Will that be a good idea to pay Pfsense annual fee to maintain some packages
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Your points are well taken and you're right, there isn't much useful feedback lately for people posting bounties. In the past, there were a number of attempts to help individuals understand why their $50 bounty to "do everything and make it easy" was not getting any traction. After a whole bunch of responses saying "I don't see why I should have to pay that much for free software" or "I'm too poor to pay for this" most of the developers gave up. I'll put together a set of guidelines for people posting bounties and sticky it. Hopefully that will help.
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I don't think I was around that far back so I wasn't familiar with previous attempts at explanation, but I can definitely see that as being discouraging to the developers. I know that people have that attitude about free software, and it sucks but there will be some people that will just never get it.
I saw the new sticky at the top and I think it's great. I really love the pfSense project, and I appreciate all the time and work put into it by you and all the other developers. I think the bounty system has a lot of potential so I'm happy to see some moves toward making it more successful.
Thanks again!
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Hello there,
This is a great discussion thread on the bounty system, and I think Submicron's sticky is a great start. I'd like to make a suggestion which I think might help create a more uniform process. I believe an official format/template for posting a bounty request would be useful. I also suggest a that a standard reply template could be employed by any interested developer.
I agree with others on this thread about the confusion factor. For a lot of end users, there is a significant disconnect between asking for a package, and evaluating how long or what that package might cost to develop.
Perhaps the best way forward for someone requesting a new feature without an established budget and timeframe is to post a RFQ (request for quotation) at the beginning of the process. This would allow for one or more developers to bid or even collaborate on a project and establish a sense of the amount of time required.
I don't think most folks intend to be insulting to anybody by offering $50 - $100 for a bounty, but when that bounty represents 40 hours work for the developer, it can easily seem that way. By clarifying the scope of the project before dollars and cents are discussed, it might resolve this issue with the bounty system.
After a sense of the project really has taken shape, hopefully then the requestor would proceed by either 1) making a reasonable offer based on the established scope of the project, or 2) realize that the scope exceeded their means alone, and either ask for financial collaborators or abandon the request.
This would also be a benefit to the community as there would be a record of requests made using a uniform methodology, with a detailed scope of work associated with the request. Even if the original request was withdrawn, future requests which were similar would have a detailed scope of work and information for establishing a reasonable financial offer for the desired feature/fix.
Lots of other forums have a more formalized structure for things like asking for support, or advise on a topic.
What do you folks think?
A sample template example for the initial request :
Bounty Request for Quotation
Feature/Fix requested :
pfSense version :
Timeframe requirement (if any) :
Detailed Description :Developer Response
Feature/Fix :
Total number of hours estimated :
Availability (re:timeframe) :
Hourly rate or flat project fee (optional?) :
Detailed discussion of implementation plan :…
I'm sure more info could/should be included in both templates, but do you think moving this direction is a good idea?
Best,
-- Phob
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I would love to see a template approach. I think that would, at least in my world, understand more about the potential project up front. It also shows you that the poster is most likely serious about their request.
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That would be great! Who has the copyright to this when paid for development? Lets say the guys behind Pfsense decide to sell the damn thing…Because it is THAT good and very feature rich and it can compete(later stages) with much more expensive solutions.
They get offered a lot of money and I (among others) have paid for development because I think its a great product and I want to contribute to making it better.....but I dont want to see other people get very rich because of what I have donated to development.
Am I an idiot or just plain normal?
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I think that what you could do is pay someone to teach you the tricks - get a second pc to learn on so that your not taking any chance.
I was thinking about this myself, maybe someone would step up and teach all us noobs.
BTW i'm new to pfSense - I just setup m0n0wall and was searching on IPv6 and hit this tv show that talked about this and so here I am -
The analogy between m0n0wall vs pfSense = acoustic vs electric guitar.
I ran m0n0wall and was like heck yeah - now i'm like - umm - a little kid opening christmas presents.
Thanks Mom and Dad ;D -
Who has the copyright to this when paid for development? Lets say the guys behind Pfsense decide to sell the damn thing…Because it is THAT good and very feature rich and it can compete(later stages) with much more expensive solutions.
We own the copyright on all the open source development we're paid to do. Once it's out there and BSD licensed, it's always available and BSD licensed. It has little value in and of itself, from the perspective of "selling out". No one is going to pay a fortune for an open source project when that code can be obtained for nothing with the very limited restrictions of the BSD license. If you feel that way about it, you could feel the same way about people taking open source code and selling it (rebranded or otherwise), which happens. If that was a show stopping concern for people, open source wouldn't exist. Those who sell rebranded versions fund a large portion of the open source development on this project, so even though in your described scenario that's "bad" as someone is making money off of something part of which you funded, reality is without that, the project wouldn't be anywhere near where it is. You can look at any major open source project and find the same. You're benefiting from work that hundreds of different companies and individuals have contributed to in some fashion in our code base alone, not counting all the underlying bits we use.
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Something that I would like to see is some form of "bounty page", which people in the forum can link to. This way you get a running tally of what people have donated vs how much it would require to get it going. Kinda like Kickstarter or something similar, but on the pfSense site if possible. Then, users like myself would be able to take the, "I'd really like it if this was in pfSense", see a thread for it (or create one), and check on the status of the donations. Lets say I see that it is $50 short of its goal, I could think "well, I think I can spare $50 to get this rolling!"
Also, the system could put a hold on funds for the projects, say to a paypal account or something similar, and if the bounty gets raised enough to start, then the funds would be pulled, and sent to the developer. If they are not, then after some period of time, the bounty would expire and people would get their money back.
My main issue is that I've seen a few bounties I'd like to contribute to, but I get leery because there is no official, organized, secure way to pay the coders. And for coders, they have less incentive to code because they're not sure if they'll even get the money once the bounty is completed.
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This is similar to how the bounty system works now. Anyone who is offering a bounty is expected to put the money for the bounty up in advance, after a developer has agreed to take the bounty. This way the developers are confident of getting the money they agreed to after project completion. Some very decent bounties have recently been completed this way.
A larger "fund raiser" type approach for bigger bounties is a very good idea. I'm not sure what any of the hot button items are right now for people.
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The problem that I've seen so far is that there doesn't seem to be an actual 'fund-raising page', but promises via forum posts. If there is such a page, then I haven't seen it. Please do tell if there is something like what I was describing, I'd be happy to peruse the projects up and see if any are something I'd feel the need to donate to! For me, using pfSense in my home, and occasionally in SO/HO projects, I'd be most interested in related things (PPPoE, squid, WiFi, etc). Main thing I'd like to donate to right now is pushing 2.0 out with a tad 'cleaner'/less confuddling traffic shaping interface and a unified wizard.
Would it be possible for devs or people interested in having some feature/package implemented to use some service like KickStarter, and linking to it via the forum? I'd imagine the dev would have to post the project's monetary goal, cause non-coding people such as myself wouldn't have as good an idea of the scope/cost.
I'd favor a system hosted on pfSense's site more, with a secure means for users to donate (PayPal comes to mind), and perhaps coders to be able to 'bid' on what the cost would be. This would encourage bidding because people can see how close 'package X' is to having its goal met, and it would also allow for coders to 'bid' on how much they would expect to receive for the package – some programmers might be able to take on a project for slightly less.
The only detrimental effect I can foresee with the latter option is bidding wars between programmers, which could lead to conflict or lower quality packages, but it may be worth trying such a feature.
There could also be rolling maintenance goals, with some limit on maintaining a package each month/quarter/etc for those that require it, like squidguard -- if the goal isn't met for the period, it would be up to the maintainer to decide on whether they feel like 'donating' an update, or something like that.
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I've looked into Kickstarter before, but the problem is it would be against their terms of service to use it, specifically: "Kickstarter is not a place for … raising funds for business expenses (rent, payroll, etc)". The vast majority of the development on the project is done by people we employ full time, from funding from various companies on various projects. So what we need for bounties is funds to cover payroll, and it sounds to me like that would be prohibited. If you know of any similar option, short of building something along those lines ourselves, that would allow our scenario, it's definitely something I would like to see.
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The thing is, I'm not sure that a package being donated to would count as 'payroll'. I understand that Perimeter might employ people to maintain pfSense base, but these packages are not part of what you pay them for (or they'd already be in base pfSense).
I'm not sure about Kickstarter though, considering the wording. It could be constituted as payroll if worded a certain way since it would be payment for a project and some are ongoing, so donations [payments?] would be recurring. I'll fire them off an email and see what they say as far as acceptable use.
I haven't found any other sites that are dedicated to this particular set-up. I'll keep my eye out though!
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It is rather ambiguous, that could just mean you can't put something up there that says "donate $X so I can fund my business" or something like that, where what we would use it for would be specific development projects which normally appear to be fine by their policies. But since it's going towards payroll, people work on whatever we get paid to work on, I don't know. If you hear back from them, let us know.