Re: Funding Open Source / bounty-hunting...

[Dragonfly]

I do think that there is a chance that you're on to something that many people could benefit from. If you have the modules ready to roll, put them on CPAN, by all means. Choose carefully which license your software is under. And then, encourage two groups to download your software; first, the users, which you can show how nice your software works and how much it can help them with their work. Then, show another group, the group of programmers you know and respect, and have them download the software and make improvements to the software.

As far as the money thing goes; some programmers won't charge you for development they do on GPL licensed software, if they feel it is for a good cause. However, if you start charging money for the software, they may feel like they are entitled to some of the profit from this, which is something you need to discuss *before* it gets to that point, preferably. You could divvy it up with the theoretical 1,000,000 points, with points divvied out to programmers who make contributions, and then allocate profit according to the point system.

Or, another way to approach the financial side of this, is not to charge for the software at all, but charge for the support for the software. If it is good and modular code, you could perhaps have certain custom extensions pre-written that aren't available on CPAN, but you would be happy to deploy for the company in question, for a price of course. This keeps the core programming group out of the loop, however, which may or may not be a good thing, I guess.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what results from this endeavor! Good luck to you sir.