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Comment by figassis | Hacker News Reader

Usually, I try to use projects in languages I work with so if the issue is not important enough for me to make a PR, then it’s not important enough. One thing I wish were possible is to sponsor an issue. I don’t usually sponsor open source projects, but I would likely sponsor a lot of issues just to speed up resolution. I think this could move a lot of projects in the right direction. Depending on difficulty, the maintainer could define a budget to have it in the roadmap with a reasonable timeline defined by them, maybe measured in quarters.

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An issue is that the maintainer may have other priorities. By sponsoring an item you "force" them to look at that sooner.

Probably, it is their choice to fix the issue and collect. An unresolved issue in the agreed timeline automatically refunds the money. Maintainer has the option to request more time. Donors can accept or reject. Ideally multiple people would sponsor an issue, so some percentage of funding would back out as deadlines are missed, but not all funding. Incentive is more delay, less reward.

What happens here is inevitably someone puts up $5 and harasses the maintainer for not taking the bounty.

They already do while putting up $0. Nothing really changes there. Also, maybe money should be refunded if maintainer does not accept in a reasonable time after funding goal is reached. Maintainer can always reject sooner. Maintainer has final word.

People feel a lot more justified to harass maintainers if they offer money, and do not usually understand that a small token amount is not really worth taking :(

As long as that money is held in escrow. Otherwise vaporware would make a killing.

You could Make them supply a test case that unlocks the escrow.

This both makes a bar that the bug creator has to pass, filtering some of the drive by time wasters, and gives a reward to the developers for fixing it.

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