Git Bounty is a project that aims to incentivize the repair of bugs in open source software with money. When money talks, everyone listens. Therefore, this likely has great potential to increase productivity in the open source software community.
Nearly every open source software project has some form of bug tracking technology, or a bug list for volunteers to take on. This is very helpful. However, not everyone wants to volunteer, so Git Bounty will enable people to post bugs with a monetary reward for those who fix them.
In the future, the team may take a fraction of the bounty, but they would provide the option to donate that fraction to a charity instead. Either way, the money will be put to good use.
Git Bounty was developed by Angus MacIsaac, Adam Burvill, Anton Shevchenko, Nathan Boiron, Martin Coulombe. These developers work together at the Osedea development shop in Montreal, Canada.
The Git Bounty Team Saw A Need For This Due To Their Own Challenges
They recently worked on a project involving an open source framework which they needed fixed, and they would have gladly paid someone $2,000 to do so. It is unfortunate that there are so many people willing to pay for work, and so many people who need work but can’t find it.
Git Bounty will help this situation by giving volunteers a way to make some money on the side.
According to TechCrunch:
Coulombe said that the team plans to ‘keep working on Git Bounty after the event. ‘We see the potential and the value. We just have to see how it gets accepted in the open-source community,’ he said.
He also noted that while the project is mostly focusing on bug fixes right now, it could also be used to pay programmers to add new features to a project.’
The latter could be very helpful. As someone who has used Linux and been part of the open source community for years, I have seen that the open source community has been staying afloat and certain parts of it are growing. This concept could also help other open source technology (even hardware).
However, open source software hasn’t enjoyed quite as much success as it deserves, so the injection of more funding into the community is very welcome.
Source: TechCrunch.
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