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

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

project.

Description

Bounties are usually offered as an incentive for fixing

software bug A software bug is a design defect ( bug) in computer software. A computer program with many or serious bugs may be described as ''buggy''. The effects of a software bug range from minor (such as a misspelled word in the user interface) to sev ...

s or implementing minor features. Bounty driven development is one of the business models for open-source software. The compensation offered for an open-source bounty is usually small.

Examples of bounties

* 2023: The Prettier Challenge to write a

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH) ...

program that would pass 95% of the test suite for the prettier code formatter was completed within three weeks, with an award of $22,500 to Biome contributors. * 2018: Mozilla Firefox's WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) bug was submitted by Education First to Bountysource for $50,000. * 2015: Artifex Software offered up to $1000 to anyone who fixes some of the issues posted on Ghostscript Bugzilla. * 2008:

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

(acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

in 2010) announced $1 million in bounties for developing

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

NetBeans NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java (programming language), Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, ...

, OpenSPARC,

GlassFish GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by OmniFish, Fujitsu and Payara. The support ...

, OpenOffice.org, and

OpenJDK OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006, four years before the company was acquired by Oracle Corp ...

. * 2004: Mozilla introduced a Security Bug Bounty Program, offering $500 to anyone who finds a "critical" security bug in Mozilla. * Two software bounties were completed for the Amiga Research Operating System (AROS), implementing a free Kickstart ROM replacement for use with the UAE emulator and FPGA Amiga reimplementations, as well as original Amiga hardware. *

RISC OS Open RISC OS Open Ltd. (also referred to as ROOL) is a Private company limited by guarantee, limited company engaged in computer software and IT consulting. It is managing the process of publishing the source code to RISC OS. Company founders incl ...

bounty scheme to encourage development of

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

* AmiZilla was an over $11,000 bounty to port the Firefox web browser to

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

, MorphOS and AROS. While the bounty produced few direct results, it inspired many bounty systems in the Amiga community, including Timberwolf, Power2people, AROS Bounties, and Amigabounty.net .

References

Open source Grants (money) Philanthropy {{Free-software-stub

Description

Examples of bounties

See also

References