Gitcoin: Open Source Bounties with Kevin Owocki

Open Source Archives - Software Engineering Daily

Most technology companies rely on open source software projects. But open source software projects are often maintained by a group of people that is not affiliated with any particular company. When an open source project develops too much technical debt, it can become a tragedy of the commons. Who is responsible for maintaining these open source projects?

This is the motivation for open source bounties. Companies and individuals who rely on open source create bounties, which are financial incentives for developers to solve problems within the open source project.

Kevin Owocki is the creator of Gitcoin, a platform for open source bounties that is mediated by an Ethereum smart contract. Kevin joins the show to discuss his experience building Gitcoin–as well as some of the problems with the blockchain space, such as rampant ICOs. Gitcoin is NOT a cryptocurrency or token itself–it is a platform for open source software to be built more efficiently. Kevin was an awesome guest and you will enjoy the conversation.

Gitcoin is a nice example of a real-world Ethereum use case–it uses Ethereum for escrow: if I post a $25 bounty for someone to fix a bug in my open source project, I will lock up ether in a smart contract. When the bug is fixed, the programmer who fixed it will submit a pull request on Github, and I will release the ether from the smart contract to pay them.

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