Hello 👋 to my extiverse followers,
I need your opinion on the following. For months - off and on - I have been working on a crowdfunding feature for extiverse, allowing people to back new feature requests, compatibility patches and bug fixes. It's a feature that needs to be thought out to prevent disappointment from the parties involved.
To get a better idea what would work I would like to bounce the following two ideas off of you.
Crowdfunding A
As a user you can create a request to get an existing extension patched for a new flarum version, fix a bug or - also for requesting a new extension - request a feature. Once you, as author, put a pledge on the request it will be published for others to also back. Once a request gains enough pledges verified developers will be able to pick up the request with the requirement to resolve it within a set time.
Once a request has been resolved by the developer, the backers can vote on the quality of the produced results. Or alternatively I am considering some kind of internal QA process.
The benefits of this approach that users and developers have is that they have a lot of flexibility on what to back and what requests to pick up.
Crowdfunding B
The alternative is based on how Wemod works. Users become FOSS donators, paying a monthly fixed fee that becomes part of a general budget. Donators are allowed to create and upvote extension requests (patch, bug fix and feature implementation).
Based on these upvotes developers can pick up one of the highest upvoted requests. Developers then keep track of their time and get compensated exactly for that amount from the budget. Other developers or a QA team will always review fulfilled tasks above a certain threshold.
The benefit of this approach is that the recurring payments allow developers to understand exactly what their gain can be in the long run. It might even allow me to hire developers to tackle the workload. It's also easier for user in payments, being a subscription model.
