Bountysource introduces 2-year-timeout for bounties

[fantasya-pbem]

Bountysource will change its terms of service on July 1st, 2020:

„If no Solution is accepted within two years after a Bounty is posted, then the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource.“

BorgBackup has already a bunch of old bounties there which sum up to about $2500. I suggest you check their terms of service change and try to save at least some of the bounties.

[aidantwoods]

Just to make the urgency here abundantly clear: the two year clock will start from the original date the bounty was posted (not the new ToS date). Which means on July 1st, any old bounties will be lost.

For Bounties posted before June 30, 2018, the Backer may redeploy their Bounty to a new Issue by contacting [email protected] before July 1, 2020. If the Backer does not redeploy their Bounty by the deadline, the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource.

[ThomasWaldmann]

List of affected tickets with bounties and backers:

• Multithreading #37 by many backers - new ticket: Multithreading #5231
• Many servers without cache rebuilding #916 by cben and level323
• borg upgrade for remote repositories missing #465 by borgbackup and kirrus
• create specs for backup service? #1553 by borgbackup and thomaswaldmann
• advanced sparse file support #14 by borgbackup
• Test on many file systems automatically #1289 by borgbackup
• Add instrumentation to borg create? #2209 by borgbackup
• document pull-like operation #900 by borgbackup
• review IntegrityErrors, especially when they kill #2444 by borgbackup
• DiffArchiverTestCase.test_basic_functionality randomly fails? #3494 by borgbackup
• query quota set / use from repository #2870 by borgbackup

[ThomasWaldmann]

For the bounties where the backing was organized by me (backers thomaswaldmann and also borgbackup) I will just close the bounties and claim them. Also, I will handle #465 like that (low value and only 1 other backer).

Guess I trust myself more than bountysource right now. :-)

[ThomasWaldmann]

Considering #37, this is a copy of my email to [email protected] as of 2020-06-17 18:16 CEST:

Considering your upcoming ToS change: I find that pretty much unacceptable and I guess I don't need a crystal ball to see major trust issues in bountysource's immediate future caused by that.

As the borgbackup github project and borgbackup bountysource organisation administrator and one of the backers of that bounty, I request that all backing on this bounty

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/17668505-multithreading

(total USD 1500)

gets transferred to that bounty

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/91760112-multithreading

(currently at USD 10, which i needed to create the new bounty)

There should be no expiry on the new bounty (or the longest possible one, in case no expiry is not possible).

[ThomasWaldmann]

related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551098

[ThomasWaldmann]

Here's the full text of their new ToS section 2.13:

2.13 Bounty Time-Out. If no Solution is accepted within two years after a Bounty is posted, then the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource. For Bounties posted before June 30, 2018, the Backer may redeploy their Bounty to a new Issue by contacting [email protected] before July 1, 2020. If the Backer does not redeploy their Bounty by the deadline, the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained by Bountysource.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Notable: they say the backer needs to redeploy, so e.g. all 16 backers of #37 need to write an email similar to as I did.

as org admin, i try to get them to redeploy of all backings of #37, but maybe they would really want 16 emails for that. or keep the money, if a backer does not write that email.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Suggestion for backer redeploy request email:

As a backer (account name: XXX, account email: XXX), I request that all my backing (total USD XXX) on this bounty

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/17668505-multithreading

gets redeployed to that bounty

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/91760112-multithreading .

[aidantwoods]

How much is locked up in other bounties? Not a perfect solution, but it might be worth going round the issues and trying to contact everyone that posted a bounty to encourage redeploying to a newer bounty so that there's more time to claim it towards project development.

Based on the wording in the new ToS, it would appear this isn't even an option for anything that happens to be slightly newer than 2 years old, with say a bounty posted on 1st July 2018 having only a couple weeks before being lost, but not having the redeploy option :(

[ThomasWaldmann]

I didn't sum it up yet, but each of the other tickets are significantly less value compared to #37.

[rugk]

Wtf bountysource. Actually they also seem to have deleted my account (although I think it had something backed to this 🤔).

Anyway, as for the other issues: I hope you will also reopen the issues when this is finished, won't you? 😄

[m3nu]

Already withdrawn:

Withdrawal of new Terms of Service
Yesterday, we communicated a change to the Bountysource Terms of Service (ToS) agreement.
These changes have been withdrawn and the ToS reverted to its prior state.
The ToS will be revised and clarified in the future.

[level323]

@ThomasWaldmann isn't there still a bounty on #916 also?

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/33011952-many-servers-without-cache-rebuilding

[ThomasWaldmann]

@level323 oh, yeah, I missed that one - I added it to the list (but didn't close it [yet?]).

[ThomasWaldmann]

So, considering they pulled back but their try still leaving a bad impression, do you think we should do anything about the old bounties and/or about bountysource in general?

[kirrus]

Re my $50 bounty on #465 , I'm okay it going to borg generally. Gonna be a while before I trust bountysource again.

[Gu1nness]

Maybe there are some other bounty services that are better than bounty source and that would not even try to implement such ToS ?
We could setup a workgroup in order to find another service or do you think borgbackup will go on using BountySource ?

[ThomasWaldmann]

I'll reopen the issues now that were closed just because of the announced (but then taken back) ToS change...

[ThomasWaldmann]

So, guess this issue can be closed.

What remains is a trust issue in bountysource... :-(