Bounty system for monetary contributions?

[charles-997]

Does the Nextcloud cookbook app have a system for contributing monetarily in the bounty style?

As someone without coding knowledge, I find the bounty system to be a really nice way for contributors to receive a small thank you for their work. I also think it encourages community members to donate when they might not choose to otherwise, as they feel they are "getting something more" than what is already available "for free"

Does anyone else think this would be a nice idea for the Nextcloud cookbook app? I have found that this app is really helpful and useful in my cooking adventures and would love for it to improve even more.

I've read about some issues with Bounty Source on the Nextcloud forum, is there another similar platform that someone suggests?

[christianlupus]

One could think of Patreon as well and there might be other options out there as well.

There was a recent question by @basebuilder that goes in a similar direction.

I added @mrzapp as the assigned person as he is the one having built this app on the first point. In general, the question arises, if it should be a general reward or some topic/issue-based one. Both have their benefits and drawbacks.

I am putting it open for discussion for all and ping the recent contributors @seyfeb @sam-19 @TheMBeat.

[seyfeb]

I don’t know them but apart from patreon there is also, e.g., opencollective, and you can accept donations via paypal.

As for general reward vs. issue-based bounties, I find it hard to tell what’s best. Bounties allow the monetary contributors to have more control over / incentivize what is being implemented. However, since they do not necessarily have a deep knowledge of the current project status some very important issues that are not visible to the outside as a user interface but are required for, e.g., an application that runs smoother (also in the backend), a better code structure or new documentation that helps contributors to develop for the app, would not rewarded.

[christianlupus]

This is exactly what I fear by Bountysource.

[ghost]

There is also the opensource focused Librepay which is integrated decently in F-Droid app store. Perhaps the NextCloud project would consider integrating to their App Store as well.

The thinking behind the project I am involved with EOTL which led to my comment

"Would it be helpful to help fund a dev to work on this feature"

Was a paid collaboration a bit different than the options mentioned above (Patreon, Open Collective, or donations). I believe what EOTL is envisioning is something like as follows:

• Establish a "required" dev task (like issue #392) AKA a "deliverable"
• Agree on an estimated developer time for that task: 10 hrs
• Agree on an developer rate 30 EUR / hr
• Funder allocates say 500 EUR to one or more devs to work on Cookbook
• Once required task is completed payment of 300 EUR is made
• Developer self-determines what additional deliverables the remaining 200 EUR will be spent on
• Once those issues are completed, the remaining 200 EUR payment is made

The idea here being that 60% of our budget funds developer to work on our task, the remaining 40% funds whatever the dev wants to work on within the given project.

Myself and EOTL collective is curious what this community thinks of this idea.

[charles-997]

However, since they do not necessarily have a deep knowledge of the current project status some very important issues that are not visible to the outside as a user interface but are required for, e.g., an application that runs smoother (also in the backend), a better code structure or new documentation that helps contributors to develop for the app, would not rewarded.

I am quoting @seyfeb here - This is a point I had not considered. I totally agree with you that there are definitely situations where users such as myself may be interested in a new feature however might not understand that backend improvements are needed before that feature could be implemented well.

On a separate note - after posting the original post, I read into a lot of issues that Nextcloud had previously with using BountySource - some issues such as if the bounty is not achieved within a specific amount of time BountySource keeps the donated funds - this is enough to make me completely avoid such an organization.

Funding open source projects in the best way always seems to be quite the challenge.

[christianlupus]

For sake of completeness, I found these ways to contribute in another project I am involved as well: