Elementary OS: get paid to fix bugs

An Elementary OS perspective free project based on Ubuntu, but offering its own work environment with an emphasis on simplicity, intuitiveness and minimalism, offers money for fixing bugs. This is followed by the translation of the entry in the project blog.

Since the release of Luna, grateful users have transferred us a certain amount of money earned by sweat and blood. We carefully considered the best ways to invest this money in the development of Elementary OS and give people the opportunity to finance the development of what is important to them. Today we want to present you one of these solutions: rewards.
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Summary

With the development of Elementary, the need for help on our bug tracker is growing. At the moment, we have opened more than 2,700 bug reports. Some bugs are fairly simple to close, while others are extremely complex and can take a lot of time from high-level specialists. Even then, some problems are so complex that volunteer developers from our community may simply not have enough qualifications or enough time to fix them. We must find a solution that not only offers compensation to existing developers, but also attracts new experienced developers and shifts the focus to complex, old and, at times, not too exciting tasks.

Until we can provide a stable and large-scale inflow of funds, Elementary simply cannot afford to hire a development team. But there is a way out: Bountysource. At the time of this writing, over $ 2,100 is available as a fee, and the amount continues to grow. This is not a bad pocket money.

Announcement reward

While Elementary often announces rewards for bugs that we consider particularly significant, anyone who has money can help. Everyone can be rewarded - both in our community of developers, and new developers, with whom we have not dealt. All this is quite simple:

First, register with Bountysource.com .

Find the bug on Launchpad that you would like to see fixed. How about this ?

Go back to BountySource and paste the link to Launchpad into the search form (in this case, the link will look like “ https://bugs.launchpad.net/pantheon-plugs/+bug/711611 ”).

On the right side of the page, select the amount you are willing to offer for solving the problem. It may be small or large - as you like. The more people offer money for correction, the greater the chance that someone will take it.

Remuneration

Now that the reward has been announced, the developer can try to solve the problem.

In the “overview” section, click the little blue “view original issue” link. You will be taken to Launchpad and will be able to find the source code related to the problem.

In the case of an example bug, you need to create a whole program. But you can see examples of such programs by selecting the "code" section at the top of the page. To solve most problems, you just need to make corrections to existing code.

Correct the problem and send your code to Launchpad. Be sure to attach it to the original bug report and change its status to “In Progress”. We are working on a clear guide to correcting errors, but at the moment you have to just trust your instincts - and, of course, you can always look in our developer chat , if you go to a dead end.

Go back to Bountysource and click the big green "get started" button. Fill out the form, do not forget to attach a link to your solution.

Now it only remains to wait! It may take some time to check your decision, so be patient. But, as soon as the problem is marked as corrected, you can collect the reward from the Bountysource via PayPal, Google Wallet or as a check.

Feedback

This is a fairly new concept, but we are full of enthusiasm. As usual, you can share your ideas in the comments . If you have questions about Bountysource, check out #bountysource on the Freenode IRC network, write to support @ bountysource.com or leave a tweet @bountysource.

From the translator: the latest version of Elementary OS at the moment is called Luna, it was released on August 10, 2013 and is based on Ubuntu 12.04, while maintaining full compatibility with it. The new version will be called Isis and will be released, according to the plans of the developers, as soon as possible after the release of Ubuntu 14.04 .