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UPDATE:
Site is up and located here:
http://bitcoin.cz.cc/genjix has agreed to work on this at least part time. I have sent him 200 BTC for hosting costs. Others can donate here:
18DRwiDQPWDz6yiNfbysS5qNRFvnxCwKpE
http://blockexplorer.com/address/18DRwiDQPWDz6yiNfbysS5qNRFvnxCwKpEDisclaimer: I cannot make any guarantees as to the quality or quantity of genjix's work or that he will even do anything at all. Please contact genjix directly for information on project timeline and any other details. He has agreed to update this thread periodically with his progress. DONATE AT YOUR OWN RISK
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Has anyone thought about how awesome it would be if other FOSS projects started using Bitcoin for Bounty Pools? I recently brought up this idea on the mailing list for a fairly large open source project called Pyjamas (
www.pyjs.org), which is a port of Google Web Toolkit (
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/) to Python (
www.python.org). The Pyjamas project leader Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (luke.leighton AT gmail.com) thought that bounty pools are a really good idea for his project and so I did a writeup on bounty pools on his wiki:
http://pyjs.org/wiki/bounties (please read this before continuing).
So here is the plan. We start a bounty pool for some Pyjamas developers to develop a FOSS web application that can be used by FOSS projects (such as Pyjamas) to run bounty pools for particular features, matching stakeholders who desire particular features with developers who can implement them (to be paid in Bitcion).
I think that Bitcoin and the bounty pool software would be a match made in heaven for FOSS developers and stakeholders. Developers from all over the world could get paid in Bitcoin for doing valuable work for stakeholders such as small businesses that need new features. And I think that FOSS software developers in general are a great group to get to adopt Bitcoin to grow the Bitcoin economy for a few reasons. First, they will have the technical background to understand Bitcoin and its advantages. Second, they are probably a lot more willing to accept payment in something that is volatile in value since many may not be receiving any monetary payment for their work now. Third, because of the second reason, they won't be relying on their Bitcoin revenue to pay for their bills so they won't be as concerned about converting it to a fiat currency. Fourth, Bitcoin is in line with the FOSS philosophy (it being a FOSS project itself) with the huge bonus of not a single bit cent going to central banks, corrupt governments or large government influenced corporations.
For those of you who are 'old time' miners out there who are sitting on a fat wallet, this could be the bounty pool for you to put some BTC into. If you put some BTC into this project, you could end up significantly growing the Bitcoin economy, thus increasing the value of BTC and your wallets.
I have been brainstorming about what kinds of features we would want to have in a Bitcoin Bounty Pool software platform. Here are some general features I came up with:
1. Rating system for escrow agents and developers.
2. Easily viewable Bitcoin escrow accounts (similar to blockexplorer.com)
3. Directory of Bounty Pools that is sortable by a variety of criteria (e.g. programming languages and time estimates)
4. Email and messaging alerts for developers based on keywords (e.g. PHP, Java, C++, Flash)
There are many more features to be mulled over. In any event, I am willing to put 100 BTC into this bounty pool, and possibly more if others are interested. Also, if there are interested individuals here, we can get in touch with the Pyjamas folks who could develop this application using Pyjamas.
