<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; ">I've contributed a few times to a chipin, but like rather to contribute and communicate directly with the maintainer for certain specific features. <div>
<br></div><div>I think there are 3 main ways:</div><div>- chipin: for popular much wanted features, a lot of people contributing a small amount. </div><div>- bounty: gathering a few sponsors that contribute a larger amount for a specific feature</div>
<div>- direct contact with the maintainer: for urgent needs or really custom changes to the module for a specific project.<br><div><br></div><div>I think chipin is suitable to gather a rather small amount with a lot of people giving very small amounts. So its mainly suitable for popular much wanted features, not something that only a few are really interested in. For my company I would like to have an invoice of expenses and with chipin this is more difficult. Also if you contribute a larger amount it would be nice to be mentioned as "sponsored by" on the project page; with chipin normally every contributor is anonymous, if you pay half of the total amount or 5$.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I like the idea of "bounty" more for specific stuff, so gathering with a few sponsors and pay each a third or so, but it could be good to find a better way to show clearly which bounties are searching for extra sponsors for a certain module. There should somewhere be an overview. Same would be true for chipins if you would have more.<br>
<div><div><div><br></div><div>For me it would be also good if contributors could state in a consequent and clear manner that they are available for paid customisations (and quite a bit do this allready, but maybe <a href="http://drupal.org" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(42, 93, 176); ">drupal.org</a> should provide an structured way to do this) and give in their profile some more info about conditions, contact ways, timing and availability. Also to know if the maintainer is a fulltime freelancer available or somebody working fulltime in a non-drupal related company having only some weekend time to spend and no possibility to write an invoice is very important to me.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Hans</div></div></div></div></div></span>