Bounty donation matching scheme

At ROOL, we want to see the bounty scheme succeed, so ordinary users can get to see the sorts of things they want to see happen. But we understand that in the early days of the scheme, when we’re testing the water, donors may be cautious about donating, because there’s no track record of how much money has to be raised before a developer is likely to claim the bounty.

ROOL has raised money over the last few years from general donations and from sales of the C/C++ toolchain, and we think it’s appropriate to use some of this to kick start the bounty scheme. We could have chosen to do this by simply allocating money equally to the available bounties, but this pre-supposes that each bounty is equally valuable to end users, and also risks paying above the “going rate” for some tasks.

So what is ROOL doing?

ROOL is hereby pledging to match, pound for pound, the first £1000 donated, spread across all bounties. This means that every £1 you donate is worth £2 to a developer who implements your chosen bounty. It also means that it’s in your interest to donate early, while this money is still available! We will keep the remaining amount available visible on the bounty page so you have some idea how much longer you can take advantage of this scheme.

There is one exception: we won’t be matching donations to the RISC OS Open administration bounty, since this would just be paying money back into the same fund from which we’re making the matched donations, so this would be pointless!

When will this start?

This offer starts with immediate effect. We will actually be starting by matching the donations already made into the bounty scheme. The donation matching process will be performed manually by ROOL staff so don’t be surprised if it takes a few days before the matching donation from ROOL appears in the relevant pot!

What happens if a bounty is closed?

The money that ROOL matched with any donations to that bounty will be redistributed to other bounties, the same as with the original donations.

What if I want to donate more money than is left in the ROOL pledge fund?

If you want to donate (say) £100 but the ROOL pledge fund only has £50 left in it, we will match the first £50 of your donation.

What happens when the pledge fund runs out?

We will re-evaluate whether to extend the scheme at a later date, depending on how successful it has been and how much money we have left in the bank account at that point. It will be encouraging if we get to the point where the pledge fund runs out, because that will mean that the bounty scheme has also attracted £1000 in donations from other people, of course!