Quote from: John Smith on August 11, 2011, 08:37:06 AM

A developer that has done some work on a bounty can post his initial work to prove that he is working on it; it might be that this still requires rework, but moderators can "lock" the bounty in his name so no one else can claim it in the meantime.

Yes but only for a short time, depending on the trustworthiness value of that developer. Maybe have milestones for larger projects.
We'll also have to watch out for scumbags submitting copyrighted code from other projects as their own and it being released under an incompatible license.

Quote from: John Smith on August 11, 2011, 08:37:06 AM

Each bounty must have a "due date", by which the posters get back their escrowed money if there is no initial submission by then

Yep, I'm thinking that each project has an address and we just post the funds back to the address that sent them, so there's no need for people to register accounts to donate. Completed projects would have new funds posted directly to the person who completed the task. Not sure about new funds, maybe new funds being added should re-open / extend a project, or maybe they're just posted back to the address that sent them.

Quote from: John Smith on August 11, 2011, 08:37:06 AM

They system should have a (primitive) discussion thread on each bounty to discuss requirements etc.

I think the requirements should be set in stone when the project is created. We're dealing with donations from many people who are donating because they agree with the requirements. This is horribly bureaucratic but IMO the only way to do it fairly.

Quote from: John Smith on August 11, 2011, 08:37:06 AM

Registration / authentication simply using OpenID

Absolutely, I hate sites that force me to sign up with a new password, almost as much as I hate having to store user passwords! Cheesy

Thinking of security, would it be possible to write the platform in a way which prevents the site owners, moderators and any intruders from having access to the funds? For example we could encrypt the private key with a "project key" (owned by the site) and a "sponsor key" (one sponsor per donation address, potentially many per project). Once the site moderators agree that the requirements have been met, the project sponsors enter their key and the funds are released. Or maybe something is possible using scripting?

This would have the down-side of projects running forever and funds potentially being lost if the sponsors disappear, as we couldn't close a project without knowing the sponsor key. But it would IMO be a better option than running an escrow site given all the recent hackings!

Quote from: John Smith on August 11, 2011, 08:37:06 AM

Maybe we should ask for this topic to be moved to Project Development?

Yep that would be good