Discussion: open source software bounties

What do you think about open source software bounties? I keep seeing them, for instance SoftwareMill offering them in the ScalaTimes letter today, or com-lihaoyi a while ago, or John DeGoes in his new Golem venture.

They seem to offer developers a chance to contribute to open source code, hone their coding skills, get experience, and they might also be getting paid for that work.

I considered contributing to one of com-lihaoyi bounties, specifically, implementing support for ms sql. However, I noticed someone else got the torch. And that gets to my point. You have N developers working on the same thing. Sure it works to the advantage of the entity that issued the bounties. But 1 out of the N developers will be successful. What if a developer starts working on it, then drops the ball because it turns out it is too much work and she/he doesn't have enough time? As a matter of fact, com-lihaoyi increased the bounty for ms sql support because there is more work than it was originally anticipated (see the pull request here: https://github.com/com-lihaoyi/scalasql/pull/29 ). Right now, I am not sure where that work is at.

I feel that these bounties might drag (some) developers in a rat race. You might argue that a monetary retribution is better than nothing, and in the end nobody forces you to do anything if you don't want to, and I agree 🤷‍♂️ . Maybe I am missing something about how the oss bounties work.

I think the ideal process would be to hire a developer to commit and to do the work in a time frame agreed upon by both parties, and to pay her/him properly. But I understand that might not be always feasible due to lack of funds and time, hence the bounties. I would be interesting to see the real-life experience of a someone that issued bounties and how that turned out.