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Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

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Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#1
Background: There's a WebRTC Chromium bug that is making life difficult for us. I'd like to pay a developer to fix it, but I don't know where/how to find people.

But this leads to a higher level question. When you want to sponsor open source bug fixes and/or feature and there isn't a clear "sponsor" link or button, how do you find qualified people? For example, is there a site/app you typically search?

Re: Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#5
> There's a WebRTC Chromium bug that is making life difficult for us. I'd like to pay a developer to fix it, but I don't know where/how to find people.

Have you filed a bug in the project's issue tracker? Has the project team not followed up? Is there a link to this issue?

Re: Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#6

> There's a WebRTC Chromium bug that is making life difficult for us. I'd like to pay a developer to fix it, but I don't know where/how to find people. Have you filed a bug in the project's issue tracker? Has the project team not followed up? Is there a link to this issue?

Filing a bug report properly is work and it is easier to pay.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#7
Pay successful bounty submissions on a faster than net 180 time frame. A friend was interested in the rather extensive Expensify bug bounty programme [0], but the red tape involved created far too long a turnaround time between claiming a ticket and receiving compensation.

[0] https://github.com/Expensify/App/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aiss...

Re: Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#8

1. git clone the project you're interested in 2. extract emails of the contributors that are involved in what you need using something like this: git log --pretty=format:"%ad - %ae - %ce" 3. make them an offer

4. keep upping the offer until they say yes

note: I mean to imply, the person that asked the question likely has a budget far lower than the person qualified to do the work is willing to accept.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find developers for open source bug bounties?

#9

> There's a WebRTC Chromium bug that is making life difficult for us. I'd like to pay a developer to fix it, but I don't know where/how to find people. Have you filed a bug in the project's issue tracker? Has the project team not followed up? Is there a link to this issue?

Filing a bug report properly is work and it is easier to pay.

Seems to me, describing the problem for the person you're going to pay is the exact same amount of work as filing a bug. They can't read your mind so you'll have to detail what you want fixed. Show how to repo the problem so they can prove they fixed it. Sounds like a bug report to me
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