Challenges in Open Source Development & How FundRequest Overcome Them
FundRequest is a blockchain powered marketplace for open source development, designed to enrich the open source ecosystem, in the same spirit of the technology underpinning it.
FundRequest aims to overcome the challenges that are currently holding back the advancement of open source software development, by leveraging the power of blockchain technology to facilitate the matching of supply and demand in a way that is mutually beneficial to both parties.
Failure to Launch
Despite the unprecedented growth in open source development, almost 80% of open source projects experience failure before completion. This can be for a number of reasons but some of the most common are due to a lack of time, interest, conflict among developers, low maintainability or the project was usurped by competitors.
Lack of Time, Interest or Incentive
Many developers quit working on a project due to the very legitimate reason of simply not having enough time or losing interest. Other work commitments that actually pay take priority, or the project may no longer serve them. While these reasons are more than fair, the majority of projects become abandoned and the leaders in the industry remain unchallenged.
What it really all comes down to in the end is a lack of incentive, as we will obviously make time for ventures that are rewarding or serve us in achieving our personal goals. FundRequest overcomes these challenges with a simple solution - to fund projects and reward contributors.
This is made possible with blockchain technology and the use of smart contracts so that projects can allocate a financial reward to their issues in need of solving, and developers are rewarded for their time and effort in solving the issue. The FundRequest utility token (FND) facilitates these rewards and a smart contract acts as an escrow, only releasing the funds after a predetermined set of conditions have been met. Therefore, developers are incentivized to place priority in any given project so long as the reward is worth the effort.
Conflict Among Developers
Conflict is common occurrence between developers when the guidelines, coding standards or license agreements are unclear and/or there is a high demand of users participating within a project. Furthermore, as the size of an open source project grows it becomes increasingly difficult for a limited number of core contributors to review each and every code request submitted, which can cause a bottleneck for the entire project and slows the progress of the software.
The FND token is a key catalyst in the mechanisms that mitigate these risks and ensure fair play, due to the fact that all contributors are required to stake an amount of tokens until a flow or action is complete and malicious behaviour is penalized. Tokens are required to participate in peer review, allowing participants to raise disputes and vote in order to achieve a community consensus. FundRequest can therefore provide a decentralized autonomous governance of the platform, as the FND token rewards validated participation, as well as prevents spam or gaming of the network.
FundRequest offers projects the ability to to link an SLA (Service Level Agreement) - a contract between a developers and project that defines the level of service expected from the solver. This SLA sets the guidelines to be adhered to by all contributors and can be referred to when raising and voting on disputes, removing any confusion or reasons for conflict between all participants.
Furthermore, the smart contract acts as an unambiguous legal agreement so there are no loopholes or dubious operators that manipulate the rules. As a result the smart contract protects both the project and all the participating developers contributing to it.
The Future of Open Source
With government, public and private organizations alike having shown an increased interest in leveraging open-source software development it only makes sense to improve the systems and environment used to manage it. Alleviating the constraints that many open source projects face is at the core of the FundRequest vision as it aims to boost open source development and reward contributors in a fair and transparent way.
For more information head to FundRequest.io.