Linux Mint Forums

==== As of 0010 UTC on Jan. 19, 2015, 58 people have viewed this and none of them have left a comment. Is this too stupid an idea to at least comment on?


Let's crowd-source Mint.!.!

I've contributed to freeware projects and I've contributed to crowd-sourced projects. The crowd-source projects were much more satisfying -- a contribution just disappears into a black hole. As a result, the crowd-sourced projects seemed to be a lot more successful. The bonus: The money was obtained up-front.

So, let's crowd-source Mint. What do you think?

Let's brain storm.

Suppose a bunch of people want a particular feature (or want to kill a particular bug). Crowd-source the feature.

Crowd-sourcing could be done right here in this forum. Have a new forum board just for crowd-sourcing projects.

Suppose the developers estimate that it will take 30 hours to write a new version of something and 80 hours to test/rewrite it. That's a total of 110 hours. Instead of using unpaid volunteer labor, use paid volunteer labor at the rate of $25/hour -- not much, but better than zero, eh?

So the project would need $2750. Start a crowd-sourced fund. Nothing happens until the fund reaches $2750, then the development happens under the condition that when it is completed, no matter how long that actually takes, the developers split the $2750.

By the way, that's a project of over 1 person-week. Many things would be smaller.

I think crowd-sourcing could work, and should be tried.