I started this to bring such discussion out of the Timberwolf RC1 topic, where some concern seems to be presenting itself. It seems a few people have critiques and suggestions about the AmigaBounty.net website and program. Please discuss that here. (Note that I neither run nor own the AmigaBounty site, I just have participated to some small extent)

Should the committee membership be posted somewhere?

Should committee deliberations be done in a public forum instead of privately? What impact (good and bad) would that have on such discussions?

How would we better describe and/or implement the approval process and measurement of "done-ness"?

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@billt

The only thing I don't like is that Bug tracker system is not part of bounty page, It be easier to track the status of project if all was in one place.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jul-2012 at 07:57 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Well, what about long after bounty is closed but updates still happen now and then? If code is posted to sourceforge, then it makes sense for tracker to go with the code. Wherever it is, it would be nice to see a bounty description pointing to any existin trackers and code repositories, etc.

I find it odd that there is a tracker on os4depot where code may not be at. But I guess that provides a public tracker to an otherwise closed project, and that may be a good thing. Just odd to me.

I'd once asked about becoming more of a forge site hosting code repositories, trackers and such in addition to the bounty program, but didn't get much interest.

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@billt

I know that most of what I postulate below will be dismissed by most 'true' os4 followers as unnecessary or even insulting. And that's the exact reason it should be implemented, IMHO - in contrast to a commercial entity, a community effort should always strive to protect the participating users - on its own, not because somebody asked for it.

In other words: most OS4 users are so used to being bullshitted and abused and to handing over their money without asking questions or expecting proper results any time soon that they pretty much need to be protected from themselves

And I'd like to make one thing clear: I admire and applaud the efforts of everybody involved with AmigaBounty. I just happen to disagree with a few technical aspects.

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Should the committee membership be posted somewhere?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I actually find it funny that we even need to discuss this.

Of course the names of the committee members should be known. At the very least donors need to know how these people actually ended up in this "committee". IMHO, donors should actually be involved in assembling this committee, or the donors should vote on the outcome themselves, while the committee only gives advice and asks for a decision based on that advice.

Basically, anything that happens should be completely transparent to the donor. Who, what, when, why and how. Everything. That starts with AmigaBounty's rules, which simply do not explain who decides if a bounty is finished or not.

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Should committee deliberations be done in a public forum instead of privately? What impact (good and bad) would that have on such discussions?

At the very least, if the committee makes any decisions, these decisions need to be explained. "we think it's finished, bye bye" is not an explanation. Especially not in a controversial case like Timberwolf.

For the sake of complete transparency, it would be nice if any logs or mail archives could be made public after the decision has been made, but I'd consider that a bonus. Discussing things in public would only lead to too much noise IMHO.

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How would we better describe and/or implement the approval process and measurement of "done-ness"?

You start by formulating more precise bounty requirements. The more precise your requirements, the easier it gets to decide if they are met or not:

"The goal of the project is a port of the Firefox web browser and associated technologies to AmigaOS 4.1" - what associated technologies? If they're required, name them.

"As much AmigaOS specific features as possible" can mean anything. Apparently, it now translated into "no AmigaOS specific features". Be precise, and nobody can argue with your reasoning (like I do ) Support for Pubscreens? Intuition menus? ARexx port? Keyboard shortcuts with Right-Amiga instead of Left-Alt? Clipboard support? Datatypes? Name them.

"Timberwolf will make use of some of the features of AmigaOS 4.1 currently in development. " is way too vague aswell - what features? Apparently, the feature in question was hardware acceleration, which has now been postponed to AmigaOS 4.2 - that would have been a show stopper for the bounty, if the requirement would have been properly named. As it is, the committee could just pretend it was never part of the deal. Not good.

Last edited by cgutjahr on 25-Jul-2012 at 09:01 PM.
Last edited by cgutjahr on 25-Jul-2012 at 08:59 PM.

@cgutjahr

It is not always possible to be precise about what to implement, it maybe its not even possible or too complicated, a bounty is a agreement between donors and developers.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

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It is not always possible to be precise about what to implement, it maybe its not even possible or too complicated

AFAIK, The Frieden brothers have been trained at a German university. They should be able to come up with precise goals for a software project. And the AmigaBounty committee probably contains more people with some background in software development.

And nobody said these goals need to be set in stone - if they need to be changed, inform the donors, propose a change and have them agree to said change.

Actually the goals for project Timberwolf have been adjusted about a year ago. Adjusting goals is nothing out of the ordinary.

@billt

Speaking for my 1.42% contribution to the Timberwolf bounty I dont have a problem.
I await the views of the other 98.58% contributors .

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Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

I have to say I only donated a small amount to the bounty and for what we got it was well worth it, true it still has some small bugs and performance issue, I hope it gets a little better (mainly on videos/youtube) but i would consider the task of bring Firefox to AmigaOS4 as pretty much done.

Now I understand why some would feel who decides that should really be the donors but I can understand the difficulty that would bring, but maybe a poll could be set up on the site so reg users when project are nearing completion users could vote to give the money over, if over 50% of users agree then money would go to the developers, this might be a simple solution.

I do think however that AmigaBounty could do with some better policy's, to basically stop some issues, one thing that i think could do with clearing up on both amigabounty and power2people is money tired up in bounty that may never happen now or have had no updates in more than a year, Gnash for example has got 1,000 euros tired up in it and looks to be a dead project, even though they did manage a alpha version, what will happen to this money, should the dev get half the money because they did get so far, should people get a refund, should the money go behind other project, like OWB html5 video who decides.

I think new bounty that start should always state what should happen to the money if the project is unsuccessful, like maybe you should have the option when donation, what happens, weather money should be divided into other bounties, refund, etc.

Another thing is if possible could the money be put in a saving account, in the uk its about 3% interest. over a year the timberworlf bounty (lets just say it was at 5,000 euros over the last year) their another 150 euros that could of been raised, small amount but still every little helps.

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@amigang

"Amigabounty committee "
Who are in the committee. Is it visible somehow?

Would it be possible to have committee voting to be open to see?
Perhaps open to donors to vote as well? While giving committee some extra weighted votes?
If donors can vote, perhaps their vote could be roughly weighted according to donated sum?
etc...

Is the committee "meeting minutes" visible anywhere?

And for bounties that seem stalled, some periodic refresh (comment from author etc.) and perhaps looking of extra R&D muscle might be needed to get stalled thing back on the move....

Last edited by KimmoK on 26-Jul-2012 at 11:33 AM.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

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"Amigabounty committee " Who are in the committee. Is it visible somehow?

No one have ever asked about it before, but it's me and a bunch of people I invited to help out in regards to which bounties to open, which to dismiss, how to describe the projects etc.

Team is not visible and I have never thought it needed to be. If team members wants to step forward they should feel free to do so (some already did in various forum posts) but I will certainly not force anyone.

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Would it be possible to have committee voting to be open to see?

No I don't think so. We operate on a closed mailinglist and that's how committee members were told it would be.

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Perhaps open to donors to vote as well? While giving committee some extra weighted votes? If donors can vote, perhaps their vote could be roughly weighted according to donated sum? etc...

Again no. As long as Amigabounty is run by me on the Liquorice bounty engine Björn created I can't see anything like that happening. But if someone comes along with a new bounty engine that has these possibilities out of the box it would be another matter.

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Is the committee "meeting minutes" visible anywhere?

Absolutely not! :)

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And for bounties that seem stalled, some periodic refresh (comment from author etc.) and perhaps looking of extra R&D muscle might be needed to get stalled thing back on the move....

I know and I also know we should be better at that. In regards to the extra r&D muscle it's more or less impossible in this tiny community, unfortunatelty (believe me I tried!).

I'm not against improvements but I don't have much time and I personally lack the skills to add features (like voting systems etc.) to the existing bounty engine. If someone comes along with good ideas that are realistic to implement I'd be happy to see it done but no one ever showed interest before..

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@Troels

The only feature I would like to see is having a mechanism for feedback able to be staffed by a volunteer or two

@Troels

First let me thank you for the work you have done and continue to do to run the Amiga Bounty system. I know that any volunteer work is rarely appreciated as much as it should be, by the people who the volunteers do the work for, so I want you to know that your work is appreciated.

I do however think that the Amiga Bounty system needs fixing as cgutjahr has suggested. If you can't implement the changes yourself, ask for help. If the site can't handle the changes, then ask the community for help in finding an alternative site to host Amiga Bounty that can handle the needed changes.

I strongly disagree with some of the other changes proposed in this thread, specially the suggestion that donors who pay more into bounties should have a larger percentage of the vote for any decisions. I find it hard to believe that anyone would want that.

I think it would be a good idea to have the donors, or community vote on who gets added to the committee that makes the decisions and takes care of the monies in all bounties, but it would be too chaotic for the donors or community to make the rest of the decisions. That is what the committee is for, making decisions. If the donors, or community makes good decisions on who they vote into the committee positions, then they won't have to worry about the right decisions being made regarding releasing the bounty money at the right time.

If committee members make bad choices, then they won't get elected again the next time the community votes on committee members.

If it is too difficult to set up the voting on the Amiga Bounty website, then maybe just the voting for committee members can be held at another website, where voting tools are already set up.

I feel that it is critical that any Amiga Bounty site be set up so that all of the community members trust it and the decisions it's committee members make without question, so more people will feel comfortable in donating money towards future projects.

To be honest, if I had known more about the current organization of Amiga Bounty and the apparrent lack of specifics in certain bounty descriptions, I would be more hesitant about donating to any bounty (though I admit that I have not had the funds to donate to as many as I would like lately, and I have instead donated in other ways).

Still, I would like to see some, or all of cgutjahr's suggestions implemented in the future, before I am ready to donate to any new Amiga Bounty projects. His criticism's and suggestions seem very constructive to me and not just criticism to be mean, or hurtful and destructive. Others may have different opinions on the subject.

I hope you will weigh all comments objectively and allow the community to help you resolve any changes that you need help with.

Transparency is needed, but not chaos or lack of control.

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@billt

If they are decisions in name of all that participated, at least it should be public.
Maybe AW.net can work it out with Amigabounty net?

You can discuss on closed list but result has to be public. This case just proves it.

Last edited by vox on 02-Aug-2012 at 08:21 AM.

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@thread

Even if no changes in "official" bounty process is made, the committee could put some advising poll or thread on AW for uncertain things.
Users could then have their say, for examble about SW stability.
In the end the council would anyway make their own decision, based on their own thoughts + community advices.

So far AmigaBounty is one of the best things for AOS4 SW development. Perhaps it can also help HW projects in the future.

(power2people has one thing better: it's multiplatform, I would opt for not to uphold the division of flavours any more)

Last edited by KimmoK on 05-Aug-2012 at 10:32 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 05-Aug-2012 at 10:26 AM.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK
We have our official forums on amigans.net if we opt to change the process in the future it's my hope it could be in cooperation with amigans.net who have always been very helpful to us.

As for Amigabounty going multiplatform I can't see that happen in the near future at least don't hold your breath.

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@Troels

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We have our official forums on amigans.net if we opt to change the process in the future it's my hope it could be in cooperation with amigans.net who have always been very helpful to us. As for Amigabounty going multiplatform I can't see that happen in the near future at least don't hold your breath.

OK, I am amigans.net member but I don`t see exponation of these decison at AB forums
http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewforum.php?forum=32

Maybe its best to publish it there

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@vox
There hasn't been any decisions made or any discussion regarding changes for that matter. So, nothing to publish.

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@Troels

Quote:

There hasn't been any decisions made or any discussion regarding changes for that matter. So, nothing to publish.

So, there was no decison to cash Timberwolf bounty?
Team decisions should be published there, so all the donors know WHAT and WHY was decided ... would save a lot of rumor mills

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Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@Troels

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So, nothing to publish

You still need to publish the names of the members of the Amigabounty committee somewhere.

@Troels:

While I was skimming throught Amigabounty.net, I noticed a few other things that I'd like to ask about :

Bounty: Raise funds to purchase loaner hardware - in the accompanying AW thread, Trevor (who initiated the bounty) says that "details of software projects are and will be posted on the AmigaBounty.net website". All I can see on your website is an announcement that the systems are available now, does that mean these systems have never been given to any developers? Who has them now, and for what purpose?

Bounty: Developer Machine for Spotify has no deadline set. How will "the committee" determine if they bounty has failed and it's time to ask for a return of the Sam system?