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The time between a bug report and its solution is heavily dependent on how serious the bug is, or simply how "popular" it becomes after it appears on the Bug Tracking System. Unpopular bugs fall down in the priority list and might be forgotten forever. However, the same unpopular bugs are probably considered serious by at least the users who reported them. Among these users, there might be some which -- not having time or not being able to contribute code and patches -- would make a donation in order to get bugs fixed.
A solution could be to add an option like "Available to donate" in the bug report form, so that the developers could make an estimate about the time they need to fix the problem and eventually agree with the donor about how much to donate to see the bug fixed promptly. In case of agreement, the donation would go directly to the developers taking care of the bug, not to KDE as a project. Of course, a developer might choose to leave part of the income as a general donation to the project. In the end, the entire community will benefit from this ad-hoc donation.
I am aware that this proposal might raise a lot of ethical questions, and the proposed solution might not be the best one, but the brainstorming forum is indeed good to discuss new ideas. My point of view is that donating to a project to get a specific problem fixed is more appealing for the donor than donating to a project just for the cause.
I would personally invest even a discrete amount of money of my research budget to have one or two of the bugs which are annoying me since 2007 fixed in the next release. Despite the fact that those bugs are not so significant for others, having them solved would improve my daily productivity at work, and that is why I am ready to make an economical donation for it.

Best regards.

I see these risks:

• Corporations would get their problems fixed first, since, I assume, they are more willing to pay.
• Corporations possibly could hijack the planning by sneaking in "semi"-bugs, more like features, and getting them implemented by paying for it. That could ruin the overall vision for KDE or the application in question.
• Certain developers could be tempted to write **** code making it hard for maintainers to evolve the code.
• Involing money could attract the above mentioned type of developer. (I have the feeling that putting money into any open project without imposing heavy top management would be a great risk.)

In case of the above named risks i vote -1. But general the right thinking i think. But the risks are to strong in my opinion.

This is a good idea but we need to mitigate the risks that surround it.

I do think this has been suggested before elsewhere, and the reason it isn't in place now is slightly deviated from one of the above risks: if developers were to fix bugs *in order to make money* rather then to actually improve the DE, then it could become something of a rush-job, an improper fix just to get the payment. I'm also firm in my belief that money doesn't motivate. Besides, there's always been the ability to put bounties on certain features/bugfixes for individual developers...

I don't know...
On the one side, this idea sounds good, as the developers who develop for KDE 4 do this as a hobby (at least a big amount of them ), would get "paid" for their hard work, and this could be a nice motivation to do some "unfunny" bugfixing.
On the other side:
There are many negative points that this "feature" could introduce... (see the list above)

I'm neutral on this one, so I didn't vote it negative nor positive...

what about set a rules to get money. For example, if your patch is approved by kde-developers (say in mail-list or reviewboard), you will get the money.

Or let try another way, KDE.e.V make campaign to collect a donation to "A BIG BUG FIXING CAMPAIGN" which aim to fix 5000 bugs. For developer, if you fix a bug and it is approved in http://reviewboard.kde.org you will get $50-100 (depend how it is tricky). For users, please donate to improve kde QA and help us to identify which bug should be fixed.

I think, you only have to publish the discussion somewhere. If i want to have a special bug fixed, i can hire a developer who will do this for me.
There is no need to make it as a offical service i think.
An other solution would be, you can set a priority on several bugs and donate money to the KDE e.V. The Developers now should, but don't have to, look for this bug. They won't get the money by themself, but earn it for the community.

bratwurst wrote:[*]Corporations would get their problems fixed first, since, I assume, they are more willing to pay.

Developer are not stupid either cant think for their own. Since its their decision, they still can reject to do one or another fix.
Also, more corporations starts to pay for fixing bugs -> more corporations could start using linux and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 could finaly be fixed

bratwurst wrote:[*]Corporations possibly could hijack the planning by sneaking in "semi"-bugs, more like features, and getting them implemented by paying for it. That could ruin the overall vision for KDE or the application in question.

To pay for making competitors product better? :D:D
Evens so stuipd bugs could be rejected and major developers still can fork for free of charge
[/quote]

bratwurst wrote:[*]Certain developers could be tempted to write **** code making it hard for maintainers to evolve the code.

Spend donated money for buying tickets to conferences, other geek stuff There are many small bugs that none would ever fix, but if developer could receive a nice usb stick, why not?
+ users with reputation could cash the donation

bratwurst wrote:[*]Involing money could attract the above mentioned type of developer. (I have the feeling that putting money into any open project without imposing heavy top management would be a great risk.)

Even so, in some cases (like a for already unsupported but sitill exremely useful for someone software) quick fix would work. Any way svn allows developer to roll back to "clean" version if something is wrong.

I think that the suggestion of Alberto.Rossini is not so much about money, as it is about desperation over things that don't get fixed for a long time. Purely hypothetically, we can imagine that Alberto is someone using the platform to its fullest potential in his research area, but he nevertheless is not a developer. His problems might not be perceived by an average user. Out of desperation, he can't come up with anything better than offering banknotes to get his problems fixed. I think that his suggestion can be restated as follows:

• Apart from voting, there should be other opportunities for non-developers to get their "private" bugs fixed. (Let me remark immediately - I'm not against voting. Voting shows what bugs the majority. But in a non-adversarial community, other methods of improvement might be possible than design by jury.)

For example, one could imagine a four-week summer camp with crash course of programming for Alberto, that would leave him able to fix his "private" bugs by himself. Or, one could imagine having Alberto examined to make sure that he is a user more worthy than others and bestowing on him a special non-developer power-user peerage with a lifelong title to speedy bugfixes. But Alberto suggests something else - he offers his earnings in exchange for the developers' work. He basically shows his will to do the work himself, up to the point that he doesn't know how.

The negative comments to Alberto's suggestion actually are not against the idea itself, but rather against the use of banknotes (which suffer from multiple problems) to convert his work into a developer's work. If not banknotes, how about giving him a quest to fulfill to get his bug fixed?

Alessandro pal, sorry for screwing up your name to Alberto - I contracted it from KDE Brainstorm Monthly Digest.

I would like to see a fully integrated, managed and publicized bounty system for KDE. Some bugs last way too long. I might not be able to hire someone to fix the bug for me, but 50 persons like myself can pool together to get things fixed. I do not see how cooperations getting bugs fixed is a bad thing -- they can already hire their own developers to do this.

Everything 'bratwurst' suggested is already possible. What is not possible is for users to pool together resources to get things fixed -- there's no reason why more developers can't make money from working with FOSS.

bratwurst wrote:Corporations would get their problems fixed first, since, I assume, they are more willing to
pay.

I thought KDE was an open source project, how is that not possible now?

bratwurst wrote:Corporations possibly could hijack the planning by sneaking in "semi"-bugs, more like features, and getting them implemented by paying for it

Again, is KDE not an open source project? Is this not possible now? Are you saying Suse doesn't get bugs fixed faster than user bugs?

bratwurst wrote:[*]Certain developers could be tempted to write **** code making it hard for maintainers to evolve the code.

That's a pretty weak argument -- certain developers could write **** or malicous code right now, just for fun.

bratwurst wrote:[*]Involing money could attract the above mentioned type of developer. (I have the feeling that putting money into any open project without imposing heavy top management would be a great risk.)

There is no evidence of that. Gnome, and the Linux kernel all have heavy cooperate sponsorship. And this brainstorm isn't purely about formalizing a bounty system. I can still go out and find someone to fix a bug for me today.

Dude, I am all for it. I was thinking about the same thing. I do not see any problem with the idea. I was talking to one of the developers about the same issue. Here is the email.

>> > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199185
>> >>
>> >> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 197590 ***
>> >
>> > Hi xxx, I am new to reporting bugs. I read that this is a duplicate
>> > bug, which I understand. But I read that this bug has been resolved.
>> > How can I apply the patch then. Please let me know, if I did not read
>> > the change correctly. Thanks.
>> >
>> > pookito
>> >

>
> I have a quick question. I do not know if you are the best person to answer
> this question, but if you are not, I would beg you to please point me in the
> right direction.
>
> I can see that there are a lot of bugs for kontact. And I know that this is
> open source version of softwares. It seems that there are not a lot of
> monetary incentive to fix or patch a particular bug. My suggestion would be,
> why don't you charge for fixing the bugs.
>
> I am sure that I am not the onlyone with the same problem. If there are more
> of us, we can donate money for fixing a particular bug in kontact. For
> example, if you name your prize, let's say $20 dollars per individual. If 5
> of us have the same problem with contact and we donate $20 dollars each, that
> would be $100 dollars, just to fix one bug. I am sure that there are more bugs
> in contact that we are all not aware off.
>
> It would be nice if on your website, there is a system that we can donate
> money to fix the bug of our preference, and see how many people are doing the
> same. It would be an incentive for both of us, developers and consumers, like
> me .
>
> This would speed up the process for people like me, that wish a quick
> recovery, and developers who are not getting paid plenty to work on small
> matter like fixing a bug without an incentive.
>
> What do you think.
>
> pookito
>

The dev's have the final say here.

I would suggest a bounty system as well, fix the bug; get the money. Features, however, might be more difficult.