OSS Bounty project: todo list / collaborative outliner, to be open sourced | Hacker News Reader

OSS Bounty project: todo list / collaborative outliner, to be open sourced

jacquesmattheij.com

25 pointsjacquesm23 comments

At the risk of leaving a 'negative' comment:

This is dangerously close (for lack of a better word) to spec work. You might get paid, based on a vague specification (I want something like x.com! Features? Just look at x.com!)

The author wants it all but offers very little. It HAS to be completed FAST (first team gets the cash!), and it has to be polished ("This is not to be a 'botch' job, I want something that's production grade"). ANY HN'r should know that FAST and POLISH do not go together.

To add insult to injury, you have to hand over all your copyright. Yeah right!

For the reasons above (low budget, no formal specifications, handing over all copyright, and risk of not being paid whatsoever), I really think that if you participate you ARE being taken advantage of.

Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick two.

Nobody said it would have to be done fast, but if there are multiple people that will go and do this then there is a chance that if you move too slow that you'll miss out. That is also why I thought it fair to offer the possibility of listing those that plan on working on this so that people could collaborate rather then compete. I thought it would be fair to mention that in case someone thought they would be able to go and do this and come back in 12 months time. By then most likely someone will have solved it. But I don't impose a time limit.

Polished as in: if you think that presenting a pile of junk tomorrow morning is going to pass muster then no, that's not the intention.

The copyright is as far as the transaction is concerned the moment at which payment takes place. I'm not paying this as a private individual, I'm paying it through a corporation and if I want to make a payment there has to be something on the the balance sheet to cover for that. Because the final product is to be open sourced that should not matter, correct me if I am wrong here why there is a practical reason why that is bad. Another good reason is to make sure the code actually does get released under the GPL, and that there will not be suddenly double licensing tricks or other nasty gotchas.

If you feel that you are or might being taken advantage of, then please do not do this, that's not the intention and that's definitely not where I want to take this.

Rather the opposite, I have some money - not a whole lot - and a whole pile of ideas that I would like to see come to life as open source projects. If you feel that you do not want to get paid but you want to make this project come to life as an open source offering then of course that would be an even bigger advantage to me, I figured that by offering a reasonable bounty on this the chances of seeing it becoming a reality would increase.

I take it you are not interested ;)

If instead of just negative stuff you would like to contribute ways in which I could make the offer better then I would be most grateful.

I do not think his posting should be considered negative. It pointed out very valid concerns.

One way you might make your offer more attractive without paying more or compromising quality might be lifting the restriction to PHP 4.

For maximum use I think PHP4 is the sweet spot, it's more than enough to build a relatively simple project as this and it would help to not require people to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of PHP if they happen to have a slightly older installation.

Personally I can't stand it when for a simple module I have to go and make changes to a system that is already working, and I can imagine that people would want to take this and integrate it as a module in their own website.

If there are really urgent reasons why PHP5 would be the only acceptable platform for something like this then I'm open to that but current+previous major release seem to be a good place to be in terms of installed base.

PHP4 end of life was at the end of 2007. I don't think you'd lose many users for requiring php5. (sorry couldn't reply to the correct nested comment)

That's a good argument, I thought it was still a supported version. Thank you, I will amend the article.

Let me get this straight...

- You want indefinite time to test a product which is loosely specified, effectively leaving developers of good solutions screwed if someone posts a better solution in the meanwhile - Yet you want everyone to rush on it because only the first accepted solution gets paid for, and - You actually you want them to invent wheels, hot water and sliced bread (no frameworks)

To add insult to injury, you want to protect yourself from people who want to earn quick money, while treating developers as a potential source of double licensing and nasty gotchas.

Or did I misunderstand you?

> Or did I misunderstand you?

Apparently, yes.

Nobody needs to rush, it is just that I think it is only fair that if someone completes the job they get paid and I only need one implementation, not 10. So I encourage people to collaborate rather than to work independently, but they're free to do so if they want.

That's also why I offer to list contact info for those busy on the project.

I want to protect myself from people who just go for the cash without any basic q&a because it will mean that a serious contender will not get a fair chance.

I find this part objectionable:

When the job is completed and tested it will be open sourced, GPLV2, copyright will be assigned to 'The Modular Company BV' in the Netherlands.

If this is GPLed, then it shouldn't matter much who holds the copyright. If you want the copyright, then it's not much of a sign of your belief in open source.

Ideally you'd accept MIT licensed code.

See above for an explanation of why the transfer of copyright was added, if you have an alternative to that that will pass with my bookkeeper I'm open to it.

As for MIT vs GPL, I chose the GPL because it is the license that I believe best represents the spirit of what I want to achieve. If you wish you can make a similar offer using the MIT license.

Typically, someone wants work done, finds someone to do it, and they agree on what's getting done and how much is going to be paid. In this case, 100% of the risk is with the developer. Maybe someone else builds it first; maybe you don't like what the finished product looks like; etc. There is no risk to you here. It seems like a very one-sided approach to getting something done.

As an aside, doesn't this belong on a job board or contractor site?

Are you opposed to a lightweight framework? Or a templating tool like Smarty? Ideally, a good framework would make a cleaner, more coherent codebase. If you restrict frameworks, I have a feeling most devs will just roll their own.

I think that plenty of people are going to 'drop' this in to their existing site as a nice to have module in the back-office or intranet. That means they'll have to do customization, any kind of dependency is going to make that much harder.

So even a 'lightweight' framework will likely complicate things, for instance it is possible that another framework is already present.

And another great offer to the HN community!

This is the inverse of kickstarter. Is there a site where you can post these sort of things?

Not yet, but if this succeeds I promise another bounty project to do just that.

See idea #32:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/My+list+of+ideas+for+when+you+are...

It might have been smarter to do this the other way around but I need this badly and so do at least two other HN'ers.

#27 has been done: http://www.deadmansswitch.net/

61 to go!

I don't doubt the number is actually much lower than 61, that list was made from my 'old' list of ideas I did not go out of my way to check if someone had not gotten around to executing them.

It's also good proof that whatever idea you've got someone else will have it too so discussing your idea is not harmful per se. Dallying during the executing phase is a much bigger problem.

I've added your find to the list of ideas.

Ah, I thought you meant it to be a list of things you'd like to see built, so I thought I'd inform you that that one exists already.

It is :)

But I did not verify if it had not been, that would have been more time that I could spend on it at that moment. I figure if anybody takes one of those the first thing they should do is check if it exists already or not. And even if, they could always do a better job. If you find more of them let me know, I'll link them from the article (multiple implementations also fine).

Ah, very true.

I have been dreaming for a long time of a site where groups could form around issues, put together a bounty, and administer it collaboratively. I think it was tried once, called bigcarrot.com, and hasn't really taken off.

Sad to read at the bottom of the page that they have a patent pending on this. How ridiculous.

You can't patent a business method. So they can stick 'patent pending' on anything it just won't fly.

Also, I've been 'dreaming' along with you for a long long time, mail me please, let's compare notes. I'm not quite ready to go publick with my dream just yet, but if you read the list of ideas linked above you might find the right one.

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