Public Software Fund's First Project

Russ Nelson writes "The Public Software Fund's first project has been funded for two months worth of development. Tom Jennings (of Fidonet fame) will be writing software to do peer-to-peer file sharing of free software RPM packages, improving the existing free software packages up2date, /current/, and BitTorrent. This will keep new distro releases from being slashdotted."

Comments

Tom Jennings

[Pathwalker]

He has done a lot more than FidoNet - take a look at some of the artwork he's done recently. ( I suggest taking a look at the Story Teller - very very cool...)

He also has lots of info on Nixie tubes and builds some cool looking clocks with them (to tie into the earlier /. articles on nixie clocks from a few months back).

Free Porn

[SeanTobin]

OMG. It really is porn. I figured it'd be a huge advertizement for them or something. Thumbs (yes, thumbs) up to BitTorrent for actually putting some truth in advertizing.

Re:I just remembered the one thing that makes P2P

[Subcarrier]

As soon as people start downloading from me, my incoming connection grinds to a halt.

This is a good point, especially with highly asymmetric systems like cable connections (asymmetry can be as high as 1:40 on these beauties). Some of the uplink capacity is needed for TCP protocol acknowledgement packets. If the uplink becomes congested, the downlink clogs down as well.

Isn't there any way to make P2P software play nice with the connection and only use the unused outgoing bandwidth?

It's possible but it requires support from the OS. A quality-of-service implementation like DiffServ can help solve the problem. Packets belonging the P2P traffic could be assigned to the lowest service class so that precendence is always given to other traffic.

What's the point?

[chris_sawtell]

BitTorrent works absolutely perfectly.
Somebody has more money than sense. Just reward the BitTorrent author, if you want to splash money around.

Re:This sucks

[vidarh]

Have you even read their pages? The donor gets to decide who will do the work. This is just a way for private individuals to hire someone to do open source development work and be able to deduct it from their taxes.

If you want the original authors to make money, donate money and specify who you want to do the work.

Re:On funding

[Russ Nelson]

If you donate $10 to this project, all of it goes to paying Tom to work that much longer on it. Even $10 will help.
-russ

Re:This sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Bram Cohen is the (broke) author of BitTorrent, but instead of hiring him to do this project, they hired somebody else.

Easy Money

[AmericanInKiev]

Assuming you have had a job for some of this year - You probably have all the funding you need waiting for you at the IRS.

If you create a "work of art", have it appraised by an expert, print it on paper, and donate it to a non-profit organization. That org can issue you a tax deduction.

Tax Deductions are worth n+n^2 face value where n is your income tax rate. Say you were at the 50% rate - the Tax Deduction you receive for your artistic contribution to AmigaOS would be 75% of the Appraised Value. I doubt many programmers get 75% of the selling price of their software - so it's really a generous deal.

See IRS Document 561 for official details on donating "Works of Art".

Its true the document doesn't break down "Works of Art" into Books, vs Photographs, vs Original Van Gough vs, Compiled works of highly mathmatical precision, but Art is a big tent, and Software is as like art as anything else.

IANAL/CPA But what an easy place to find the money you need to complete that OS! And We the People will both benefit and pay.

AIK