The Bitcoin Grant For Open Source | Hacker News Reader

The Bitcoin Grant For Open Source

bitcoingrant.org

>continue to do great work and we will reach out to you.

That's a bit of a sticky problem. It's a hard job finding worthy projects that than benefit the most from funding. There are a lot of projects out there. Some have a lot of potential but identifying them isn't easy.

I can understand why there isn't a sign saying "I'm giving away money, apply here." That is a recipe to be inundated with requests where the the most worthy lose out to those more skilled at applying for grants.

I wonder if there is scope for a crowd sourced intermediary here. We all think about the worthy causes we could support if we were mega rich. Maybe what we need is a "If I had a Billion Dollars" website where people suggest and critique causes to enable those who do have the money can look to see where they can do the most good.

Specifically for Open Source, I have found quiet little projects that could benefit from grants, projects that would never actually seek out funding in their own right. Another aspect are projects that are not yet open source that could possibly be liberated with a fair payment. I see things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Studio_Pro which I doubt will ever be finished as a proprietary project, but might have a chance as open source. Similarly http://sol.gfxile.net/atanua/ is an excellent program that is largely lying idle. Both of these could be possibly bought into the open source world if their respective developers were offered some compensation for their efforts so far.

Of course I know only a little snapshot of what is out there, perhaps there should be a way for the cumulative eyeballs of people to find the best opportunities.

Sounds like an interesting initiative (if serious), but I can confirm this has nothing to do with the Bitcoin project or foundation. They may use bitcoin, but that's all.

Some kind of crowdfunding platform could work better here. Something like fundhub.org or gittip.com

the fuck? why is it okay to put up shit like this if you don't have any external validation?

It is 'okay' to put up anything at all, of course.

But I too am wondering what on earth this is and why anyone would take it seriously.

The only requirement of the Bitcoin Grant is that the project must be open source in nature, this is not limited to only software. There is no application to fill out, simply continue to do great work and we will reach out to you.

That's all you need to know. Which is nothing. All of this is, at least at this point, nothing at all.

Thanks for pointing this out. I could't get through the fold/unfold interface, or the biased overgeneralized writing.

So the tldr; "I have a lot of bitcoins, which are now worth something, so I'm going to give some of them to some people working on open source projects. Keep being awesome free software developers!"

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