[NickGerleman]

A company using React Native recently used bounties to solicit bug-fixes to RN issues their app was hitting.

A lot of positives came out of it, and it did improve framework quality. There are challenges with the model though. More changes than not are high quality, but some aren’t, or are just inherently risky, and it’s especially tricky to discern when first time contributors touch systems that might no longer have an active maintainer. Unlike someone employed full-time, there isn’t the opportunity to establish long term trust, and the contributor might not be around to support their change if something goes wrong.

A lot of changes fell through the cracks, or needed maintainer time that wasn’t there, which creates a bad situation where someone could have done great work, but isn’t getting paid. Knowing that someone is losing money if you don’t accept a PR can also trend towards guilt-inducing as a maintainer.

[templix]

> or needed maintainer time that wasn’t there

That's my experience with bounties: someone does the job because they get paid, not because they have a particular interest in the issue, and then they instantly move on, leaving the submission to rot.

I agree with ZSF here.