Hey, I’m one of the main developers of IFC.js, an open source project built on top of Three.js. We recently got some funding from our community ($40,000 and going up), and we are using 100% of resources to create bounties.
Bounties are small tasks, issues and features of IFC.js in exchange for money. Many of them are very simple and require only a basic knowledge of Three.js (or not even that). The simplest bounties start at $100 and can be done in an afternoon or less. The most ambitious ones go up to $2000, although that doesn’t necessarily mean they require a lot of time.
If anyone feels like making some easy extra money, we will be posting new bounties periodically. We started with this this week, and there are already a lot of people signed up. All the code generated in these issues will be open source and available to anyone.
Sounds like you won’t pay people for their time. A lot similar to some other projects out there. I get that its a bounty system but its a shady way to get honest labour for nothing.
In the long run it will only build resentment and not everything is clear cut, i.e definition of done is a gray area.
That’s a bit harsh, given the nature of the project. IFC.js is a free architectural and engineering tool that reads and writes large structural datasets. It is also open source, so anyone can use it for free, and contribute for free, much like Three.js is. I don’t see the problem with offering some incentives for people to contribute, especially since they show the reward up-front so it’s up to each individual to determine if it’s worth their time or not.
If it was a for-profit corporation, like Adobe offering a $100 “prize” for a day’s work, or AutoDesk crowd-sourcing their customer support to StackOverflow, I would agree with you. But this IFC.js bounty looks like more benign way to get eyes on an open-source library.
Hi @woynaronaro , thank you very much for your feedback!
IFC.js is an open source project (MIT), not a company, and therefore cannot afford to pay salaries, but I wouldn’t say we are not paying people for their time. @gkjohnson and one other person have each taken $2000 in less than a week, and many others also got smaller bounties for smaller amounts of time. In my humble opinion, that is much fairer than expecting people to contribute for free.
As @marquizzo pointed out, we are reverse-engineering Autodesk Forge and offering it for free forever, so that anyone can create BIM software without suffering the consequences of the oligopoly that we have in the AECO industry. At this point, if we wanted to make money we would make a company and sell IFC.js as a SaaS, not try to shave a few hours from random devs on the internet.
Once a feature is finished that’s it? The outlines seem to have been implemented, but they also seem to disappear as i navigate. I’d like to take a stab at this if it gets revisited.
Cheers!