The Art of Contributing

I've often thought that contributing to open source projects is too labor-intensive. Installing the version control system, configuring your environment to run the code, learning the code, updating the code, submitting the patch and then asking the maintainer(s) to merge the change all present barriers to entry.

What I would prefer is something akin to development currency, that would lower the bar and flatten the learning curve. I think that users want to be able to:

* Suggest a change

* Point to the problem code, if desired

* Suggest a fix, if desired

* Contribute in some way (perhaps monetarily) that helps the change occur, if desired

I wish that github had a bounty system like the one in Stack Overflow:

http://www.quora.com/GitHub/Why-doesnt-Github-add-a-bounty-f...

If a system like this existed, I could easily see developers earning income on the side by improving code. It could incorporate something like Flattr so that developers could join a guild for some amount of money per month and vote for enhancements with their dollars/bitcoins. It would be nice to withdraw karma as currency also.

The point made about "bias towards merging" is my favorite. It's hard enough to get people to contribute without compounding the problem by kicking back their work over minutiae.