V".
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Sorry, but I have always found names of this sorts bad for all
       | kinds of ways. IMO the way you say it and the way you spell it
       | should be relatively obvious. Ofcourse there are exceptions like
       | Lift..ggrr..Lyft. To be fair, its quite difficult to satisfy all
       | aspects of a company name. You can't Kodak like the old days!
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | Ad prices for "resolve" targeting developers are pretty cheap,
         | so getting to the top of the results page will be simple. This
         | is how SEO works now.
        
         | adgezaza wrote:
         | Maybe call or, "Openly Pay"?
        
         | neilsense wrote:
         | The conversation would happen over iMessage or Twitter DM and
         | the first message would come with a link.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | On the other hand searching for xkcd is very easy, searching
         | for resolve (or even resolv) would take more searching skills.
         | 
         | EDIT: actually, searching for rysolv -> resolve :)
        
           | canofbars wrote:
           | I didn't even realize it was a play on resolve. I was reading
           | it as rye-solve
        
           | systemvoltage wrote:
           | True! I would guess that was the original motivation from the
           | author - to make it unique, short and be able to purchase a
           | .com domain name.
        
           | Addono wrote:
           | Ran into the same issue when naming our startup ClaimR,
           | searching for the name on Google would indeed give a
           | suggestion "Did you mean 'claim'" and completely tank our
           | SEO.
           | 
           | Although ~9 months after launching the site it stopped giving
           | this hint. Not completely sure what changed it, although in
           | the meantime we added the domain to the Google Search Console
           | and incorporated.
        
         | corty wrote:
         | Learn German, we have more vowels!
        
         | mbg721 wrote:
         | It doesn't show up on Googol?
        
         | bartvk wrote:
         | Even if you think it's important, it's not equally important
         | for all names. In this case I dare say that this project is
         | going to be typed about more, rather than talked about.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Preaching to the choir lol. I've always hated tech companies
         | with misspelled names. Lyft, KoFi, Flickr, etc.
         | 
         | But the .com domain was $9.00! And that was enough for me.
         | 
         | Also your comment is now the #3 result when I google "rysolv".
         | Congratulations!
        
         | StavrosK wrote:
         | > You can't Kodak like the old days!
         | 
         | What do you mean "you can't codec"?
        
       | switchstance wrote:
       | This goes against Daniel Pink's analysis, in his book Drive, of
       | why people contribute to open source software.
       | 
       | They contribute to be a part of something, for the actual
       | process, to up their skills, etc.
       | 
       | Though, this is perhaps the very reason open source issues go
       | unfixed. I'm curious to see if this works.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | > I'm curious to see if this works Same here! And I can see an
         | inverse effect as well. People willing to work for free on a
         | project, who aren't as willing to work for $50.
         | 
         | But I think often times the bounties will go to the people who
         | are already maintaining the project. Who likely would have
         | resolved the issue anyways.
         | 
         | And rather than a ton of people commenting "same" on an open
         | issue. They could chip in a couple dollars and support the
         | developers.
        
       | swalsh wrote:
       | Eventually a system like this will succeed at getting some kind
       | of scale. When that does happen, the smart devs will write tools
       | that search for common issues in open source repositories, that
       | also have bounties. You apply 1 code fix to 100 repositories, and
       | that $80 bounty (x100) becomes an $8000 bounty.
       | 
       | The result of that is that the easy stuff with a known fix will
       | always be prioritized, and the hard stuff that require real
       | engineering time will never be fixed.
        
       | gopaz wrote:
       | Wants a bit mucky much permissions from GitHub;
       | 
       | Personal user data Full access This application will be able to
       | read and write all user data. This includes the following:
       | 
       | Private email addresses Private profile information Followers
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Totally agreed. And this is a really weird default behavior in
         | the Github Oauth 2.0. There's an issue raised for it and I'll
         | try to get a fix in this week.
         | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/15
        
       | Abishek_Muthian wrote:
       | Congratulations OP. Is the USP same as
       | https://www.bountysource.com/ ? Or are you addressing a need gap
       | in it?
       | 
       | Also I'm tracking the problem of 'Monetizing open-source
       | projects'[1] at needgap and I'd like to mention Rysolv in it.
       | 
       | [1]https://needgap.com/problems/80-monetizing-open-source-
       | proje... (Disclaimer: It's a problem validation platform I
       | created).
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | > bountysource Very similar proposition to bountysource. But
         | ideally with better execution. They've got a great stats page.
         | But you can see a pretty sharp decline in their contributions
         | since ~2016. They've changed management a few times, and I
         | wonder if that's contributed to the the decline.
         | 
         | > addressing a need gap Immediately, no. But rysolv is ~2
         | months old right now. And I'm still building every day.
         | 
         | A few things I'd like to add: - First time only: accepted
         | bounties only if it's the users first PR - Projects:
         | Kickstarter approach for new projects. Pitch an idea and have
         | people crowdfund it. - Gitlab support
         | 
         | > mention Rysolv Sure! Go ahead. And feel free to give me a
         | ping if you want any additional info on the site.
         | (tyler@rysolv.com)
        
       | devwastaken wrote:
       | For anyone game multiplayer savvy there's a mod for Skyrim called
       | Skyrim Together, the old version is closed source but a new one
       | on github is open and has some well funded issues from their
       | patreon.
       | 
       | The creator essentially stepped down from a development position
       | but their patreon still makes money, so may be some opportunities
       | there.
       | 
       | https://github.com/tiltedphoques/TiltedOnline
        
       | littlestymaar wrote:
       | When I see this kind of bounty for open source projects, I
       | immediately think of this psychology anecdote: when you tip
       | people to give their blood or sperm, the number of donor goes
       | down, not up. Why? Because you don't really pay them, it's too
       | low to matter and never covers the time spent anyway (even at the
       | minimum wage). Yet, now people are not giving it, it became part
       | of a transaction and it completely changes how the reward
       | mechanism in the brain is stimulated: when giving, you're proud
       | of yourself for giving, when in a transaction, the amount
       | matters.
       | 
       | In order to have a net positive effect, such a program would need
       | to be able to generate an income, not necessarily a engineer
       | market-level one (because you could have students working on
       | this) but at least something above the minimum wage[1], not just
       | tips.
       | 
       | [1]: and at this level, you'd still not attract more affluent
       | kids who don't need a job.
        
         | m12k wrote:
         | The book Predictably Irrational has a great section about this.
         | Basically we have a "market" way of thinking and a
         | "social/gift" way of thinking about goods. When something is
         | free we think of it in the latter way, when it's not, we use
         | the market mindset. And the transition can be jarring - say
         | you're selling cookies. If you lower the price, people buy more
         | cookies. Lower it a lot to, say $.01 per cookie and people will
         | buy all of them. Then lower it all the way to free and people
         | will suddenly take fewer again. Why? Because when you buy all
         | the cookies at $.01 you're a shrewd merchant, but when you take
         | all the free cookies, you're the asshole who took all the free
         | cookies, so there's none left for everyone else. It's two
         | different mindsets, leading to a discontinuity in the supply
         | and demand graph.
        
           | xeromal wrote:
           | Is the book worth reading?
        
             | m12k wrote:
             | I'd say so - it's a very accessible introduction to
             | behavioral economics. Similarly, "Stumbling on Happiness"
             | is an easy introduction to the psychology of happiness, but
             | also tells you a lot about perception, memory and decision-
             | making, and the illusions and biases we have. And finally
             | "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a slightly deeper and longer
             | but still accessible book that digs into the details about
             | how many of the biases we have (that the other books talk
             | about) arise due to the interplay between the conscious and
             | unconscious parts of our brains - it felt like a deeper
             | explanation, but I'm glad I read after reading about most
             | of the biases before in the "lighter" books.
        
               | xeromal wrote:
               | Thank you so much for the reply. I'm gonna check all
               | these out but I'll start with Predictably Irrational.
               | Have a good one!
        
           | bambax wrote:
           | Yes, there are also related examples of this in some of
           | Ariely's books. If you introduce a fine for showing up late
           | at daycare the number of late people and the average lateness
           | goes up, not down, because then people are "buying" the right
           | to be late for example.
        
             | dash2 wrote:
             | There were some issues with the paper you're citing ("A
             | fine is a price"). I believe a grad student wanted to
             | replicate their analyses and they told him the data had
             | been lost, which is pretty weird. I wonder if anyone has
             | replicated the experiment.
        
             | faeyanpiraat wrote:
             | Or maybe if you do not have a specified fine, then in the
             | heads of people there is still a "virtual fine" associated
             | with being late, but it is not an exact number, but a wide
             | range, and people tend to predict all kinds of bad things
             | that would happen (but 99% of times it wont happen), so the
             | fear of an unknown punishment is higher than a known one.
        
               | bambax wrote:
               | Intuitively the present value of punishment is amount of
               | punishment x probability of getting it, and if the second
               | term is nil then so is the punishment; but according to
               | many studies I believe the amount of punishment is much
               | less important and being caught is what matters.
        
         | z3t4 wrote:
         | Then we get the "problem" that many people want to do the job
         | and you have to choose which one does it.
        
         | plif wrote:
         | > In order to have a net positive effect, such a program would
         | need to be able to generate an income, not necessarily a
         | engineer market-level one (because you could have students
         | working on this) but at least something above the minimum
         | wage[1], not just tips.
         | 
         | The pay scale is going to be tough. Looking quickly through the
         | top bounties, none of them are really student level. Issues
         | that are truly good for beginners or someone unfamiliar with
         | the codebase in any moderately popular open source project
         | usually get scooped up immediately for resume building.
         | 
         | I can see this as being useful for abandoned projects, or as a
         | way to promote something new. It's a much better signal that
         | the ticket is actually meaningful and impactful than a GitHub
         | tag.
         | 
         | Whether that is enough to get past psychological barriers
         | behind transactions, I don't know. I do like the "buy the
         | author a coffee or two" mentality of support, which I think
         | does remove some of the transaction aspect of it. Not sure if
         | this is what Rysolv was going for -- it feels a bit more
         | formal.
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | > students
           | 
           | I have funded a couple issues at like $25 that were marked
           | "Good First Issue". And I had a couple people reach out
           | saying they were excited to have done their first pull
           | request.
           | 
           | So I think that even with small bounties, rysolv can have the
           | positive affect of introducing more people into OS
           | contributing.
           | 
           | And if the site ends up making money, I think there should
           | always be a list of "First Time Only" issues.
        
         | billfruit wrote:
         | The amount might make a decent difference esp, if you come from
         | a 3rd world country.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | > Spend a week working on this issue for free? No problem! I
         | love to contribute to software I use.
         | 
         | > Spend a week working on this issue for $50? No way! I'd never
         | work for so little.
         | 
         | I can certainly see it having this affect. And hopefully there
         | will be ways to mitigate it. But I don't see any harm in trying
         | to bring some additional funding into OSS development.
         | 
         | Also I feel like it would be nice supplemental income for sole
         | maintainers, who would likely be tackling these issues anyway.
        
         | xwdv wrote:
         | Paying bounties for people to fix issues removes the altruistic
         | aspect of being a generous open source contributor. Instead it
         | makes you seem like a money grubbing bastard that's hard up for
         | cash.
        
       | itamarst wrote:
       | I do some consulting where I'm paid to fix specific bugs / add
       | specific features to various open source projects, often in
       | Python data science world. Usually it goes something like:
       | 
       | 1. Figure out what the project's contribution guidelines are.
       | 
       | 2. Check out code, figure out how to build it and run tests.
       | 
       | 3. If it's a complex task, might want to build some credibility
       | with maintainers first, so might contribute tiny fix first.
       | 
       | 4. If it's a complex task, try to engage maintainers to see if
       | they'll accept it, and to get hints on how to approach it. They
       | may be hard to reach, so this might take a few days or a couple
       | of weeks, though I'm not working during that time, it's just
       | delay.
       | 
       | 5. Do the actual work.
       | 
       | 6. Go through whatever code review process. Sometimes I might
       | need to gently ask for reviews if it sits for too long.
       | 
       | $80 total for all the above is laughable. And to be fair I ask
       | for a good amount of money because I am good at what I do, and
       | there are people who live in much cheaper places than Boston area
       | and could charge less.
       | 
       | For $80, you'd have to both have an extremely low cost of living
       | and already be an expert on the project for this to be in any way
       | worthwhile.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Consider that steps 1-3 may often be skipped, since it will
         | usually be the existing maintainers who are resolving issues.
         | 
         | And given that they will likely be fixing the issues at some
         | point anyway, it could just be another bit of supplemental
         | income. As well as give them an idea of what issues people are
         | struggling with the most.
         | 
         | I think it's unlikely that rysolv bounties will ever pay an
         | engineers salary. But I see so many projects with thousands of
         | download get like $4 / month on Open Collective. And I figure I
         | could at least beat that.
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | Some of them pay $0.00. There should be a minimum amount. Then...
       | 
       | 1) Rewards at this moment do not seem very high, but I can see
       | that improving over time.
       | 
       | 2) There are multiple people competing to complete the same tasks
       | as you.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | I've been struggling with this concept for a while and I'm not
         | sure would be best. I want to allow people to raise and issue,
         | and then crowdfund a bounty for it. And I think that adding a
         | minimum dollar amount would limit people posting new issues.
         | 
         | But I also don't want the site filled up with $0.00 issues.
         | 
         | If anything, I may do a small minimum. Like $5, so that way
         | every issue has some value to it.
         | 
         | And for #2: I'd like to add in some collaboration features so
         | people could split the bounty if they both worked on the
         | solution.
        
           | 29athrowaway wrote:
           | Some ideas:
           | 
           | - Listing those issues separately.
           | 
           | - Make posts without funding last a limited amount of time.
        
       | RickJWagner wrote:
       | Reminds me of Lyfevest.
       | 
       | https://lyfevest.io/
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tylerjwilk00 wrote:
       | Cool project!
       | 
       | Feedback: Please reduce the range of your price filter. All the
       | bounties are under the $500 range. This makes the range slider
       | pointless beyond the first 1%. On a mobile device it's near
       | impossible to select a meaningful range that returns results.
       | 
       | Solution: Make the upper bound max value a dynamic variable of
       | the current highest bounty with some padding and rounding up to a
       | nice number.
       | 
       | U=ceil(M+N)
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | The filter component is a bit optimistic lol.
         | 
         | It also has a hardcoded list of languages that totally don't
         | exist on the site. I went ahead and raised an issue for this.
         | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/19
         | 
         | Thanks for the feedback!
        
       | runako wrote:
       | I'm curious how/if this can handle sponsor theft. The mechanism:
       | someone posts an issue and puts a bounty on it. A working fix is
       | imported by a developer. The sponsor then grabs the diff and
       | applies it to their own private fork of the code.
       | 
       | Most open source bugs never get fixed (or get fixed slowly), and
       | this project would select further for issues that are not already
       | being addressed for whatever reason. So it's not unreasonable to
       | think that many PRs would not be merged inside 6 months, even if
       | they are valid fixes. (Raise your hand if you've ever contributed
       | a PR to an OSS project and had it linger for > 6 months.)
       | 
       | That risk, plus the low bounties identified by other posters
       | here, seem very tough to overcome.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Well luckily git has timestamps. And we have a manual approval
         | step before bounties are paid out.
         | 
         | So the original developer would have to raise a dispute
         | somewhere (issue, email, etc.) and I could go through the
         | commit history to see who wrote the code originally.
         | 
         | Although I think that would be an extreme edge case. Especially
         | with a low bounty. I don't think it's worth the effort of
         | ripping off another contributor.
         | 
         | And if the bounty was like $10,000. I would pay a lot more
         | attention to the solution before sending out the money.
        
       | newbie789 wrote:
       | So this works as a kind of escrow?
       | 
       | How are refunds handled if a bug is never fixed?
       | 
       | The 10% cut is kept either way?
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Yup. Rysolv holds the funds and then distributes when the issue
         | is resolved.
         | 
         | Right now, if an issue isn't fixed after 6 months, the bounty
         | can be refunded to the user. But I'm still exploring better
         | ways for this to work out.
         | 
         | Since other sites have run into issues where they refund money
         | to a user's account, and then it sits in limbo forever because
         | the user forgot about it.
         | 
         | I've contemplated instead of refunding the bounty, having the
         | funds move into a repo account that get's distributed among
         | other issues for that repo.
         | 
         | i.e. and issue for OBS with $100 was closed and not solved. So
         | all the other OBS bounties will have an extra $100 / n added to
         | them
        
       | InitialBP wrote:
       | When logging in with a Github account this application requests
       | Read and Write permission to the following:
       | 
       | Private email address
       | 
       | Private profile information
       | 
       | Followers
       | 
       | Looks like a cool application but I have no idea why you would
       | need write access to any of the above.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | This is totally an unintended consequence of the Github Oauth
         | 2.0 setup. And I'm working on changing the authentication setup
         | to avoid this. Since we really only need to read the username
         | and email address.
         | 
         | There's an open issue for it, and I'll try to get to it in the
         | next week.
         | 
         | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/15
        
       | jokethrowaway wrote:
       | I'm not a fan of OSS development as it's unfair to creators
       | (which are rarely remunerated for their time, minus a few
       | exceptional individuals who can survive of donations) but I
       | really appreciate the idea behind it: this is providing a way for
       | a developer to earn money without subscribing to the usual
       | employee bullcrap dance or the usual contractor sales bullcrap.
       | The closest thing I can think of are security bug bounty but
       | companies are not really reliable with the way they reward
       | issues, not to mention getting closed as duplicate or just
       | waiting forever because they have half engineer dealing with
       | security.
       | 
       | That said, I think we need a mechanism to assign an issue to a
       | developer on rysolv, so that if someone outside of the
       | maintainers fixes the issue in a way that is considered
       | acceptable by the provider of funds, it can be closed and the
       | developer rewarded.
       | 
       | I have had PRs open on OSS projects for 5 years, just one merge
       | away from delivering value, just because tons of OSS projects are
       | not maintained. Other times maintainers are just not willing to
       | share responsibility with others (and I doubt it will be much
       | better with money), forcing you to fork their project or wait
       | forever.
       | 
       | This would also solve the issue of waiting forever for a fix
       | without being able to unpledge the money: there's someone
       | assigned to the issue you can ping about status or terminate.
       | 
       | Best of luck
        
       | knz42 wrote:
       | How does this compare to https://onlysponsors.dev/ ?
       | 
       | HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25882021
        
       | Gys wrote:
       | I like it.
       | 
       | > If an issue remains open for more than 6 months, a user may
       | request their contributions be refunded to their account.
       | 
       | I think there should be a lot more to this. Like having a choice
       | how long my bounty can stay up (in months maybe, minimum 6).
       | Receive an email after that time to remind me. Show in each issue
       | how much of the bounty is up for how much longer for sure.
       | 
       | Add an RSS feed and weekly newsletter where I can subscribe to
       | see new additions for a specific language.
       | 
       | It is not clear who is holding the bounties while waiting for
       | issues to be resolved? It is not clear what fees are involved?
       | How is this platform financed?
       | 
       | I also suggest you add the faq link to the header ;)
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback. I went ahead and opened an issue to
         | pull together some better detail in the FAQ:
         | https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv/issues/20
         | 
         | > RSS, Newsletter Definitely something we want to pull
         | together. And I think it would be a great way to keep people
         | engaged on the site.
         | 
         | Something like: "10 new Python bounties posted this week" based
         | on what languages people choose.
        
       | amirathi wrote:
       | This is great. Other comments here are underestimating the power
       | of a group. An average bounty on an issue might just be between
       | $10-$100 but there can easily be 50 people putting up a bounty
       | for a popular issue (have you seen issues with hundreads of
       | upvotes and are still open for years). If we start seeing
       | (collective) bounty on an issue in the range of a few thousand $$
       | then it's decent money for maintainers or anyone else who's
       | motivated enough.
       | 
       | My guess is this is eventually going to be built into GitHub (via
       | acquisition or otherwise).
        
         | khalilravanna wrote:
         | Was just thinking the same thing on the "built into GitHub"
         | thing. Being able to easily see the current bounty directly in
         | GitHub and donate $10 to the bounty with one click I imagine
         | would make adoption blow up.
        
           | tpetry wrote:
           | Yeah and now extend this idea to start a bounty of 100$ for
           | the maintainer of a library/framework to merge your pull
           | request, completely new ways for open sources projects to be
           | paid for their hard work.
        
         | dash2 wrote:
         | Open source is a public good, which means open source bugfixing
         | is likely to be undersupplied by private demand. I think this
         | needs a kickstarter-like way for groups of people to
         | "contribute only if others also do so".
        
           | themanmaran wrote:
           | The kickstarter approach is something I've been thinking
           | about a lot lately. Since people are much more likely to
           | pledge funds than to give cash.
           | 
           | Since there is the chance that the money gets refunded,
           | people are willing to up the contribution.
        
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