Bug Bounty?

I thought this would be more relevant to this forum than "Suggestions".

Logos has advertised substantial hires for programmers, but will the company consider some form of Logos credit for bug hunters? I can think of a couple of folks that really deserve this (such as fgh, and some of the technically-minded MVPs)

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JT (alabama24)

I can think of a couple of folks that really deserve this (such as fgh, and some of the technically-minded MVPs)

Hear Hear! (I'm not one of the "technically-minded MVP's).

Rosie Perera

There was a time when I was working for Microsoft when our manager introduced a form of bug bounties in my team. The testers would get a bug-shaped sticker on their door for every bug (or more likely every 10 bugs, as they were crackerjack at finding them) they found, and developers would get dead bug stickers (or bug with a red circle-slash through it or something like that) for every bug (or 10) we fixed. It was organized like a competition between Testing and Development. It was at a time when morale was really low and management was trying to do something fun to give us team spirit.

I found it very insulting and childish, and it put us developers in competition with Testing rather than collaborating with them. It did not work to improve morale. Our manager discontinued the idea after a while when we let him know we thought it was stupid.

Bug Bounties for users might be a good idea, though. It would be a bit of a concession for the inconvenience of running into a bug and the time it takes to write up a good description of it, and an incentive to report them and not let them fall through the cracks. But it could be hard to manage. What constitutes a good quality but. If someone reports a thing that annoys them but it isn't really a bug, or they report a bug that's not reproducible, or they report something that someone else has already reported, do you give them the bounty?

Lee

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525047#Comment_525047

It would have to be discretionary.

A bug-shaped sticker? A "dead bug" sticker? What'll that do for anyone's morale?

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525053#Comment_525053

It would have to be discretionary.

I'm guessing that Logos's response would be it would take too much of their testers' time making discretionary decisions about bug reports on the forums and managing the reward program. They already have a hard enough time as it is keeping up with bug reports on the forums. Sometimes I don't see a response from a tester for three or four months to a bug reported long ago. It's better than it used to be, now that they actually have a real testing department. I used to regularly have bug reports of mine completely ignored for years until I sent a rather irritated email to Bob Pritchett about it, listing dozens of my old forum threads that had never been responded to. He got Bradley on it right away, and the problem seems to have subsided dramatically. But their testers are still stretched thin.

A bug-shaped sticker? A "dead bug" sticker? What'll that do for anyone's morale?

Yeah, little kids like getting stickers as rewards (at least they used to; nowadays it probably isn't much of a motivator for them either). But for adults it was really beneath us.

Tim Bray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525054#Comment_525054

As a side note, I use Essay Writer to organise my notes for sermons as well as study...Found 2 bugs the other day and they thanked me with a nice email and 50 pounds via paypal...Lovely company.

Tim

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525057#Comment_525057

I use Essay Writer to organise my notes for sermons as well as study...Found 2 bugs the other day and they thanked me with a nice email and 50 pounds via paypal...Lovely company.

Wow, that's generous!

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525053#Comment_525053

It would have to be discretionary.

A bug-shaped sticker? A "dead bug" sticker? What'll that do for anyone's morale?

A book credit of $100 would motivate people, though 5.1a will be expensive for Logos (note how many RC's** there were + the SR-1 + current reports). But there are so many unfixed bugs and regressions that there would be many "known" reports. I'll sharpen up on Active Layout in case Logos do award a bounty!

** RC's are fair game when Logos "release" them to the regular (non-beta) forums.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525064#Comment_525064

A book credit of $100 would motivate people

That's probably more than enough. For some of us who often go through periods of reporting several bugs a week, we could easily pay for our whole library all over again through bug credit like that. I think $25 or $50 is all Logos could/should offer. It might get too expensive for them otherwise. There are still lots of bugs to be found, and they tend to release things too early and fix the bugs later rather than doing very thorough testing in-house for a nearly bug-free but delayed release.

Another question would be whether to offer the bounty for bugs in beta versions where bugs are expected or just in released versions where they should be rarer. Maybe a $25 bounty for beta bugs and $50 for bugs in released versions.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525077#Comment_525077

Maybe a $25 bounty for beta bugs

That'll motivate Logos to keep it in-house for longer!

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525089#Comment_525089

Maybe a $25 bounty for beta bugs

That'll motivate Logos to keep it in-house for longer!

Which would be a good thing!