Bounty For Open Source

I stumbled across this topic, when I was researching the topic of Photoshop Vs GIMP.

Open Source software, be it operating systems like Linux, CMS like Drupal or graphic editors like GIMP, has most of the times been the poorer cousins of their commercial counterparts when it comes to features. Of course, there are cases where the Open Source alternative is way better than commercial ones (web servers for example), but they usually happen to be exceptions and special cases.

Open Source software is usually developed by volunteers - driven either for the purpose of giving to the community or scratching an itch. The Open Source software may be said to lack the coherence in developing a solution. It is this situation that marks the cue for entry of bounty.

Bounty, in the traditional sense, is something that are usually put on the heads of criminals. Bounty hunters chase them up, catch them, and they are rewarded the amount. A similar case happens in the world of Open Source and it is not that dramatic as things happening around Neo in Matrix.

Bounties are placed on the bugs in Open Source software, that are usually hard to crack or take up a lot of time to fix. These bounties are placed by companies that would be using the software. The licensing requires them to release the fix to the public, but that is actually a good thing for the investors. Once it is in the open, there is a possibility that it is optimized. And more importantly, the fix travels down the future versions.

Bounties are also placed on specific features for a software. Again, the feature would generally be released back into the community. It is also a way for people who do not have skills, but want to contribute towards a project, to do so.

There are arguments against the practice too. Bounties are said to discourage others from implementing features or fixing bugs, that they might have done otherwise. The people who are capable of coding a feature or fixing a bug, might not put in the effort when they are not awarded the bounties. Due to the unorganized fashion bounties are placed, some of the ventures fail. (For example, the famous - or infamous - bounty on feature development for GIMP).

The future though, of both bounty and the Open Source projects in general, lay in how the economy develops and also how the community as a whole proceed.