Galt Escrow Agency

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Greetings

Welcome to the Galt Escrow Agency, named after the character John Galt in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Here, buyers and sellers can enter into contracts for custom software development, with payment in e-gold. The financial terms of each contract give the seller a clear incentive to deliver a working version quickly, to minimize bugs, to fix promptly any bugs that do arise and to achieve stability quickly.

Simply put, the seller's income is tied to his performance. In fact, if the software is delivered very late, or if there are too many bugs, or if stability is not achieved by a certain deadline, then the seller must pay the buyer, instead of the buyer paying the seller.

The escrow agency holds deposits from both buyer and seller, and enforces the terms of the contract. Any dispute, such as whether something qualifies as a bug, is resolved by an independent arbitrator, with the loser paying the arbitration fee.

Benefits for buyers (clients):

• You can find talented developers who are undervalued by conventional wisdom, e.g., because they lack specific experience.
• As long as your requirements don't give away your identity, developers don't need to know who you are.
• Either you will receive a stable version of the software meeting your requirements by the given deadline, or else you will get your entire deposit back plus a penalty from the developer.

Benefits for sellers (developers):

• You can distinguish yourself from other developers by your willingness to enter into contracts where your income is tied to your performance.
• These contracts tend to appeal to discriminating clients who know what they want and can provide clear requirements. This makes the work very satisfying.
• You don't need to be concerned about the client's ability to pay. Once the contract has started, you know the client's funds are in escrow.

Please see the online help for more information.

News

2007-05-17: Version 0.9.5 of the system software has been installed. This fixes bug 5. The reward of 1 troy ounce of e-gold to whoever finds the next bug in the system still stands.

2006-09-27: Version 0.9.4 of the system software has been installed. This fixes bugs 3 and 4. The reward of 1 troy ounce of e-gold to whoever finds the next bug in the system still stands.

2006-07-07: The site has been moved to a server in Hong Kong. As a bonus, the new server supports SSL. Now you can use the Galt Escrow Agency with or without SSL. Access with SSL doesn't use a trusted certificate, so your browser may complain, but it should at least give you some privacy.

2006-06-06: Version 0.9.3 of the system software has been installed. This reflects version 1.1 of the requirements, which fixes bug 2. The reward of 1 troy ounce of e-gold to whoever finds the next bug in the system still stands.

2006-05-23: Congratulations to jghansen for finding bug 1. I'm offering the same reward (1 troy ounce of e-gold) to whoever finds the second bug in the system.

2006-04-01: This is a sample installation of the Galt Escrow Agency system. I will maintain the source code here as work 3, posting defect reports as I find them. I'm offering a reward of 1 troy ounce of e-gold to whoever finds the first bug in the system. If you discover a bug, please send it to me, including a trigger scenario to make the problem happen consistently. Thanks.

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