Idea: LSL Bounties?

So the first bounty should be to the person willing to script slbounties.com?

I'll fund and host it, but I am SO not coding it!
Unless you like phpBB, alot.

The idea is not to knock-off other people's products, but you can bet that it would get used that way. You can buy one pair for L$75, but it only takes three people to all want them to make it worthwhile for them to post a bounty for an open-source pair.
- The ability for someone posting a bounty to specify the perms they want on a project, possibly even a way to set different prices for different perms (i.e. 2k for a closed source version, 5k for full perms).

- The abaility for prospective scripters to make "counter offers", the price and terms they would want to see before they considered the project. If they considered L$2k to be too low for a large-scale project, they could suggest a higher price. Or "There's no way I'll do a full perm version of this but I might consider copy/transfer/no mod".

- A comments section to handle things like "This allready exists in-world, here's how to find it", or "does anyone want to team up on this?" or "this is a rediculious bounty" or "I need more details in the description" or...or...




Bingo.[/QUOTE]

If the idea is to make a souped up version of Products Wanted, then that's a great idea: it was the (apparantly, from the original post) compulsory open sourcing that I was concerned about.

A couple thoughts on what I'd like to see:

1. Allow various terms: Open Sourced, Close Source - Licensed Use, Closed Source - Full Code Rights, etc.
   
2. A form of escrow. Upon someone taking the bounty, have the $$ stored in escrow to be released upon completion of the bounty.
   
3. Open Sourced code could be stored in a repository within the site for general consumption.
   
4. Expand the system to allow for other types of bounties (such as object, textures, etc.)
   

I did a search for a current open source code bounty system, and it seems there is no developed open sourced code bounty system (kind of ironic that all of the open source code bounty systems are not open sourced themselves...). There does seem to be a need/desire for a general system, outside of SL also, so perhaps two birds could be killed with one stone.

I agree that the first step is for someone to write this system. I, myself, probably don't have time to handle the project myself, although I'd be willing to contribute pieces of it as I have time. Likewise, I can offer to host it - I have more web space/bandwidth than I'd ever hope to use.

I'll think over a full list of goals for a platform to handle the bounty system throughout the day and will post my thoughts later, and likewise a starting $$ pot for the development of such system.

I support this idea, and if someone is serious about setting up the website for it, contact me and I'll make sure it gets hosted and is advertised.

Hmmm. I have 45gb of hosting a month that's not getting used. I still need a php coder that can fix something for me but I don't have much money.

Ideally, I'd hope for a mechanism like this to be built as an offshoot of one of the Big Three shopping sites, as they already have infrastructure in place for taking and giving money, plus the trust necessary to make use of that infrastructure.

(And more than that, they've already demonstrated an ability to execute projects)

Any ideas as to how to implement an escrow system using Linden Dollars?

I'm guessing that for this to actually work you'd need to be able to request/pay said bounties in L$ (in addition to 'real' currencies?)

Regards
Leon

PS. Reason I'm asking is because I'm considering developing the site.

I'd be the escrow source, of course, of course!

Mmmm ... trust is going to be an issue

L

The only way I can think of doing it would be an open-source (for trust purposes) in-world script running on a holding account. (But that doesn't help much for an external website of course.)

Am I correct in remembering that SL Exchange had an escrow system in place as one of it's features, or am I halucinating? (I couldn't see any reference to it on my quick glance of the site). As for the other two, I personaly like SecondServer.net and the people running it are the ones I'd think would be most interested in this type of project, though they seem to have their hands pretty full with their own stuff. And I know zilch about SL Botique except that FlipperPA runs it.

The only way I know of to maintain a public trust using an alt account as the bank would be to create one used *only* for the purpose and to post their account transaction logs daily. Automating such a thing would be left as as task for the coders.

Food for thought: Since coding a website from whole cloth takes a lot of time but is probably something that should happen down the road, what's the best system we could do in a short amount of time using readily avalible tools (like forums), what would be absolutely necessicary to have in it and how could we do it?

That was exactly my first thought.



Well, that's just the thing. If the site was standalone, it's harder to establish credibility than if you're handling several thousand other sorts of transactions daily. Those sites don't need to publish anything because the proof is in the pudding -- if the system was being exploited you'd have a few hundred very vocal dead canaries.

Okay,

I've managed to talk a friend into attempting to set up a SL Bounty site. Between us we have the required web and design skills, but we are missing an experienced SL Scripter/Builder.

Please IM me in-world if you have the skills (and time) to spend on helping to build this.

Also, please note that although we feel this will benefit many in Second Life, there is a strong profit motive, i.e. we do not intend developing an open-source application.

We will however endevour to make the process as transparent as is prudent.

Lastly, if you have any specific requirements you feel this site must have then please contact me.

Regards
Leon

PS. I'm UK based so best times to contact me are 20:00-23:00 weekdays or weekends

BUMP ...

Has interest in this died down already? Or are we all building competing 'products' in silence

Regard
Leon

I've got a few 'issues' I can't see a way around and would appreciate any comments.

The list of requirements from this thread implies two different systems. One being a 'pure' bounty and the other some sort of enhanced 'services/products' wanted. The main difference between these two are, that the bounty would have to have a mechanism to allow people to donate funds till someone was willing to claim it, whereas the enhanced 'services/products' wanted is more along the lines of I want X for Y and you could offer to do X for Z.

Now, the specific problem I'm struggling with is that I do not want to have 'transactions' taking place outside SL. This means that the web site would facilitate to creation of the bounties or services/products wanted adverts and workflows to support delivering them, but that any money exchanged would have to take place within SL.

What I can't figure out is how to tie the two together, i.e. have the process working outside SL, but the actual transactions within SL. My main concern is how to ensure that the payments are tied to specific jobs/items/bounties and tamper free.

I've thought about various e-mail/rpc combos and lists to do this, but can't quite see a way to make it work tamper free.

Any suggestions welcomed

Regards
Leon