An idea to incentivize mod donations

[Sebiale]

This idea was inspired by a recent update to Firefox, so a few other people here might also have seen this. In the last few updates, Firefox removed Tab Groups as a default feature, but it's now a kind of semi-official addon (I don't really know the details, but I don't think they matter here).

As a part of this, when you have Tab Groups installed you can go to a specific page detailing the addon (about:tabgroups), and if you go to the About page, you will see this.

In particular, I'm interested in that Development Status. Basically, the addon developer is valuing his time in development of the addon at $5 per hour he works on it. When this page was first deployed, he was at about -50 hours (hours loaned, as he put it), he is now at nearly 300 hours "banked" (so over $1500 for the addon development at this point).

 

So to reach my point: I'm wondering if something like this might be useful a way to help incentivize mod donations (and thus help keep mod development flourishing) on the Nexus. Basic idea is roughly the same--mod authors would select a value that they feel is reasonable for their time to develop and then keep a record of the time they spend working on their mods. This development loaned vs banked (doesn't have to be the same terms of course) would be viewable on the mod page(s) (and maybe another that totals time spent across mods for an author). Hopefully people would then have a sense of what the author's time is worth, but without having to do anything like purchase the mod upfront.

 

Any obvious concerns or problems I've overlooked? Does it seem like it would help mod authors in an appreciable way? Would it hurt in any way? Are there any major difficulties in implementation? I'm not really sure how the economics would work out over time.

 

ETA: Maybe incentivize is the wrong word. Promote maybe? Encourage?

Edited June 4, 2016 by Sebiale