200 PTS - Bounty Rules and Procedures Document [Closed]

[bytemaster]

We are preparing to manage the entire development process via bounties with a goal of maximizing the rate and quality of development.   The result will be millions of dollars worth of bounties posted and managed by Invictus and the community.  For this process to be successful we must have clearly stated rules and procedures that give participants predictable outcomes.

I would like to come up with our official policy rule book that describes the best procedures for running this bounty campaign.  This rule book must be drafted in public, using a mergable file format (like HTML).  The look and feel of the rules and procedure document must by professional and of the highest quality.   The philosophy of this bounty campaign will be as follows:

1) Encourage Collaboration Competition rather than Cut-Throat Competition
2) Reward speed by offering advantage to 'first to market'
3) Prevent theft of work by building on others without their compensation
4) Unambiguous allocation and division of bounties (Invictus should not be responsible for judging divisions)
5) Handle rules for different types of deliverables (code, writing, graphics, videos, etc)
6) Encourage referrals of people to the bounties, people who refer winners get a cut
7) Perhaps a time window after submission during which competitors may make a submission
Encourage reinvestment back into the community
9) Encourage post-bounty support of products
10) Discourage submission of half-baked code with bugs and coding violations
11) Dispute resolution process
12) Process states PENDING, ACTIVE, EVALUATING, CLOSED
13) Bounties to help in the evaluation phase... ie: finding bugs, coding violations, security holes
14) Ways to organize team bounties where a 'project manager' can organize many others to help build a larger deliverable.
15) Bounties double as marketing / giveaways and thus should be priced to entice heavy competition and multiple bids rather than attempt to get a deal for minimal effort or expense. 
16) Have a commission system for the bounty operator/organizer.  The goal is to motivate rapid question/answer/evaluation cycles and divide up the task of running the bounty in addition to completing the bounty.
17) Voting systems are a big negative, we strongly prefer solutions that do not involve voting of any type.


The goal of the process is to make management of the bounty campaign efficient and effective with minimal room for conflict and ambiguity.   

This bounty is in the PENDING state until initial questions / concerns about the scope of the bounty are handled.  While in the PENDING state everything is subject to change.   

The value of this bounty (About $4000) is set to reflect the importance and urgency of getting the right set of rules as quickly as possible documented in a way that is easy to follow.