Introducing Bad Code Offsets

<i>The dollars you spend purchasing Bad Code Offsets are donated to various worthy Open Source initiatives that are carrying the fight against bad code on a daily basis. These organizations currently include jQuery, PostgreSQL, and The Apache Software Foundation.</i><p>Very clever! In my grand naivete I assumed that my $.50 would go toward actually cleaning up bad code, but instead, it decreases the <i>relative</i> impact of my bad code by producing more bad code, which will help distract from mine.

Reminds me of this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Abuses" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Abuses</a>

<a href="http://codeoffsets.com/" rel="nofollow">http://codeoffsets.com/</a><p>Also, I think that the idea is not that stupid. Bad code have many (business also) consequences and I can imagine a savvy company that punishes teams for poorly written code with similar mechanism.<p>For instance, let's say that team has $100k bonus budget for a year. Every poorly written SLOC means $1, or $10, less in a budget because the company has to spend this money on QA or customer service.<p>Of course, what's really complicated is how to measure poorly written code (cyclomatic complexity, length of methods etc. basic metrics?), and how to adjust it to the deadlines.

This reminds me of <a href="http://www.cheatneutral.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cheatneutral.com/</a><p>I'd say both of these parodies show why carbon offsetting doesn't really work.<p>---<p>When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.<p>Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.<p>Can I offset all my cheating? Well, first you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you've done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.

Is this some kind of joke? Or they are for real? Funding floss by paying for not feeling guilty writing bad code? Strange idea...