Status of amigabounty.net?

[ddniUK]

I've read the amigabounty.net page and see some reported issues with the service. What isn't clear is when that post was made.

What is the currentvstatus of Amigabounty.net?
Are new bounty suggestions still possible / worthwhile?

[cgutjahr]

What is the currentvstatus of Amigabounty.net?

It's been dead for at least five years. Back then, the Timberwolf bounty money was paid to the Friedens - and the way this was handled destroyed a lot of goodwill (even if nobody would say so in public, back then). It certainly didn't help that the maintainer had already lost his motivation at that point.

One or two more bounties were started after that, but nothing ever came of it AFAIK.

[ddniUK]

Thanks cgutjahr.
Disappointing. Is there an alternative way of crowdfunding AmigaOID programs whilst attracting a developer?

[SamuraiCrow]

Power2people.org is not just for AROS.  Try them out.

[cgutjahr]

Power2people.org is not just for AROS.  Try them out.

I'd write a proposal first, and have it discussed in some forum. That way, you get some feedback: there might be things you didn't think about, there might be something in the works already, demand might be smaller/bigger than you anticipated etc. You also get help in nailing down the bounty requirements - the more precise these are, the better the chances for a peaceful outcome and a decent release.

And whatever you do: the end result needs to be compilable by everybody with a simple make (or something like that) and *all* of the code needs to be released under a free license.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of bounties. We had a similar discussion on a German forum recently, here are some numbers I digged up for that cconversation:

Check amigabounty.net's list of finished projects and see how many of these projects were actually useful in the end. Now add the numbers in the 'Bounty' column - the amount is close to 18.000 Euro. Plus 3100 Euro for Sputnik (see 'Closed Projects'), 4100 Euro for the source release of a 20 year old file manager (see power2people.org), 7600 Euro for Odyssey source release, donations for having the stuff ported to OS4 etc. etc.

That doesn't look like a good deal to me. And how many of these projects are still actively maintained? None, actually. I don't think the bounty system has done OS4 any good.

[Iggy]

Power2people.org is not just for AROS.  Try them out.

You are suggesting that people fund Amiga projects through Bill and Rachel Buck?
Interesting.
Not that it wouldn't work, but I do primarily see AROS projects there.

@cgutjahr

Bounties have worked before. It's how we financed the G5 port for MorphOS