Why Don't "We" Pay Our Bitcoin Client Coders In BTC?

[gigabytecoin]

Imagine this...

A fund of Bitcoins held by some reputable member on this forum... of which ~10% would be distributed evenly each month to the coders who worked on the Bitcoin client that month.

Submit 100 lines of 10,000 total new lines of code, receive 1% of the 10% monthly payment.

Submit 5,000 of the 10,000 total new lines of code, receive 50% of the 10% monthly payment.

The fund would be generated simply through donations from miners who have a vested interested in the Bitcoin community's growth.

Not sure how you would calculate the percentages of payment since I am not a programmer... but it could work?!

[BitterTea]

Lines of code isn't a good measure of contribution. A better idea might be attaching bounties to specific bugs or features.

[kseistrup]

A better idea might be attaching bounties to specific bugs or features.

+1

[laanwj]

Lines of code isn't a good measure of contribution. A better idea might be attaching bounties to specific bugs or features.

Yes, that'd be a very nice idea. Just put reasonable bounties on the github issues. I'm sure they will be solved very quickly.

Maybe we can convince one of the early bitcoiners to chime in and deal out the bounties... after all, if solving the issues improves bitcoin adaption it'll increase the overall value of his coins.

[Matt Corallo]

There is a site for this (I think its something like bitcoin.cc.cz or bitcoin.cz.cc) but the problem is how to deal with people who don't pay.  Do you take the money before hand, how do you decide if there are ambiguous terms of payment, etc, etc.

[laanwj]

One of the 'official' devs should be a trusted intermediate in this case, as s/he would be best in judging whether something is implemented properly.

[Gavin Andresen]

The project needs more bug fixing and testing, so I would rather NOT see bounties for new features.

Bounties for fixing bugs would be ok.  And maybe a bug bounty, for finding significant bugs.

[laanwj]

Yes, obviously you'd put bounties on things you want fixed. Not the fun stuff that people will do anyway

[xel]

The project needs more bug fixing and testing, so I would rather NOT see bounties for new features.

Bounties for fixing bugs would be ok.  And maybe a bug bounty, for finding significant bugs.

Hello, we would be interested in coding for such bounties - including fixing bugs.

[Gavin Andresen]

I'll brain-dump my second half-baked idea of the day:

github has a nice API for basically everything it does (issues getting closed,etc).

I've been working on an API for ClearCoin (creating escrow accounts, etc).

Marrying the two might work nicely.  Coders could publish their bitcoin addresses in their github profiles.

Bounties could be established for bugs (or, grumble, features) by creating a ClearCoin account, linking it to the issue (maybe by posting a machine-readable comment via the github api).

And when the issue was closed via a commit the bounty could be automagically paid to the coder(s) who contributed to the commit.  (somehow... via a yet-to-be-written way for ClearCoin to get a where-to-release-coins address that is not set in advance).

Reasons not to do it:  allegations of corruption/favoritism if people doing the pulling have to decide between two pull requests.  Maybe less cooperation to find/fix things if people are competing for bounties.

[gigabytecoin]

Reasons not to do it:  allegations of corruption/favoritism if people doing the pulling have to decide between two pull requests.  Maybe less cooperation to find/fix things if people are competing for bounties.

This could easily happen, yes. Why don't we force contributions to be anonymous then?

You have to sign up for a new github account (and display a new bitcoin address) for each pull request you submit to the site.

[gigabytecoin]

There is a site for this (I think its something like bitcoin.cc.cz or bitcoin.cz.cc) but the problem is how to deal with people who don't pay.  Do you take the money before hand, how do you decide if there are ambiguous terms of payment, etc, etc.

I think we should collect the money before hand... Put your money where your mouth is so to speak.

I suggest we also have a board of competent coders decide what bug fix is worth what - and perhaps an accountant type to look after the overall value of the fund - similar to how a condominium board takes care of itself.

If you own a lot of bitcoins, it is in your best interest to give back to the community and improve the client - I don't think we'd be pulling any teeth here.

Perhaps one of the competing bitcoin mining pools might want to "donate" 1% of it's collected fee towards this charitable cause, and might attract more miners because of it.

Or perhaps the newly minted bitcoin millionaire (mentioned in another thread) might want to donate 1,000 or so to get things started!? (If he does, his new nickname is "Bitcoin Bill"  )

$3k USD can go a long way in the world of outsourced programming.

[laanwj]

Reasons not to do it:  allegations of corruption/favoritism if people doing the pulling have to decide between two pull requests.  Maybe less cooperation to find/fix things if people are competing for bounties.

This could easily happen, yes. Why don't we force contributions to be anonymous then?

I think we're going to much into hypothetical cases. If people let know in the github issue topic that they are working on something, and finish it within reasonable time, they should get the bounty.

Yes, there might be corner cases / race conditions where multiple people fix an issue at the same time, in that case I guess you should either choose the technically best solution or (if just as good) share the bounty. But I don't expect it to happen a lot.

I don't agree on forcing anonymous contributions or creating extra github accounts... You're making it very inconvenient that way.

[gigabytecoin]

Reasons not to do it:  allegations of corruption/favoritism if people doing the pulling have to decide between two pull requests.  Maybe less cooperation to find/fix things if people are competing for bounties.

This could easily happen, yes. Why don't we force contributions to be anonymous then?

I think we're going to much into hypothetical cases. If people let know in the github issue topic that they are working on something, and finish it within reasonable time, they should get the bounty.

Yes, there might be corner cases / race conditions where multiple people fix an issue at the same time, in that case I guess you should either choose the technically best solution or (if just as good) share the bounty. But I don't expect it to happen a lot.

I don't agree on forcing anonymous contributions or creating extra github accounts... You're making it very inconvenient that way.

You're right. After seeing how quickly the community learnt about and turned on the btcex owner, I am sure this wouldn't be a huge problem - but anonymizing things is a possible solution should it arise.