Comment Open Source Payment System. (Score 1) 242
I've been thinking for a long time now that we need to have a payment system that could be viable for open source development making it profitable. Now I know many will argue that it's kinda going against the open source way or what not, but here it is. What I was thinking is that we could have something like "The Open Source Treasury". Now what would happen is that every project has bugs, and feature requests. Now wether or not something gets fixed and how fast it gets fixed is based more or less on the motivation of the developer.
Now i noticed on most websites you can donate money to the open source project but the user doesn't really get all that much in return, if anything at all. Sometimes there is this membership thing where you get a few more forum features or what not. However you have NO idea what is happening with the money you donated.
So my idea was that you can donate money as a member of the site, the site can then deposit the money to a project portion of the treasury, and get project points in return(have a limited number of points per project that way it's more international, and easier to make software to handle integers,(simpler meaning hopefully more easily secure)anywaays) so what happens then is that the member has these points with which they can do what ever they want.
They can go on bugzilla or some derivative and instead of just adding themselves to a vote to get something done or what not, they can give these points to them. Now i know adding money into the equation makes people "evil" but if people are willing to pay why not let the developers get something in return other than putting something on their resumee. <\br>
Now so when there is a solution to a bug(how this is identified is up to the project, obviously leader bias etc should be taken out of the equation. So things like sympathy points aren't given away to poor developers, worsening the quality of the software. by implementing bad code so you can pay a poor guy.) the developer can cash in their points.
or not! because the beutiful thing is that you can make it like the stock market, if we have a limited number of points and you purchase them, you can have fluctuating prices, so it will give people even more incentive to donate to the project(btw project will get processing fees and conversion things, to garuntee a steady flow of income or what not.)
Oh and i dono if i mentioned but basically you can also do things like give your points to project leader or w/e if you don't want to distribute them yourself.
Now obviously the particulars are all up for consideration. I'm not an economy major (yet), so I don't really know what the best way to go about it would be.
Anyways,
Happy Hacking :D,
"The Singularity is Near"
Now i noticed on most websites you can donate money to the open source project but the user doesn't really get all that much in return, if anything at all. Sometimes there is this membership thing where you get a few more forum features or what not. However you have NO idea what is happening with the money you donated.
So my idea was that you can donate money as a member of the site, the site can then deposit the money to a project portion of the treasury, and get project points in return(have a limited number of points per project that way it's more international, and easier to make software to handle integers,(simpler meaning hopefully more easily secure)anywaays) so what happens then is that the member has these points with which they can do what ever they want.
They can go on bugzilla or some derivative and instead of just adding themselves to a vote to get something done or what not, they can give these points to them. Now i know adding money into the equation makes people "evil" but if people are willing to pay why not let the developers get something in return other than putting something on their resumee. <\br>
Now so when there is a solution to a bug(how this is identified is up to the project, obviously leader bias etc should be taken out of the equation. So things like sympathy points aren't given away to poor developers, worsening the quality of the software. by implementing bad code so you can pay a poor guy.) the developer can cash in their points.
or not! because the beutiful thing is that you can make it like the stock market, if we have a limited number of points and you purchase them, you can have fluctuating prices, so it will give people even more incentive to donate to the project(btw project will get processing fees and conversion things, to garuntee a steady flow of income or what not.)
Oh and i dono if i mentioned but basically you can also do things like give your points to project leader or w/e if you don't want to distribute them yourself.
Now obviously the particulars are all up for consideration. I'm not an economy major (yet), so I don't really know what the best way to go about it would be.
Anyways,
Happy Hacking
"The Singularity is Near"
