Bountysource Stole at Least $21,000 From Open Source Developers

BrikoX@lemmy.zip to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 232 points –
Bountysource Stole at Least $17,000 From Open Source Developers
boehs.org

This is why people say the open source ecosystem sucks.

23

Hi! I wrote this <3

Hi. Could you add a link to your Lemmy account to any other source? The website/GitHub/Mastodon/Liberapay doesn't mention this account.

Sure! I've been meaning to depoy hedgedoc for a while now and this seems like a good use. Here you go: https://doc.boehs.org/s/socials

::: spoiler fixed; ignore Edit: Why does nothing ever work. Immediately hit some obscure error because of a cloudflare minifier edgecase: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/cache-minify-breaking-script/386650/11, well if you do a view source you'll see it

:::

Edit 2: You can also verify by asking at any of the methods in https://boehs.org/contact

Also, could you please update the title of your fediverse post? The article now says 21k 🙂

I cannot maths sometime 😩

It happens to the best of us 🙂

In 2017, the project was purchased by the cryptocurrency company CanYa, and in 2020 it was sold to “The Blockchain Group”. Coincidently, around this time, the Bountysource project announced drastic changes to its terms of service, enabling them to steal unclaimed bounties after two years

Crypto ghouls strike again!

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasdfsadfasfasdf :::

Here's the thing: I'm excited about the tech and its potential uses. BUT there's a reason why I still steer clear of any project that hasn't built up reputation for years. If the project is worthwhile, early adopters will find out and eventually, it will grow over many years. Then it could be considered somewhat "trustworthy".

Funny how Bountysource deteriorated at the exact time cryptocurrency got involved.

I don't like the comment "this is why people say the open source ecosystem sucks" because a bankruptcy of a company has nothing to do with the concept of open source.

If you read through some of my other stuff, I mostly document controversy in the open source community. OSS developers being taken advantage of and loosing is just the norm, the only thing unique here is that the donation platform itself was doing that instead of the users

I didn't and it doesn't matter because you wrote it under this article and so it's related to it. I'm not saying that it's not true, but it can't be related to this fact.

That's why I provided 18 citations for that claim in the first paragraph

That’s incredibly scummy. If it were huge corporations, it would be a rounding error no one would care about, but this is OSS community members we’re talking about

Right? like the probably 50-100k they stole in total is whatever, but the fact they stole it from underpaid OSS developers and generous community members is disgusting.

I might apply for funding to research the real number that was stolen...

Are there better open source bounty sites/systems?

The best option is to just support the developer/project by the method they prefer the most (ko-fi/patreon/crypto/beer/t-shirts etc).

If the project doesn't accept any donations but accepts code contributions instead (or you want to develop something that doesn't exist), you can directly hire a freelancer to work on what you want, from sites like freelancer.com.