Bounties are a way to pay someone to add features / fix bugs for open source software. 

For example, bountysource is a company that helps support bounties:

https://github.com/bountysource/frontend/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

I think it'd be cool if WarGear used bounties to see what features/fixes users are most interested in.  There are a lot of ways it could be structured.

e.g. Tom has a list of features and bounties (I have no idea what sort of #s make sense here)

$100 - New color scheme

$500 - Add unranked Games

$1000 - token territories

Users could donate money directly to reach a bounty, or when people buy premium membership, they also get some bounty credit to apply (10 cents per month of premium membership bought).

Tom could still do development without a bounty being reached if it's something he wants to work on.  Tom could use BountySource, but it's kind of limited. I'm not sure if there is a way at BountySource to set prices on features, instead we users would pledge money as an incentive, but without a specific price.

I think this is a great creative idea..  My sense is that Tom is reticent to hand over source code - or for that matter. trust much in the way of any coding other than his own.

..which pretty much  leaves paying tom the bounty.

I think it would be tom collecting the bounty. The way I understand it is that it's more incentive for tom to add new/desired features to the site other than our begging and pleading. For instance, he sets a price on adding unranked games and once the community raises that much money he implements the new feature and collects the money raised.

AfroDaby wrote:

I think it would be tom collecting the bounty. The way I understand it is that it's more incentive for tom to add new/desired features to the site other than our begging and pleading. For instance, he sets a price on adding unranked games and once the community raises that much money he implements the new feature and collects the money raised.

In theory - this is what the monthly fees we pay are doing.  Tom only has so much time to put into the site. but I can't speak for him.  Personally, I'm not sure that additional monetary incentives on his end are necessarily a good idea.

M57 wrote:

AfroDaby wrote:

I think it would be tom collecting the bounty. The way I understand it is that it's more incentive for tom to add new/desired features to the site other than our begging and pleading. For instance, he sets a price on adding unranked games and once the community raises that much money he implements the new feature and collects the money raised.

In theory - this is what the monthly fees we pay are doing.  Tom only has so much time to put into the site. but I can't speak for him.  Personally, I'm not sure that additional monetary incentives on his end are necessarily a good idea.

I see your point. Maybe tom could act as the bounty "gatekeeper" and award the bounties to whoever writes the best code that's up to his standard...which now that I'm thinking about it sounds kind of like tom would essentially be employing those people...

Ah, yeah.  I assumed that Tom would be the only one touching the source code.  He has never offered to share it with anyone else.  If he did want to, I'd be happy to sign a non-disclosure, non-compete, pinky swear, etc.

....non-disclosure, non-compete, pinky swear...

As a professional computer-ician, I can vouch for Ozy that NDNCPS contracts are 100% binding.  :)

Ozy - I think the idea is a great one.  I'm sure some players would be willing to pay for an additional feature, and it's an additional revenue stream for Tom, if he wanted one.