Proposing a Bug Bounty Program for Swift & SwiftPM

Evolution Discussion
,
1

Feel free to move this post if this is in the wrong section, initially I was going to make this an evolution proposal pitch, but that didn't seem right either.

Summary

I would like to propose the creation of a Swift Bug Bounty Program for both Swift and SwiftPM, with the goal of fostering a more collaborative and healthy open-source ecosystem. This program would offer monetary rewards for identifying, reporting, and resolving bugs, ultimately accelerating development, enhancing security, and encouraging greater community involvement.

Motivation

The Swift community has grown immensely over the years, and while the ecosystem is rapidly evolving, there are still many opportunities to improve Swift and SwiftPM. A bug bounty program could:

  • Increase the speed of bug discovery: Bug bounties incentivize the community to actively find and report bugs that might otherwise go unnoticed.
  • Improve the quality of Swift and SwiftPM: With more eyes on the code, we can resolve issues faster and improve the overall stability of the language and tools.
  • Engage the developer community: Bug bounties are an excellent way to engage the broader community, including those who may not have the time or resources to contribute regularly but can still assist by identifying issues.
  • Attract new contributors: Developers who may not be familiar with the Swift ecosystem but are interested in bug hunting could be drawn to the project, thus broadening the pool of contributors.

Benefits

  • Faster issue resolution: Issues that may have taken weeks or months to identify can be flagged and fixed quickly.
  • Stronger ecosystem security: Critical vulnerabilities would be flagged and fixed faster, helping to protect the ecosystem.
  • Encourages collaboration: By rewarding contributions, the community would become more engaged, leading to new ideas, cross-collaborations, and improvements.
  • Attracts external talent: Developers outside the core Swift team may be more inclined to engage with the Swift ecosystem knowing that their contributions will be compensated.

Proposal

Bug Categories
  • Security vulnerabilities: Critical vulnerabilities affecting Swift or SwiftPM.
  • Performance issues: Bugs causing performance regressions.
  • Stability issues: Crashes, unexpected behavior, or other serious stability issues.
  • Documentation issues: Errors or missing information that hinders the user experience.
  • Other bugs: General bugs or unexpected behaviors that impact the development process.
Eligibility and Reporting
  • Anyone can participate in the program, from newcomers to experienced developers.
  • Bugs would need to be reported via official channels like GitHub issues, ensuring a consistent review process.
  • Reports would be evaluated and prioritized based on their severity.
Rewards Structure
  • Rewards could vary depending on the severity of the bug (e.g., $100 for minor issues, $500+ for critical issues).
  • SwiftPM could offer higher rewards for issues related to security or build failures affecting a larger portion of the ecosystem (e.g., C++ Interoperability).
  • Transparency in reward distribution (e.g., publicly tracking reports and payments) to ensure fairness.
Program Governance
  • The program would be managed by a dedicated team within the Swift organization (possibly a subgroup of existing maintainers or a special task force).
  • Clear guidelines would be established for how bugs are prioritized and evaluated.
  • Public visibility and discussion of the program’s progress would ensure accountability.
Examples from Other Ecosystems
  • Mozilla Firefox: They run a successful bug bounty program, offering varying amounts depending on the severity of the bug, and this has led to significant improvements in both security and user experience.
  • Google’s Android & Chromium: Google has long had bug bounty programs for both security and functionality, helping to identify major vulnerabilities before they become widespread issues.

Next Steps

If this proposal generates interest, I’d suggest...
  • Forming a task force to work out the specifics of the program (reward tiers, bug categorization, reporting workflow).
  • Reaching out to Apple’s internal teams to see if there are resources or existing programs we could leverage.
  • Reviewing how similar open-source projects have structured their bounty programs to ensure efficiency and sustainability.
  • Start with a pilot phase to test the waters with a smaller bounty pool, then expand as the program proves successful.

Conclusion

A bug bounty program for Swift and SwiftPM would make the ecosystem stronger, more secure, and more collaborative. It would help bring new developers into the fold and enable faster identification and resolution of issues, ultimately improving the quality of Swift and SwiftPM.

I'd love to hear any feedback and discussing how we can bring this idea to life!

6 Likes
2

This didn't belong in Community Showcase, because you're not talking about an actual project of yours. I've moved it to Evolution > Discussion, but... honestly, I don't really know what to do with it, because it's not really a proposal in any sense. You're just saying you'd like there to be a bug bounty program akin to what you've heard about in other projects.

1 Like
3

Correct, I really just wanted to leave it up to the community for how this should best be done - and if this appears to be something the larger Swift community would be interested in.

4

I'm all for getting greater community involvement in the project, and having the world's most valuable company compensate people for their time with relative fractions of a penny could be a good way to do it.

However, fixing bugs is one thing, even with outside involvement. As long as Swift is beholden to Apple's release process it will take six months to a full year, at a minimum (in general), for those fixes to be deployed. Even with payment, not being able to use the fix you just spent time writing just feels bad. A bounty program is probably still worthwhile, it would just need to make clear when people can expect to see their fixes.

4 Likes
5

Maybe there could be an expedited process for fixes coming through the bounty program? Or at least some way for them to land in nightly or beta toolchains sooner rather than waiting for a full yearly cycle?

Either way, I still think it’d be worth it, especially for long-standing issues that otherwise wouldn’t get much attention. Curious to hear if others have thoughts on how to handle the release timing aspect.

6

I have a few notes:

Documentation fixes

There just needs to be a minimum amount of work and effort required to get a bounty for this category. We want contributors to provide more useful context to the error/documentation not making a small grammar fix.

Funding

How exactly do you think we should get funding for this. Some candidates for this could be Apple or the Linux Foundation as Apple is a stakeholder in Swift Development. The Linux Foundation could be a source as Swift is an Open Source Project. While this would be pretty helpful for supporting maintainers and encouraging more review of Swift and other Swift Organization projects however, we aren’t magic and can’t produce the funding required without outside help.

What Constitutes an Acceptable Submission

I am having difficulties determining if you are basing this on reports, fixes or both. Reports are great for unrelated reporters who may not have domain knowledge of Swift but are not useful for actually fixing the bugs; fixes are vice versa. If this joint bounty system is used we need to provide qualification and disqualification information for these reports that are dedicated for each side of the program to prevent abuse or double dipping

This are mostly things that will need to be resolved beforehand. However I do like the initiative and it could be useful for supporting developers while providing useful improvements to the projects under the Swift umbrella.

1 Like
7

Documentation Fixes

Agreed, there should be a minimum effort threshold to ensure meaningful contributions. Perhaps we could classify documentation issues into tiers, where small grammatical fixes wouldn’t qualify, but significant content improvements (such as adding missing explanations, improving code examples, or fixing misleading information) would be eligible.

Funding

I think Apple should be the primary funder, given their vested interest in Swift’s success. That said, external funding sources such as the Linux Foundation could also be explored if Apple isn’t interested in fully backing the program. Maybe one potential model could be a hybrid approach where Apple funds the core Swift-related issues, while third parties could contribute towards bounties for specific areas they care about (e.g. C++ Interoperability).

Acceptable Submissions

Good point on clarifying whether this is for reports, fixes, or both. I was envisioning a system that rewards both:

  • Bug reports: Rewards would be lower and based on the severity of the issue reported.

  • Bug fixes: Would have a higher reward, with clear qualification criteria to prevent abuse or duplicate payouts.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!

8

Bug reporting doesn't seem to be a bottleneck currently. Github is showing more than 5,500 open bugs just for the core swiftlang/swift project, and nearly 700 of those have not been triaged.

5 Likes
9

Bug reporting doesn't seem to be a bottleneck currently. Github is showing more than 5,500 open bugs just for the core swiftlang/swift project, and nearly 700 of those have not been triaged.

Fair point! I guess I've experienced a fair share of C++ Interop and SwiftPM conditional compilation bugs, specifically when attempting to support fully cross-platform development (Linux, Darwin, Windows) that haven't been reported, but I understand that doesn't represent the majority of the Swift project.

10

You are right, but as @furby-tm says, many more bugs probably go unreported, especially after they see that long list of open or untriaged bugs. The hope would be that the financial incentive and less untriaged reports would spur more reporting.

As for the original idea, I've been silent so far because even though it's a good idea that I've championed for more than a decade in other projects, I have to admit that bug bounties have mostly failed so far. For example, I have heard people say that if they sold their Chromium/Android security bugs to the black hats instead, they'd make 10X or more what the security bug bounties pay (I have no way to verify these price claims as I'm not a security researcher myself).

In general, the computer hardware and software market has a huge quality problem, this is merely another dimension of that. These are the most profitable companies in the world, but for whatever reason, they don't see it as worthwhile to fix this fundamental quality issue. Maybe they've crunched the financials and come to that conclusion rationally, maybe not, never discussed it with those decision-makers.

Such bug bounty programs for open source are an end run around the tech companies, to let users directly report and pay for the fixes they need, but most bug bounties never get enough users contributing. Whether that's an issue of inadequate publicity or simply free riding, I don't know.

My suggestion, if you're serious about seeing this through, is that you sell an alternate Swift toolchain instead, where you maintain a closed branch of the upstream OSS project, to which any Swift dev can submit paid fixes or maybe even experimental features. This would be a product that Swift devs and companies could buy and all such closed patches would be contractually required to be open-sourced to those buyers after a year or two.

This way, you avoid the significant free rider problem in open source, where everybody wants somebody else to pay for development, so significant work never gets done. Perhaps @marcprux at Skip or @compnerd at TBC, both of whom vend their own Swift toolchains, would be interested in collaborating on something like this.

Some competition in Swift toolchains would be good, :wink: though realistically nobody is going to compete with Apple for targeting Darwin platforms. This would focus on linux, Windows, Android, and so on and would be a good way to get more platforms and contributors into the Swift toolchain.

2 Likes
11

This is a manpower issue.

As someone who enjoys learning compilers, has read much of /docs, follows along on the forums, learns more about the shortcomings and holes of the language, and got a CS degree - starting work on the compiler is daunting. Over the years, I have observed that there aren't many opportunities for someone to independently start working within the compiler.

The main opportunities to get first-hand work and help in the compiler are:

  • work at Apple
  • work at a company with a stake in the language itself
  • have a very strong independent resolve and motivation, as well as a lot of time outside of one's normal life
  • GSoC - seasonal and arguably doesn't have much breadth, depending on mentorship availability and interest

Sure, there's a good first issue tag but those are targeted for those knowledgeable in compiler technologies. The educational opportunities are few, whether academic or professional.

I'm not saying that there needs to be a Swift Compiler 101 tutorial, that Apple/Swift community should bear the weight of educating people of compilers, or that the currently existing outreach of help is lacking. All I'm stating is that to get started in the Swift compiler and its dependent technologies (largely LLVM) one who earnestly desires to make improvements is immediately faced with a learning cliff.

At least, this has long been my perspective. :salt:

4 Likes
12

Apple recently announced a $500 billion investment in the U.S., amid concerns about their iPhone sales, showing they have the resources to make significant commitments when priorities align.

Meanwhile, Swift and especially its open-source ecosystem continues to lack the funding needed to fully thrive. Even a small fraction of that investment could make a huge difference for things like a bug bounty program, SwiftPM improvements, and broader adoption outside Apple’s ecosystem.

6 Likes