Open-source is a lot of work, with little reward

First, some disclaimers

bountyhunt.io is (as of writing this) not at all done. In fact, it mostly just contains UI work. Follow me to stay tuned!

In addition, this post mostly contains criticism and has some dark viewpoints at certain times. It's not a rant, but it's not exactly something that'll cheer you up either. Continue at your own will 😅

My background

By day, I am just an ordinary software developer working a full-time (or soon-to-be part-time) job. But, as the sun sets and the night begins, I become a full-fledged open-source contributor 😎

My NuGet packages have been downloaded more than 1,5 million times, and my NPM packages have reached millions of downloads as well. Amazon's AWS team uses my packages in their projects and SDKs, and I maintain 50+ repositories or projects on a regular basis.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

There are good parts to being an Open Source developer. Sometimes people will comment "I love this project - thank you!" which instantly warms my heart. Sometimes people open a pull request and contribute to my projects themselves, demonstrating the true power of open-source 🙏

However, more often than not, people are rude, demanding, and ruthless 😐

Comments like "You failed to commit to the deadline", or "Your package has this bug, can you get it fixed within a day?" are popping up far too often. People expect too much and have little sympathy for the ones behind all the open-source software out there. If I reply "I'm sorry, I've been quite busy, will most likely get to it soon!", I am often met with frustration and no understanding of the situation.

This is most likely a contributing factor as to what leads some open-source developers to end their own life 😰

In addition, most open-source developers are not lucky enough to receive sponsorships and fund their work. They do it all in their spare time. At the same time, big corporations use open-source projects, happily making billions of dollars of revenue, while the creator gets nothing.

There's a famous XKCD that explains this pretty well:

Link to comic: https://xkcd.com/2347/

What can be done?

Most of the above issues are solvable by you (the "consumer" of the open-source projects).

If you want to make a difference, here's my list of advice:

• When you submit a bug, start out by saying how much you appreciate the work that the creator is doing.
• Consider sponsoring the creator of a project. Even $3 a month helps a lot.
• Consider submitting pull requests instead of opening issues. Help to find the solution to the problem.
• Consider putting a bounty on the issue you open, to reward whoever solves it, and to bring attention to the issue. Pssst! That's why I am building bountyhunt.io!

bountyhunt.io: When time is money

When I decide which projects to work on next, I typically try to find a balance between how long something takes to make, and where there is the most pressure at the moment (priority = impact / effort).

However, if each issue had a bounty on it, my priority would instead be based on a balance between what I would earn, and how much effort it would take to make (priority = bountyAmount / effort).

On the other side of the spectrum, I think it's a fair assumption to make, that people would be more likely to place bounties on issues that they find extra important. So putting a bounty on something that's proportional to the importance becomes a way of getting attention to the issue at hand, but at the same time awarding whoever fixes it, for their work and time spent.

That's what bountyhunt.io is all about. Being able to put bounties on GitHub issues, and let people become full-time bounty hunters, doing what they love and getting paid for it while helping solve the biggest issues out there in the wild.

Here's a UI mockup of the concept so far. Remember it's just a concept - many things don't work yet!

https://sponsorkit.io/bounties/view/?number=10121&owner=microsoft&repo=vscode

Competitors

There are competitors out there, but they either require a GitHub App to be installed to the repository where you want to make a bounty on an issue, are crazy about their hidden fees, or have shady business practices due to hedgefund acquisitions and too big of a focus on earning money.

The future

I am brewing up a side concept for Sponsorware integration for developers, called Sponsorkit. It'll be launched shortly after bountyhunt.io.

Follow me to keep up to date!