hi everyone,
it's good to see that this issue is being discussed here ...
what i don't like about the bounty system, is the idea of "competition" or "hunt" which is not really compatible with "community" to my mind.
I agree. Then again, the pd community (like any other open source community) is probably not as coherent as it seems to be at a first glance: there are the developers working on the software package and the users that use it for whatever their purposes are. There is a fundamental difference between developers and users: developers implement the stuff they are missing, while users are unable to do so, because they are - well, just users. Enthusiastic users most of the time (and especially with regard to pure data), but still - they can't program, and this is not due to a lack of will, but to a lack of knowledge that can't be alleviated within a month or so. From this point of view, bounties might be a good instrument to bring developers and users closer together - after all, the things that the average Joe User is missing in pd are not necessarily less important than the new and nifty things the average developer is implementing at the same time. Needless to say, this is not meant to be a rant or an insult towards the devs or Joe User ... I see bounties as an additional incentive for developers to implement this or that often requested feature. Admittedly, we would introduce some sort of market mechanism into the shiny new world of open source development, but - unless every child learns to program c++ in kindergarten, open source won't change the world anyway ... it will definitely not abolish capitalism. or so i guess.
my 2 cents, Thoralf.
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