Hi all, I'm Yavor, founder of kinti (kinti.io), a platform that lets companies and individuals fund work on open source issues. I'm writing to gather this community's feedback, not to propose anything for adoption. Robert Scholte suggested I bring this to the dev list rather than approach anyone individually, so I'm cc'ing him.
Why I'm building it: I want more open source to exist, and I believe many capable people are effectively excluded from contributing because they can't afford substantial unpaid work. I'd like funding to widen who participates without changing anything about how projects govern themselves, because I think widening participation makes the ecosystem more resilient. How it works, end to end: 1. Maintainers enroll their project and opt individual issues in. Nothing can be funded on a project that hasn't enrolled or an issue that wasn't opted in - there are no unsolicited bounties, ever. 2. Funders pool money on an opted-in issue. Money is charged at that point, so every bounty is backed by committed funds, not promises. Each bounty has a deadline. 3. Contributors do the work through the project's normal contribution process. The platform adds nothing to the process: the same PRs, the same standards, and the same reviewers apply. 4. The maintainer alone decides when the work is done and initiates completion on the platform. 5. Funders then vote to release the payout, accept or deny with a reason, concluded at a two-thirds supermajority weighted by contributed monetary amount. Funders can never direct the project or override the maintainer; their only power is over whether their own money moves. If the vote rejects, there's time to address the concerns and a dispute path for the maintainer in case of bad faith voting. 6. On approval, the maintainer decides how many contributors are paid and how much each receives. Up to 20 people per issue. Additionally, maintainers can configure a project's share of each bounty - a portion of the money that goes to the project regardless of who does the work. This is a per-project setting, entirely under maintainer control, ranging from 0% to 80% (the full remaining bounty after the platform fee). At 0%, everything goes to the contributors who do the work. At 80%, the bounty effectively funds the project, and the incentive for outside contributions disappears. Unlike previous attempts in this space, the design goal is maintainer control. I'd like to understand how this community thinks about money attaching to volunteer-driven work: whether opt-in and maintainer control over the gate address the usual concerns (empowering entitled users, review burden, distorted priorities), and what would make a model like this unacceptable or acceptable from your perspective. All input is useful to me, including "this is a bad idea, and here is why." Thanks, Yavor Lulchev
