I'm a startup founder working on developer tools for robotics. I'm still working out my business model, but my plan is to open source the core of the product and offer some SaaS addons and integration services to make a profit. I've been thinking about how to build an open-source community, and one idea I had was to give equity to contributors.
I could put out "bounties" worth a number of points for bug fixes or features. Each bounty is worth a number of points. All of the total points would convert to 5-10% of the company in an exit event, or once the company raises a certain size round. Employees/founders/investors would be exempt from earning points.
I see ways that this system could be abused (such as assigning a 1,000,000 point bounty to someone I want to give equity to right at the end) and I'm not sure how to write this in a way that contributors are guaranteed to get a fair share. What ever I do, I'll have some form of TOS written up by a lawyer.
What do you think? Would this make you more likely to contribute to an open-source project? Does this sound like a turn-off to future investors? Have any existing projects implemented something like this?
