[est31]

I think bounties create an unhealthy incentive structure. The kind of thinking you expressed in your post that payments shouldn't be seen as "charity" leads to people trying to not "waste" their bounties.

They'll add it to issues the maintainers won't do otherwise, which in turn leads maintainers to hold the code hostage, not doing something they'd have done had there been no bounty structure, hoping that someone posts a bounty for it. Of course a maintainer is one of the world experts in that codebase so knows really well which things can or have to be done. So that behaviour will lead to maintainers not addressing issues they know will annoy users. It leads to annoyance driven development.

Regular payments are far better IMO for projects long term because they allow maintainers to actually maintain the software instead of hunting for bug bounties. They give more security to maintainers (rent is pretty much a constant for example) and less overhad for users (unless they want to save money and use it most efficiently, but IMO that's not what donations should be about). That being said, bounties aren't bad overall, they are definitely great ideas if used here and there, but funding of open source projects shouldn't be bounty-driven.

[vortico]

I can't speak for others, but many of my company's open-source projects are not open-contribution (meaning I don't accept PRs unless I hire you). Features are added because funding comes from somewhere else, but it would be nice to have a second option for users to fund a feature directly.

[oauea]

Just curious, what do you gain from having your code be open-source if you do not accept outside contributions?

[vortico]

Users can enjoy these four freedoms when using our software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

If you're asking what we benefit from doing this, not much. We could have released proprietary software, but as users of software ourselves, we enjoy having these freedoms, so we don't want to restrict users of the software we write.

[bloodorange]

Mate, I haven't felt as happy reading a comment on this website as when I read this comment of yours. Keep up the excellent work and I hope you find a lot of success!

[jaywalk]

It gives users of the code the ability to inspect it and understand what is going on.

[dnautics]

There's room for both models. Some people operate better under one incentive structure and others under a different. There's probably one structure that is better for more people than others, but maybe we should normalize both and encourage exploration.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Agreed, if bounties conventionally worked like that I would feel incentivized to not contribute to OS projects unless there was a bounty. I dunno, maybe it'll still be a net benefit with an influx of bounty hunters. Hard to say really.

[heavenlyblue]

Well, if there was more market for bounties then surely you’d have no problem asking for a bounty in order to contribute that feature to the project?

I don’t see an issue with people saying “here’s my contrib if the community is willing to pay for it XX”.

One could even see maintainers becoming the budgeteers of aforementioned projects.

[dodgepong]

Depends. If the bounties are created by the maintainers themselves, funded from something like Open Collective, I think it can be a healthy way to get the community involved and help maintainers get things done that they wouldn't be able to work on themselves. If bounties are only exclusively created and funded by the community, I can see how this could be a problem.