LP.net Feature Suggestion

[Scott Glazer]

Hello,

I was pondering a method for enticing users to fix bugs, and I shared
the idea I had with a friend of mine who suggested that I forward to
you:

Similar to the way prizes have been offered as a bounty for developing
software, I assume a similar idea could be applied to Launchpad.  When a
user submits a bug report, confirms that they experience the same
problem, or simply posts a feature request, they should have the ability
to donate to a bounty pool.  When the bug is fixed or the feature
implemented, and this is confirmed by the users experiencing the
problems (or requesting the feature), then the pool is released to the
contributing developers.

Of course, as with other types of donations, a percentage could be
lifted for administrative needs -- servers, bandwidth, personnel, etc.

I'm simply sharing this idea in the hopes that it can be used to
coordinate developers where they are needed most.  Many users donating a
little can add up to a significant amount for a given bug.  A few users
donating a lot of money can get a bug fixed that is of great importance
to them even if it benefits the community little.

As I said, I discussed this idea with a friend, and one of the concerns
he brought up was distribution support within the FOSS community.  I
urge you to forward this idea to anyone else in the community who may be
able to use it in a productive way.  Additionally, I'm concerned that
bugs that receive large support may be targeted by developers, and other
projects would be sidelined; in an effort to minimize this, a percentage
of the bounty may be spread equally among a random sampling of bugs.
Given enough donations, random bugs would also accrue bounties -- though
without bounties being placed directly on them, they would accrue much
slower.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this idea is useful,

-Scott

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