21 Jul
2012
21 Jul
'12
4:41 p.m.
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 6:14 AM, renato <rennabh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, I was wondering, what can we non-dev users do when
our favorite
piece of FOSS software is lacking a little feature, but one that makes
the software for us of little or no use?
I'm thinking of seq24 not working, since a year or so, with JACK
Transport - which for an app like seq24 makes it almost useless. It
really itches me and I'd like to do what's in my power to help fix it.
I was thinking, since this would be (I think) a few hours of devs
work, couldn't I/we raise some money to pay a dev to do it? How would
I/we do it?
In long term thinking, we could have a site where users propose a bug,
devs name a price for it, and when the money raising reaches that
quantity, the dev starts to work on it and when he fixes it he recieves
the money. Basically a mix of kickstarter and amazon's mechanical turk.
There's no simple way that this can work. The dev that works on a
particular problem has to be an expert with the software to be fixed.
Usually this means being the one who wrote it in the first place.
Also, you never know how long you'll spend working on a problem, until
you actually do it. Anyway, the notion has been surviving for
years--I'd say "search the archives", except I have no idea what terms
would actually work.
<puts on his devil's advocate hat> Suppose I write a potentially
useful software, and then leave several bugs until people start
funding it. Then, rake in the dough and fix the bugs (I already know)
in record time. It changes the incentive whether and how to create
software. </puts on his devil's advocate hat>
But changing the incentive is the entire point, right? IMO--devs need
no particular incentive. Funding conferences is a more attractive
option--for those aspiring academics and those who are building a
resume, free software conferences provide another route to
peer-reviewed publications.
Chuck