Open-source bounty

An open-source bounty is a monetary reward for completing a task in an open-source software project.

Description

Bounties are usually offered as an incentive for fixing software bugs or implementing minor features.^[1] Bounty driven development is one of the business models for open-source software.^{[citation needed]} The compensation offered for an open-source bounty is usually small.^[2]

2023: The Prettier Challenge to write a Rust program that would pass 95% of the test suite for the prettier code formatter was completed within three weeks, with an award of $22,500 to Biome contributors.^[3]^[4]

2018: Mozilla Firefox's WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) bug was submitted by Education First to Bountysource for $50,000.^[5]

2015: Artifex Software offered up to $1000 to anyone who fixes some of the issues posted on Ghostscript Bugzilla.^[6]

2004: Mozilla introduced a Security Bug Bounty Program, offering $500 to anyone who finds a "critical" security bug in Mozilla.^[8]

Two software bounties were completed for the Amiga Research Operating System (AROS), implementing a free Kickstart ROM replacement for use with the UAE emulator and FPGA Amiga reimplementations, as well as original Amiga hardware.^[9]^[10]

AmiZilla was an over $11,000 bounty to port the Firefox web browser to AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS. While the bounty produced few direct results, it inspired many bounty systems in the Amiga community, including Timberwolf, Power2people, AROS Bounties, and Amigabounty.net .^{[citation needed]}

^ Kanda, T.; Guo, M.; Hata, H.; Matsumoto, K. (2017). Towards understanding an open-source bounty: Analysis of bountysource. 2017 IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). IEEE. pp. 577–578.
^ Zhou, J.; Wang, S.; Zhang, H.; Chen, T.H.P.; Hassan, A.E. (2021). "Studying backers and hunters in bounty issue addressing process of open source projects". Empirical Software Engineering. 26 (4). Springer: 1–36. doi:10.1007/s10664-021-09979-z. S2CID 254472802.
^ "The Prettier Challenge". Algora, Public Benefit Corporation. 30 October 2023. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
^ "Biome formatter wins the Prettier challenge". Biome. 27 November 2023. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
^ "Bountysource, Education First increase Mozilla WebRTC bounty to a whopping $50,000!". CanYa Blog. 2019-10-08. Archived from the original on 2019-10-08. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
^ "Ghostscript: Bug bounty program". Retrieved 14 July 2015.
^ Shaun Nichols (30 January 2008). "Sun sets $1 million open source bounty". iTnews. nextmedia. Retrieved 5 May 2025.
^ Linda Rosencrance (3 August 2004). "Brief: Mozilla offers bounty for bugs". Computerworld. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
^ "Amiga.org - Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase II) Assigned". Archived from the original on 6 December 2010. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
^ "Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase II)". Retrieved 14 July 2015.
^ "RISC OS Open: All bounties". Retrieved 14 July 2015.

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