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Bountysource is changing their ToS to keep unclaimed money
2 points by phoenix616 2196 days ago
Starting July 1st Bountysource.com will have a new section (2.13) in their Terms of Service which basically lets them keep all money on issues that have not been resolved and claimed after 2 years: https://www.bountysource.com/terms

If you have an account with them then you probably have gotten an email already but this is the section in question:

2.13 Bounty Time-Out. If no Solution is accepted within two years after a Bounty is posted, then the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource. For Bounties posted before June 30, 2018, the Backer may redeploy their Bounty to a new Issue by contacting support@bountysource.com before July 1, 2020. If the Backer does not redeploy their Bounty by the deadline, the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource.

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At least they seem to be giving you the opportunity to move the money onto other issues until July 1st but it would be a lot better if they just returned the money (even if with fees removed) to the sender like most other bounty platforms (gitcoin, issuehunt) seem to do it.

As someone who has seen a lot of startups, altcoins and other internet projects pop up and fail this kinda seems like a last attempt to get some money before they shut down. Not that I have any proof that this is indeed the plan, but their recent outage without any communication about it as well as the lack of communication on their issue tracker makes me think that the service is no longer actively maintained. Additionally claiming ETH bounties and withdrawing it has been impossible for a while now so they will basically keep all old, non moved ETH bounties after July 1st which nobody can claim. All in all this paints a pretty bad picture.

2 comments

Apparently this was a pull request ~a month ago and due to wishes of the stakeholders... https://github.com/bountysource/core/pull/1480