Does this mean that there's a business here - kind of like a reverse groupon?
A group of people want X (digital content), and each will pay whatever they want to for it. Fulfillment is more likely the larger the "pot" becomes, and it's an all-out competition to see who wins the pot.
Any ideas for a tweaking of this business model that makes more sense?
I looked into this long and hard and even built a website and minimal implementation, as I'd had some experience running and contributing to bounties on Open Source projects, but the more I thought about it, the less like a solid business it seemed.
The biggest problem is that the amounts involved are small, and the number of projects involved is also small (this is a $400 project, and it was considered interesting enough to get front page on HN; this indicates a tiny market). At the time, SourceForge, and several other Open Source sites, were beginning to add bounty and "hire this developer" features, and I couldn't see how a third party could more effectively reach those users or those developers (because you need both sides to buy into your product in order for it to be useful). The amount a third party could charge for the intermediary service is bound to be low or developers would go elsewhere; a couple points, maybe. So, 2% of $400 is 8 bucks. It'll take 10,000 projects of that size per year to pay yourself a decent salary and cover expenses. There probably haven't been 10,000 Open Source bounties in the past decade, much less the past year.
One of the problems a product like this would solve would be the trust issue: Can the bounty contributors trust the developer to deliver quality code if paid at the start, and can the developer trust all of the bounty contributors to pay up in a timely fashion if the code is delivered first. But, there are already ways to solve that problem. ChipIn solves the latter one, and many Open Source developers are sufficiently well-known in their community that no one would doubt they would finish the job. The other problem is connecting developers with money; but SourceForge and elance and many other sites already provides mechanisms for users to give developers money, as do traditional contractor agreements.
Of course, you've specified "digital content", and I was just looking at software, which opens up the market quite a bit. There were discussions amongst the browncoats (Firefly fans) of building a system to directly fund new Firefly episodes through viewer contributions. But, I think in the end, everyone agreed that the math just didn't add up. It might for lower budget content.
Back to software, I think github and SourceForge could make a few extra bucks from this kind of idea, but I don't think there's much room for any third party to fit into that relationship, if they aren't already in the loop for some reason.
Bounties are not new in any way.. i have seen those for ubuntu und i think gnome some years ago.. but can't find an ubuntu bounty list anymore, weird..
It sounds like a reverse Kickstarter: someone posts a need and starts the pot. Other people can add to the pot and/or fork the product to modify the requirements. When the product is delivered and you can verify that it matches the requirements, the pot is paid out to the developer.
What happens if multiple people claim the pot at once, perhaps with variations in quality, speed and completeness? Is the pot really just one pot or will each contributor decide who gets paid?
Comments
Does this mean that there's a business here - kind of like a reverse groupon?
A group of people want X (digital content), and each will pay whatever they want to for it. Fulfillment is more likely the larger the "pot" becomes, and it's an all-out competition to see who wins the pot.
Any ideas for a tweaking of this business model that makes more sense?
I looked into this long and hard and even built a website and minimal implementation, as I'd had some experience running and contributing to bounties on Open Source projects, but the more I thought about it, the less like a solid business it seemed.
The biggest problem is that the amounts involved are small, and the number of projects involved is also small (this is a $400 project, and it was considered interesting enough to get front page on HN; this indicates a tiny market). At the time, SourceForge, and several other Open Source sites, were beginning to add bounty and "hire this developer" features, and I couldn't see how a third party could more effectively reach those users or those developers (because you need both sides to buy into your product in order for it to be useful). The amount a third party could charge for the intermediary service is bound to be low or developers would go elsewhere; a couple points, maybe. So, 2% of $400 is 8 bucks. It'll take 10,000 projects of that size per year to pay yourself a decent salary and cover expenses. There probably haven't been 10,000 Open Source bounties in the past decade, much less the past year.
One of the problems a product like this would solve would be the trust issue: Can the bounty contributors trust the developer to deliver quality code if paid at the start, and can the developer trust all of the bounty contributors to pay up in a timely fashion if the code is delivered first. But, there are already ways to solve that problem. ChipIn solves the latter one, and many Open Source developers are sufficiently well-known in their community that no one would doubt they would finish the job. The other problem is connecting developers with money; but SourceForge and elance and many other sites already provides mechanisms for users to give developers money, as do traditional contractor agreements.
Of course, you've specified "digital content", and I was just looking at software, which opens up the market quite a bit. There were discussions amongst the browncoats (Firefly fans) of building a system to directly fund new Firefly episodes through viewer contributions. But, I think in the end, everyone agreed that the math just didn't add up. It might for lower budget content.
Back to software, I think github and SourceForge could make a few extra bucks from this kind of idea, but I don't think there's much room for any third party to fit into that relationship, if they aren't already in the loop for some reason.
Can't I accomplish the same thing using Kickstarter?
Yes, but it didn't exist when I was working on the problem. But, it is one of many competitors you would face trying to make money in the space today.
Bounties are not new in any way.. i have seen those for ubuntu und i think gnome some years ago.. but can't find an ubuntu bounty list anymore, weird..
Anyway, there is http://www.cofundos.org/ and http://micropledge.com/ at least..
FreeSWITCH has bounties too:
http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Bounty
The Open Media project also has bounties: http://openmediaproject.org/bounty
While not a prime driver for development, they can be useful for picking off new feature branches, etc.
It sounds like a reverse Kickstarter: someone posts a need and starts the pot. Other people can add to the pot and/or fork the product to modify the requirements. When the product is delivered and you can verify that it matches the requirements, the pot is paid out to the developer.
What happens if multiple people claim the pot at once, perhaps with variations in quality, speed and completeness? Is the pot really just one pot or will each contributor decide who gets paid?