Would you pay a developer to write some code for you/others?

[Nimless]

Just a quick question that has always filled my mind...

Would you pay a developer/coder to make a feature you always wanted in an application or a driver for a hardware that there isn't support for?

I don't mean paying some big money all yourself, i mean contributing like 10$ each with some other people interested in the same feature/code, would you think that would be a viable method to help open source with some features that a minority wants or some hardware not wide spreaded that needs support?

Maybe some developers or just freelance programmers have the skill but not the free time to spare on a non retributed job,but seeing that like 20 people would be OK to pay 10 bucks each ( so 200 total) for that code would make them do it?

Of course the code could be released open source, nothing wrong with that :)

[gn2]

Would I pay to get a job I needed doing done if I couldn't do it myself?
Of course.

[Nimless]

Would I pay to get a job I needed doing done if I couldn't do it myself?
Of course.

Maybe i should explain better...

Let's suppose i want a zooming function in VLC media player ( it's an example ) , i can afford to spend 10 $ dollars for that,nobody would code for 10 dollars right?

But let's suppose ten other people wants the zooming function , that's 100 bucks and someone might do it..

[Arthur_D]

I think it's a great idea.
But it might be kind of difficult to organize.

[murderslastcrow]

Most open source projects that are large in scope (PiTiVi for video editing, the GIMP, Wine) all accept donations and use that money to fuel their coding. If we want an advanced video editor for Linux, we should fund projects that we think are going in the right direction.

In fact, the lack of certain times of professional software like video-editing, running natively in Linux, is a lot of the reason some businesses and even average consumers don't switch.

We'll get there someday, but I think it's important to donate. It'll still be less than paying for the OS like Windows users have to do. That way we can also get more out of our needed software, instead of everyone donating to some mass fund of some sort.

If you go to sourceforge, you'll find that most of peoples' needs could be met by an advanced version of one of the available programs.

[y-lee]

No i wouldn't. I can code well enough to do what I want to do and if i am too lazy to do it then so be it.


But let's suppose ten other people wants the zooming function , that's 100 bucks and someone might do it..

Hmm not a bad idea but honestly I wouldn't get out of bed for a 100 bucks. I think you would need more people and a more realistic price to find a developer to do about anything.

[gn2]

Maybe i should explain better...

No need, I understood your original post, yes, I would pay a contribution if it was for something I needed.
I have donated to open source projects before and would do so again.

[Nimless]

No i wouldn't. I can code well enough to do what I want to do and if i am too lazy to do it then so be it.



Hmm not a bad idea but honestly I wouldn't get out of bed for a 100 bucks. I think you would need more people and a more realistic price to find a developer to do about anything.

Yes! that's the point of it , i was thinking about some kind of third party trusted website that would collect the "cash" ,then put on an advertise like " Hey there are XX bucks for whoever can do "X" , would be cool :P

And if there is nobody answering in a given time ( 2-3 months) you get back the cash .

[ssam]

yes.

its rare that bounties work well. i suggest a better idea would be that the contributed funds go to a company like canonical, redhat, fluendo, collabora etc, who then employ somebody to do the work.

[cmay]

Yes! that's the point of it , i was thinking about some kind of third party trusted website that would collect the "cash" ,then put on an advertise like " Hey there are XX bucks for whoever can do "X" , would be cool :P

And if there is nobody answering in a given time ( 2-3 months) you get back the cash .
I would pay a programmer to make some custom drivers or something like that if i was going to setup a professional sound studio using a linux distribution . i seen others use linux for that so i figure that they might use custom software to some extend.

as ordinary Desktop user i dont have the need for custom software and i am learning to program myself so i would rather try that myself first and if it was a problem i could not handle then i would consider buying a program instead that had the features i was looking for even i doubt it will ever happen.

only thing i can think of i need to find a solution for sometime is a Danish keyboard layout for minix and i wont exactly say that the need is so great it would warrant a expensive developer to write one for me. :)


actually My brother and i have a website we just put back up again and i am supposed to work on it. so this here gave me and idea. i would not handle the "cash" as you put it but but provide a open forum for developer and customer to figure these things out for them self if i where to do anything.

there is nothing wrong with the idea if the customers group up and have a offer for a developer that knows how to do what is being asked.

only problem is that somethings maybe closed enough for them to be able to do the job such as writing drivers for something that is closed source and does not leave any room for the developer to figure out how to create a open source alternative if such situation would occure.

but the idea is fine and maybe if lucky there will come something useful out of it if you keep working in this direction.
good luck :)

[khelben1979]

I chose no, because I would be more interested in bug testing applications or learning to code these features myself than to pay for it. I like the concept of using open source free applications.

I have payed for software in the past and therefor contributing to those who code applications, but I'm much more interested in helping out myself in different ways.

[hessiess]

Wheares the "I am a developer and can normally work stuff out for myself" option?
And with the extreame modularity of Linux and UNIX in general, it is rarely necessary to code anything, as someone else has done it already most of the time.

[3rdalbum]

I would definitely contribute if there was a good liklihood that the developer would take on the task.

[macogw]

No, I'd write the code myself.

[wmcbrine]

As a developer, I'm occasionally on the receiving end of these kinds of offers, and the problem I find is consistent low-balling. Even with the type of collective offer suggested here, it's usually not enough to cover the time it would take to implement the request. $100 or $200? Make it $1000 or $2000.

Second is the problem of actually collecting. People will promise, and then not pay. So it would have to be upfront. But this becomes even harder with multiple contributors. What if not enough people pay? Do the ones who did, get their money back? Does the developer go ahead, at a cut rate? Maybe you ought to start an escrow account... but now this is getting to be a real pain.

So, ultimately, I decline such arrangements. I'll take donations, but only with the understanding that they don't buy you anything. And I'll implement your requests -- for free -- but only if I feel like it.

If I ever got a solid offer in the thousands-plus range, I might reconsider.

[lykwydchykyn]

What you describe is called a "bounty" and it's been tried a few times. I actually thought about organizing a FOSS bounty site a few years back. Though it seems like a great idea on the surface, the more I thought it through the more problematic it became.

wmcbrine raised some good points, and I'll add a few more:

- when does the developer get paid? If "Up-front", what if he/she doesn't end up coding? If "when it's done", when is it considered "done"?

- Who decides if the requirements of the job have been satisfied? What if 10 users contribute towards a feature, and when the feature is coded 5 of them are unhappy with the implementation? You can say "tough luck", but if you do that's likely to be the last time they participate in a bounty.

- What if a bunch of money is raised for a feature that is impossible? Or a feature that is already being implemented in the development version?

That's not to say in the right context, it couldn't work. But there are complications to consider. Things get complicated when money gets involved.

[mgmiller]

Interesting thread. I just went through this. I paid the developer/maintainer of the fujitsu scanner driver to add a function to a scanner I had just acquired.

I was given an almost new fujitsu fi-6130 by someone who was switching their office over to Ubuntu. He had 4 of these scanners and they did not work at all in ubuntu 9.04.

I quickly discovered that they work pretty well in 9.10 as it uses a newer version of sane (1.0.20 vs 1.0.19) , however, an important feature of this sheet fed ADF scanner, namely automatic page length detection, was not implimented.

I looked on the SANE database page and found the name of the driver maintainer and after sending him a few e-mails we agreed on a very reasonable fee to upgrade the driver for this feature.

It ended up costing me US $90.00, an absolute bargain for an $800.00 scanner.
This resulted in a fairly simple install process for ubuntu 9.10.
We also figured out how to make it work correctly in Ubuntu 9.04, which required several more changes to configuration files beyond just compiling the driver for it.

I then installed the driver for the fellow who had given me the scanner and we are both very happy.

The changes I helped pay for are now part of the sane project and will be released in version 1.0.21.

The way I see it is, after a certain point, we have to start giving back. Linux and Ubuntu have saved me so much grief, time and money in the 9 years that I have been using them (first Red hat, then Ubuntu since 4.10), that $90 scanner drivers or $45.00 printer drivers (turboprint to get a canon i960 photo printer working spectacularly), are total bargains.

[RPG Master]

I'ed be willing to plop down 50 bucks for someone to add 16-bit color support to GIMP! :popcorn:

[Eisenwinter]

I voted yes, but for me it depends more on the person.

If someone asked me to write code for them, of course I wouldn't mind getting some money for it, after all, society imposes itself on us to the point where we do have to have some money.

But, a simple genuine "thank you, friend" is also a great reward, in my eyes.

[mgmiller]

I'ed be willing to plop down 50 bucks for someone to add 16-bit color support to GIMP!

This is from the gimp people:
http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html

"When can we see 16-bit per channel support (or better)?

For some industries, especially photography, 24-bit colour depths (8 bits per channel) are a real barrier to entry. Once again, it's GEGL to the rescue. Work on integrating GEGL into GIMP will begin after 2.4 is released. Once that work is completed, GIMP will support 16 bits per channel. If you need such support now and can't wait, cinepaint (http://www.cinepaint.org/) and krita (http://www.koffice.org/krita/) support 16 bits per channel now.
It should be noted that for publishing to the web, the current GIMP release is good enough."




Here is another link discussing gegl and gimp and what it all means:
http://blog.wbou.de/index.php/2009/08/04/black-and-white-conversion-with-gegls-c2g-color2gray-in-gimp/


There seem to be a few features that will be implimented with GEGL. So, I guess, "they're working on it".


Maybe talk to the gegl people and see if your $50 would help speed things up.