Re: The Bounty License

I think this is a great idea and have been thinking along similar lines 
for a while.

It is trivial to make this work on a small scale with select projects. 
The real force in the approach will come out when ways to scale it up 
evolve.

I think it is important to think about what a scaled approach could 
look like as that is the only way to establish sustainability for the 
ecosystem.

To scale I think it needs to be rooted in open source test suites that 
the projects aim to meet.

Anyone can pledge to a proposed project until the target amount is 
reached at which point the developers have reasonable assurance that 
the effort will be worth it. Of course development can start at any 
time. During the non-commercial use phase the source code can either be 
made available or stay hidden depending on the project.

In time, follow-through on pledges can be tracked on the blockchain and 
establish an integrity score for participants.

I really like how the base concept of a bounty can scale in lots of 
directions for different types of projects and community needs.

I think it will encourage multiple implementations that are compatible 
yet use different implementation approaches to solve specific needs.

It can be made friendly to large as well as micro donations.

The one huge problem that is not "solved" by this approach is 
maintenance. But that is a general FOSS problem that I think will be 
solved in the near future.

I think a bounty approach is best used with small projects that meet 
specific tests and from the FOSS conversion point forward will require 
only minimal work which a user community can easily contribute. Thus, 
major rewrites or new major versions may often result in a new project.

I like how the bounty approach can be heavily distributed and automated 
as well as used for special and custom one-off situations that only 
require agreement by email.

+1 on the basic idea of a "Bounty License". IMO the specifics of how it 
is leveraged by any one community are irrelevant as long as the 
projects end up with a FOSS license in the end. I see this as a major 
feature of the approach.

Christoph



On October 17, 2018 02:22:06 pm PDT, "Manu Sporny" 
<msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> Following up with an idea on "how can we fund things in this ecosystem".
> The concept of bounties came up.
>
> Here's a simple concept:
>
> Release software, documentation, and specifications under a "Bounty
> License".
>
> The license states that the content is free for non-commercial use and
> sets a bounty price to transition the license into a FOSS license.
>
> For example, libvc is a Verifiable Credentials library in C++. It is
> under a bounty license of $50K, if the bounty is paid, it moves to BSD
> 3-clause license. I can imagine three companies joining in and paying
> that bounty because it reduces implementation risk for them, and they
> get the software at a fraction of the cost of developing and maintaining
> it themselves. The upside is that the developer is paid for their effort
> vs. what happens today (leeching).
>
> This is easiest for software... harder for things like documentation,
> videos, etc. Information that once it's out, it's out, is more
> difficult. So, for those items, previews are released and the full
> version is only released once the bounty is paid.
>
> Bounty prices would have to be above market rates... because the content
> creator took on considerable risk in creating the content.
>
> -- manu
>
> PS: I know there are some things that may be better paid for up front,
> and we can still do that in parallel to the suggestion above.
>
> -- Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches
> https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches
>

Received on Wednesday, 17 October 2018 22:22:44 UTC