Open-source bounty

An open-source bounty is a monetary reward for completing a task in an open-source software project.

Description

Bounties are usually offered as an incentive for fixing software bugs or implementing minor features.^[1] Bounty driven development is one of the business models for open-source software.^{[citation needed]} The compensation offered for an open-source bounty is usually small.^[2]

Examples of bounties

• 2023: The Prettier Challenge^[3] to write a Rust program that would pass 95% of Prettier test suite was completed within 3 weeks and awarded $22,500 to Biome contributors.^[4]
• 2018: Mozilla Firefox's WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) bug was submitted by Education First to Bountysource for $50,000.^[5]
• Sun MicroSystems (now owned by Oracle Corporation) has offered $1 million in bounties for OpenSolaris, NetBeans, OpenSPARC, GlassFish, OpenOffice.org, and OpenJDK.^[6]
• 2004: Mozilla introduced a Security Bug Bounty Program, offering $500 to anyone who finds a "critical" security bug in Mozilla.^[7]
• 2015: Artifex Software offers^[8] up to $1000 to anyone who fixes some of the issues posted on Ghostscript Bugzilla.
• Two software bounties were completed for the Amiga AROS operating system, producing a free Kickstart ROM replacement for use with the UAE emulator and FPGA Amiga reimplementations, as well as original Amiga hardware.^[9][10]
• RISC OS Open bounty scheme to encourage development of RISC OS^[11]
• AmiZilla was an over $11,000 bounty to port the Firefox web-browser to AmigaOS, MorphOS & AROS. While the bounty produced little results it inspired many bounty systems in the Amiga community including Timberwolf, Power2people, AROS Bounties, Amigabounty.net and many more.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Bountysource
• Bug bounty program
• Business models for open-source software
• Crowdfunding
• Google Summer of Code

References

1. Kanda, T.; Guo, M.; Hata, H.; Matsumoto, K. (2017). Towards understanding an open-source bounty: Analysis of bountysource. 2017 IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). IEEE. pp. 577–578.
2. Zhou, J.; Wang, S.; Zhang, H.; Chen, T.H.P.; Hassan, A.E. (2021). "Studying backers and hunters in bounty issue addressing process of open source projects". Empirical Software Engineering. 26 (4). Springer: 1–36. doi:10.1007/s10664-021-09979-z. S2CID 254472802.
3. "The Prettier Challenge". Algora, Public Benefit Corporation. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
4. "Biome formatter wins the Prettier challenge". Biome. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
5. "Bountysource, Education First increase Mozilla WebRTC bounty to a whopping $50,000!". CanYa Blog. 2019-10-08. Archived from the original on 2019-10-08. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
6. Shaun Nichols (30 January 2008). "Sun sets $1 million open source bounty". iTnews.com.au. nextmedia. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
7. Linda Rosencrance (3 August 2004). "Brief: Mozilla offers bounty for bugs". Computerworld. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
8. "Ghostscript: Bug bounty program". Retrieved 14 July 2015.
9. "Amiga.org - Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase II) Assigned". Archived from the original on 6 December 2010. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
10. "Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase II)". Retrieved 14 July 2015.
11. "RISC OS Open: All bounties". Retrieved 14 July 2015.