Boosting the bounties: A pound for pound pledge

RISC OS Open Ltd, who only made a formal announcement about their bounty scheme earlier this week, have followed that news this evening with a pledge that they will, up to a £1,000 total limit, match every donation into the bounty scheme themselves, with the exception of donations to the administration bounty.

This means that while this scheme is in place – i.e. until that £1,000 is used up – every £1 you donate to the bounty scheme will be worth £2 to whichever developer is able to fulfull the requirements of the specific bounty to which you donate – so if there is something you particularly want to see worked on, a donation now is a good way to increase the incentive for potential developers beyond what it would have been without the pledge.

By the same token, if there is an area you feel needs to be worked on, but which doesn’t have a specific bounty into which you can donate, now is the time to make a suggestion and try to get a bounty set up. It’s not a quick or easy process, since the requirements for a bounty have to be well defined, and make absolutely clear what’s needed, so a discussion is likely to come before an addition – but the sooner the idea is put out there, the sooner you can get it to a point where the RISC OS Open staff will either be able to say “yes” and add it to the list of bounties, or explain why it’s not practical.

The amount remaining of the initial £1,000 pot – i.e. the amount that has yet to be used to match donations –  is shown underneath the table on the bounties page and, as I write this, stands at £795 – so £205 has already found its way into the various bounties. (Which, excluding the administration bounties, therefore stand at a total of £410).

When making a donation, you should note that the matching donation is a manual process, so it’s unlikely to be reflected on the page immediately.

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