track Bountysource

[chadwhitacre]

Bountysource started directly competing with us last spring, with the release of "Salt." It's been growing steadily since. Before, Bountysource just did the bounty model. But, while we've had the wind totally knocked out of us by the Balanced shutdown, Bountysource has been gradually pivoting into the spot we once occupied alone: a "recurring crowdfunding platform to help developers earn their own salary from open-source."

Patreon swooped in and picked up content creators before we could blink.

Assembly showed up with an innovative revenue-sharing model, but eventually gave up.

This is the third time I've felt a fire in my belly, and I've come to recognize it as the :fire: of competition. If we ignore Bountysource, they're going to eat our lunch. Simple as that. In fact, it may already be too late. I don't know how this is supposed to work, because I've never gotten mixed up in serious business competition before. But ... when in doubt, make a ticket! :-)

[mattbk]

We have some things going for us:

• We don't take a cut.
• Donations start at $0.01.

What else?

[chadwhitacre]

@mattbk What do we not have going for us? That's what's going to get us burned here.

[chadwhitacre]

Clarity.

[mattbk]

• A shiny website?
• Progress bars (see attached)?
• Share links (see attached)?
• Clarity is true. I always get overwhelmed looking at sites like IndieGoGo that have so much going on, and that's what Salt looks like to me. Let teams focus on the copy on their own sites, not have to keep updating another site in order to make yourselves look active to receive funding.

[chadwhitacre]

I was thinking that Bountysource Salt has more clarity than us. Compare:

https://salt.bountysource.com/ (homepage!)

with:

https://gratipay.com/explore/teams/ (not even our homepage!)

[chadwhitacre]

We are casting the net wider than just open-source projects, which hurts us in that it dissipates our focus and makes us muddy. On the other hand, it means we get to have awesome hackerspaces as users! :-)

https://gratipay.com/catapultpgh/ https://gratipay.com/cyberpipe/ https://gratipay.com/sudo-room/ (and also https://gratipay.com/sudomesh/) https://gratipay.com/totalism-hackbase/

[chadwhitacre]

I'll also say something similar to what I said about Patreon a year ago: I'll cede to Bountysource when they:

• go fully open-source,
• implement https://gratipay.com/about/features/payroll,
• and fund themselves on themselves.

[techtonik]

Replacing all the text with datavis is definitely a good direction.

And I think that there is no competition. Gratipay - it is not about bounties and competition. It is about designing Open Source Economy of Gratitude, and that means that we need to make a step further than just collecting the stuff for living. Without doubts, but.. let me create a ticket.

[mattbk]

It's interesting to see @whit537 stepping toward competition and away from what you posted, @techtonik.

As Funkadelic say, "free your mind and your ass will follow."

[chadwhitacre]

Via the latest Changelog newsletter:

[mattbk]

I think we should focus on sustainable funding, not total collected.

[chadwhitacre]

/me changes the ticket title to be more honest.

[chadwhitacre]

Bringing this over from https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/312#issuecomment-133207889:

[chadwhitacre]

SIX STRATEGIES TO COMPETE IN BUSINESS

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+you+compete+in+business

[webmaven]

Simon Wardley is the most sophisticated thinker I know on the topic of competitive strategy. http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/wardley-map-set-of-useful-posts.html

Some recent posts not listed in that round-up: http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/05/on-evolution-maps-and-numpties.html http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/05/on-61-different-forms-of-gameplay.html (love the D&D alignment metaphor!) http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/05/five-key-indicators-for-success.html http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/07/the-100-day-corporate-get-fit-plan.html http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-future.html http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-platforms-and-ecosystems.html http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-common-fallacy-of-hypothesis-driven.html

[chadwhitacre]

I think they might be out of invite-only? Can anyone confirm?

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

They've rolled out search and tagging:

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

I received Bountysource's announcement immediately after pinging The Changelog. Seems like this could be about to heat up. :)

Product and brand.

Product

Our product is weaker.

Bountysource has more money and, consequently, a better product with features like updates and tagging.

Brand

Our brand is stronger. They're trying to serve the open-source community, but they're not open. They skim 10% off the top. They don't openly discuss their competitive strategy. ;) And their brand is "Salt," which, along with the term "bounty," is vaguely mercenary:

The word salary comes from the Latin word salarium, or "salt-money,” a Roman soldier's allowance for the purchase of salt.

In contrast, Gratipay receives payments on the same terms as any other Team. We are open. And our brand is the heart coin, which is all about punching an effing heart into the goddam global economy, which we are in fact slowly but surely doing.

So what?

Our brand only comes into play if we can meet the table stakes. If we can stay close to Bountysource on product then the fact that we're truly open and they're not should help us a good deal in the marketing, but if we can't compete on features then it doesn't matter how open we are: at the end of the day, users want to use a good product!

Whoever reaches critical mass first wins. Patreon won hands-down with creatives. If we let Bountysource take the open-source market ... then we can keep straggling along with our die-hard fans and working part-time on Gratipay, since we don't have investor pressure (Bountysource does). But I'd really like to get this :airplane: off the ground here at some point. I'm up for some more huffing and puffing on the campfire to get it started, but at some point I would like to sit back and crack open a beer. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

I'll also say something similar to what I said about Patreon a year ago: I'll cede to Bountysource when they:

• go fully open-source,
• implement https://gratipay.com/about/features/payroll,
• and fund themselves on themselves.

I wonder ... would Warren maybe actually go for this? :-)

[techtonik]

Let me iterate it a bit.. What if we concentrate more on people receiving money and sending it not for the service, not the product, just because of gratitude? We need a clear separation for this for FinCEH, and for people - clarity for one and confidence for the other. Sooner or later Bountysource will hit the same wall with FinCEH that we've had. And then it will be a question if it is a money-laundering and tax-evasion service or not. If somebody can solve a ticket for money and pay taxes, and somebody can do this for "bounty" and don't pay taxes, I can imagine some people seeing it as a tax evasion and raising questions.

So by concentrating on people I don't mean yet another social network - payment is all about money and keeping oneselves alive - I mean let's concentrate on how to make the flow legal, taxes paid and allow the transit passage of GPieces from one person to another through a series of exchanges. Gratipay can serve as an fund, where a distribution scheme is defined by rules that people are set personally. This guarantees that GP can get money into the system without question from authority. Then we need to make sure it is legal to get money for every country. Then we also need to be clear how the system could be abused, how authority sees that and what can we do about such external pressure.

[techtonik]

But the thing that bothers me much more is that I am not productive as a coder anymore. Well, never was, but that doesn't help to push it..

[chadwhitacre]

Went out in The Changelog Weekly today:

[chadwhitacre]

Salt started with one-off contributions. We got a huge demand for that in https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/issues/5. Hmmm ...

[chadwhitacre]

I was thinking that I'd like to go through Bountysource and do a feature comparison to see where we're lacking. Then it occurred to me to publish a one-page site comparing the two, because that would answer the question for us, and it could help us set the terms of public debate around openness: as we're able to close the feature gaps, the remaining "Open company?" feature will become more apparent.

I just bought gratipay-or-bountysource.guide. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

Idea is evolving ... I wrote this copy:

$ diff gratipay bountysource

With the launch of Bountysource Salt and the relaunch of Gratipay 2.0, there are now two great options for crowdfunding open-source.

Disclaimer: This site is owned by Gratipay.

The purpose of this site is to document the feature differences between Gratipay and Bountysource, so that we at Gratipay can stay competitive.

And now I'm thinking that we could/should generalize to something like this:

http://diff.gratipay.com/bountysource

In other words, evolve See Also into a site where we have pages comparing Gratipay with any and all competitors that we're tracking. Note that the primary audience for such a site is ourselves. We want to know who's out there and how we stack up. The secondary audience would be our users and prospective users.

[chadwhitacre]

Or do we just fold this down into IG?

http://inside.gratipay.com/diff/bountysource

[chadwhitacre]

Maybe we do both: use gratipay-or-bountysource.guide as a marketing piece, and offer IG/diff as a drill-down.

[chadwhitacre]

[chadwhitacre]

http://inside.gratipay.com/appendices/diff/bountysource

[techtonik]

I don't like the red cross. Better have it just empty. Like to be filled later. But the table comparison is a way to go.

[chadwhitacre]

I don't like the red cross. Better have it just empty.

Why? The red cross really drives the point home, imo.

[techtonik]

Ok. We are talking about competition, not about Gratipay being funded on Bountysource, even though I like the idea. So, making the features that Bountysource in a clear message is good. But.. At the same time there maybe some stuff that we don't want to carry aboard, because it is hard to legalize. In that case red-cross looks like it is something critical.

[chadwhitacre]

At the same time there maybe some stuff that we don't want to carry aboard, because it is hard to legalize. In that case red-cross looks like it is something critical.

Sorry, I'm not following you. :-( Can you rephrase this? The red crosses are things that we are critical of Bountysource about. No?

[chadwhitacre]

We're live! :-)

[techtonik]

I wanted to say that for honest comparison we need to mark features missing from Gratipay with red crosses too. But it may be not that bad that me miss them. In fact, missing features can actually be a good thing, and there could be good reason and explanation to that. Like staying legal and guarding out users from potential problems with law.

[chadwhitacre]

I wanted to say that for honest comparison we need to mark features missing from Gratipay with red crosses too.

The purpose of this website is to make the point that we're open and they're not, not to go into a detailed feature comparison. That's what the diff is for.

[techtonik]

I see. I thought what we will have only one page, but ok.

[chadwhitacre]

[techtonik]

!m @whit537

[chadwhitacre]

:-)

[chadwhitacre]

• Progress bars (see attached)?
• Share links (see attached)?

@mattbk Noted on http://inside.gratipay.com/appendices/see-also/bountysource.

[chadwhitacre]

Pretty interesting search results. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Google Trends benchmark lol

[wkonkel]

Hi Chad and team!

I just noticed this discussion and wanted to respond to a few of the comments.

Bountysource started directly competing with us last spring, with the release of "Salt." It's been growing steadily since. Before, Bountysource just did the bounty model.

This is not accurate. We've had support for team contributions since December 2012. At first there were Kickstarter style fundraisers that would typically span 3-6 months (e.g. Farwest, JS-Git, RVM, etc). Then we added direct one-time contributions to all teams in January 2014. And in April 2015 by request we added recurring contributions. Because www.bountysource.com started to have too many buttons on each page, we decided to split out contributions from bounties and have two separate but connected sites: Bounties and Salt.

Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that Gratipay started competing directly with Bountysource in May 2015 when you announced Teams 2.0 ("Most significantly, instead of giving to other users, now you can only give to teams").

Sooner or later Bountysource will hit the same wall with FinCEH that we've had. And then it will be a question if it is a money-laundering and tax-evasion service or not.

We've been working closely with lawyers and tax accountants for years. As far as I'm aware, we're fully compliant with all laws and regulations, both foreign and domestic.

go fully open-source

This is certainly on our roadmap and something we'd like to do sooner rather than later.

implement https://gratipay.com/about/features/payroll

Teams have had the ability to split payouts amongst members for quite some time, but it is currently a manual process. We have a more automated solution on our roadmap which isn't exactly the "team takes" model you describe, but it serves a similar purpose.

and fund themselves on themselves

We think this would be awesome! Since we haven't released our source code yet, we're hesitant to promote our own Salt campaign, but both are in the near future.

-Warren

[chadwhitacre]

@wkonkel Thanks for chiming in! :-)

We've had support for team contributions since December 2012.

Then you beat us there by four months or so (though the timeline on your launch announcement states "Summer 2013"). From https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems.org/issues/500#issuecomment-65147249:

Gratipay's teams feature began life in this commit from April 11, 2013, reached its first point of stability a few days later, got a rewrite a couple weeks later, on May 1, and then a second rewrite to its present form two months after that, on July 1 (with a blog post two days later).

As you point out, Gratipay Teams got an overhaul in May of this year, with our relaunch.

And in April 2015 by request we added recurring contributions.

This is the point at which I see Bountysource and Gratipay beginning to overlap to the point of "direct competition," because recurring donations have always been essential to Gittip/Gratipay since we launched on June 1, 2012. When we relaunched in May of this year, we removed recurring donations to individuals, we didn't add recurring donations to teams: we had explicit teams for two years at that point, and of course we had some users that were implicitly teams nearly since we launched (e.g., Read the Docs).

Where to from here?

One way or another, though, we are where we are today: Bountysource and Gratipay are now in direct competition with each other. What will come of it? I don't know! It's so exciting! :-)

Here are the endgames I see:

1. Bountysource wins. You are already way ahead of us on features. If you can achieve some threshold of openness (open-source all your code, drop the 10% hard fee, etc.), then you take away our unique value proposition and sweep the market.
2. Gratipay wins. If we can catch up to you on features before you can catch up to us on openness, then we may be able to come from behind and take the market back from you.
3. Bountysource and Gratipay merge. We come to terms while we're still roughly equal, before either of us has swept the market.
4. Gratipay gives up. We run out of energy and give up, before Bountysource has swept the market.
5. Bountysource gives up. You run out of money and give up, before Gratipay has swept the market.

In (1) and (2) there is a clear winner: one of us runs away with the market, rendering the other irrelevant.

In (4) and (5) we both still have respectable market share, but one of us gives up.

I think (3) is an interesting option, but I'm not sure I trust you to really be open enough. :-)

• Are you going to drop the 10% hard fee when you start funding on yourself?
• Are you going to open up the ownership of Bountysource and not just its code?
• Are you going to publish your finances?
• Are @wkonkel and @rappo going to draw from Bountysource on the same terms as anyone else working on Bountysource?
• How are you going to sell this to your investors?

Here's my current ranking of options, by decreasing likelihood:

• (1) Bountysource wins. In this case, Gratipay's role is to hang on long enough to try to goad you into following through on making Bountysource truly open.
• (3) Bountysource and Gratipay merge. This would mean that we can come to an agreement before you run away with the market.
• (2) Gratipay wins. I think you'll achieve "enough" openness before we can achieve "enough" features, but who knows?
• (4) or (5) I think you've got roughly as much capital (salt) as we have energy (heart), so I'm not sure either of us will give up before a) the other has swept the market or b) we've merged. ;-)

[mattbk]

I see one more:

'6. There's enough room for everyone, without anyone needing to win or lose.

We're caught up in the all-or-nothing mentality that is pushed everywhere else in the business world, but it seems like Gratipay wants to be different, and might as well try to transcend that as well. The more people donating to other people for getting things done, the better--it opens up a world where more and more people can do what they love. Gratipay needs to be able to pay the people who work on it, which means it needs more users--but those users don't have to come from Bountysource, just like Bountysource's users don't have to come from Gratipay.

Look at the number of users on both platforms: In the grand scheme of things, it's tiny.

For those who may not remember, I'll leave this here: https://medium.com/gratipay-blog/how-is-gratipay-different-from-patreon-1f828d977935

[tshepang]

:+1: @mattbk