441215 - A micro-economy for the Addons site

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Administration, enhancement)

Description

[Brett Zamir]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 StandardSitemap/0.1
Build Identifier: 

As an extension developer, I'd very much like to see the ability for an economy to develop around the Add-ons site (even for sandbox items). As a number of sites are doing now, open source projects allow paid services to be associated with a project (the opportunity to take donations for specific purposes, for users to make paid offers to a bidder or to a particular developer). I'd especially like to see the ability for a developer to offer to develop something or work on something if pledges for a certain amount can be given (including for example the possibility to take money to expand on a proof-of-concept sandbox extension, if enough pledged contributions are found).

I think the great success in participation that Firefox Addons has garnered could be amplified if participation could be extended to would-be small-scale patrons who'd like to see interesting features implemented and made available, or to corporate or other sources of funding who come across a trusted developer and good idea which they'd like to see implemented, or make their own request for a particular tool.

Non-commercial developers offering free extensions might often be idealistic, but there are few who couldn't use (or even need) some extra income, and I think the quality of contributions (and improvements on existing extensions), and loyalty of developers not to mention their conscientiousness in making updates, etc. could be raised even further by such a mechanism that made extension development become more than just a hobby.

Many of us would love to spend more time developing for our niche communities and interests, but there just isn't an open source economy (at least one that benefits us) that can provide at least some support.

(Other requests out there like bringing back discussions, getting email notifications, etc. would also be nearly essential for this.)

With the great love of Firefox by its users, I don't think it is a far fetched to think that its fans are unwilling to contribute if they can get the browser to work even more the way they want it. Mozilla could even, I think, fairly take its own cut.

Thank you! :)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Contribute an extension
2. Ask for donations
3.
Actual Results:  
Watch your Paypal account go up by $5 or $10 once a year.

Expected Results:  
Potentially get offers in the hundreds (if not paid employment) to build specific features or extensions.

Comment 1

[Brett Zamir]

Added a related bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441219 (for Bugzilla)

Comment 2

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Why not just put a paypal link in your description for donations?  Or if you want people to bid or pool their money or whatever you could just link to an existing project like bountysource.com.

I think implementing this on the AMO site itself is a huge amount of work and duplicates the functionality of existing sites.

Comment 3

[Jason Spiro]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I think implementing this on the AMO site itself is a huge amount of work [...]

No, it's not hard.

1.  Let extension developers specify a donation URL.

2.  If they specify a URL, then make a huge donate-money button on the extension download page that takes users to that URL.

fligtar, could you kindly find out if policy would allow such a change to be made to the AMO site?

Comment 4

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I think it would be a substantial amount of work, and require a lot of thought before it could be implemented. There may be legal concerns to address, for example if someone puts a link to a site that's just going to steal someone's credit card information, that looks pretty bad on Mozilla.

And there's the policy decision where we need to decide if the community would even want this. I suspect add-on developers would want it, and end users may not. I know Basil wanted to have a discussion about this before he left and we didn't really get the chance to. This would probably be appropriate for discussion on the mozilla.dev.amo newsgroup, and I can think of a number of parties we'd want to solicit for feedback. (Mitchell, Harvey, Lilly)

Comment 5

[Jason Spiro]

(In reply to comment #4)

> [...] if someone puts a link to a site that's just going to steal someone's
> credit card information, that looks pretty bad on Mozilla.

OK, so do this instead:

1.  Let addon developers specify a donation email address

2.  Make the donate-button point to https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=[e-mail]

> And there's the policy decision where we need to decide if the community would
> even want this. I suspect add-on developers would want it, and end users may
> not. I know Basil wanted to have a discussion about this before he left and we
> didn't really get the chance to. This would probably be appropriate for
> discussion on the mozilla.dev.amo newsgroup, and I can think of a number of
> parties we'd want to solicit for feedback. (Mitchell, Harvey, Lilly)

OK, could you please start the discussion?  :)

Comment 6

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Will start a discussion next month or 2009 Q1.

Comment 7

[Jason Spiro]

Justin, what was the result of your discussion?

Comment 8

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

We'll be working on this very soon. Re-assigning to Nick, who is driving this project. I'll let him comment on the specifics.

Comment 9

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Contributions are live and therefore this bug's scope is fulfilled. Woot :)

Comment 10

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Verified FIXED; w00t indeed.

Comment 11

[Brett Zamir]

I meant to comment on this earlier, but felt maybe I was too late--but to heck with it, better late than never.... THANK YOU!!!!!!!!  Nice work!!!

(If possible though, it would also be great to see the opportunity for users to be able to make promises of funding (if the dev. would implement a certain feature they wanted) through the site, as it can be cumbersome to visit a developer's blog/site, go through hoops to add a comment, etc., but if it is all at AMO, it makes the process inviting and familiar as you did well for regular contributions and pledge drives--the latter also a nice touch. 

Moreover, such an opportunity would go far to stimulating the idea of self-interested patronage--perhaps of even greater potential than selfless patronage.