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A New Free Software Donation Directory
Wolfgang Spraul writes: "CoSource and SourceXchange are closed. They became part of the history of Open Source Software Markets. However, I still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give me support if it doesn't work in my environment.
Since no such place is in sight, I launched the Free Software Donation Directory as a first step. What do you think? How should the next Free Software market look like? Should there be one at all?" Right now, he's got around 20 projects listed, if you care to invest in some Free software.
While your site looks quite good, why do we need a directory specifically for projects that accept donations? Isn't that like creating a new Google just for open source software? Why not just use the resources we already have?
Open source projects can say easily enough on their own Web pages whether they accept donations or not, and can also put this information on their SourceForge.
To that end, I think this would be an area where SourceForge could help. Sure, SourceForge might not be ideal, but it's the one place where almost all open source projects are listed.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Why don't you just make it a site where you can hire open source developers? Donations seem too much like charity, and I think it can be demeaning to those who write the features you want.
Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment
accepts your payment, for free software.... for free software....
Most free software developers are quite short of time because the project they work on is in their spare time and not their day job. Or if it is their day job, the time they have for 'cool features' is limited because the more boring and lucrative parts need doing first.
If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for? If you wanted to change the developer's mind about what to implement, you'd probably have to bid a lot more than just a thousand dollars. I wonder what the hourly rate of pay was for the projects on SourceXchange or CoSource, and how that compared with what the developers could earn in the 'outside world'.
There are lots of small improvements to free software projects for which I'd be prepared to pay a $100 bounty, but that amount seems insultingly small for the work involved. If I work as a software developer myself, the time spent to earn $100 is probably about the same as the time that the $100 would buy for another developer. Okay, maybe I take three times as long to implement a feature for project X because I've never before seen the code for that project, but if you take into account tax (so I see only $70 of the money earned, and the other developer sees only $50 of that) and other overheads, it doesn't seem like a particularly good deal. Sites like CoSource might be useful for _users_ to find development, but it's the first rule of software that users don't know what they want. Unless they are really big users (like the Weather Channel funding Radeon 8500 drivers), and then they probably don't need someone else's website.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
nothin' like a generous helping of meth to start the day!
"someone should make a hot air balloon that is shaped like a giant vagina" -- Bill Clinton
free software and open source operates on premises
that are remarkably similair to the ideas of SOCIAL THREEFOLDING.
basically, instead of a tee-ter-totter of supply and demand*,
it works more like a transistor -- regulating the supply and
demand in accordance with actual human need.
that's a lot like free software -- people have software needs,
and they need to support the livelihood of programmers for the
duration of the time they are creating a software product.
but the human need (daily supply for food, house, machines)
is not directly connected to the VALUE he creates for the
money it takes to support his/her life. there's a disconnect.
so supporting the producers takes up a certain amount of value,
which sends out much greater value to the community 'for free' - in
terms of sharing source and code with anyone that OPTS-INTO the POOL.
for working within this sort of framework,
there's no better (heavy-reading but short 7 pages) article
here.:
SOCIAL THREEFOLDING
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/S
regards,
john.
I think the biggest problem with the likes of SourceXchange (and others) was that they tended to request software that cost WAY more to develop than was being paid. (e.g. $100 to convert a J2EE server to use HPs proprietary RMI ripoff.) This just isn't good business for programmers. My free time is worth way more than the $.50/hr that it would end up as.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
give me support if it doesn't work in my environment.
::shudder::
If that's a primary concern, I wonder what you are using. Ultrix maybe? OS/390?
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
By accepting donations. I can rid you of your problem by accepting them for you. I know charity is a terrible thing to have to accept, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice.
Uh?
I don't see the need of this.
You can simply find the website or mailing list for the software you need support or new futures and contact them directly.
For instance, if you need one feature to get added to, say, Vim, you could go to their site, find out the addresses for their mailing list and then send them a message stating with your feature request and your interest in paying USD $500 to whoever implements it.
Thanks.
Alejo.
I'm interested in creating a MIDI-enabled hardware step sequencer to my own specifications and as I know very little about programming hardware this idea sounds *very* appealing to me. I was going to submit an Ask Slashdot question and cross my fingers hoping it would get submitted, but now maybe I don't have to.
sig.
Lets say the feature is worth $100 to you, so you offer $100 for it.
It costs the programmer $500 to do it.
If you are the only one sponsoring it, nobody does it.
If 4 other people feel that it is worth $100 to them, and put up $100, the programmer gets his $500, and everyone paid $100 for the feature.
While something like this or SourceXchange is great for advertising the fact that there can be a paying market for OSS (i.e. advocacy reasons), is it really neccesary from a practical standpoint?
Sometime last year a company I was working for needed a new feature added to a high-profile OSS app before we could use it in our office, so we just emailed one of the developers and negotiated a rate - the task was quickly done and everyone was happy.
Bottom line: unlike the myriad layers of corporate bullshit that sit on top of the average proprietary software developer, most OSS developers are directly reachable - just grab their address from the project's mailing list and ask if they want to earn some $$$ fufilling your feature request... No fancy 'marketplace' site needed - the whole internet is the marketplace.
Got a problem with software from M$ or Macromedia or Adobe, etc.? Try calling the main switchboard and asking for the developer who coded that particular feature, so you can ask him about it... Yah...
Am I brave enough to switch to commercial model ?
the line under the heading says:
"Is anybody still paying for Free Software?"
ouch!
the answer is "nobody" or "one in the million" ?
$500 to convert J2EE server to use HPs proprietary RMI. You sir are an IDIOT! You probably don't even know what RMI is. First of all you would need a team do it then you would need a qa team to debug it unless you want to install buggy code on enterpise machines. Lastly, just to do that you would need full time programmers.
Conclusion: See "opening doc files in linux"
Moral: Piss off
Remember Clinton? Mr hide-the-cigar? Yeah well he would also donate his used underwear to charity and claim a charitable donation of $4 per stained Y front.
The anti-fur bregade set up as charities and handed out donation receipts to anybody who brought along their furs.
Microsoft donates software to schools (cost them nothing to make) and probably ends up making a profit from the tax credits (while still perverting our kids and getting good PR).
Maybe the same could be done for OSS. A charitable organisation commissions OSS development, then issues donation receipts at a healthy rate. The developer uses these to get a tax break.
Can this work?
Hmm, I take it back; now that I think about it, maybe it does make sense to have a 'directory' site of these kinds of project, again mainly for advocacy reasons.
While I maintain it's probably not too hard to find someone to do the work without such a site, and that the project's mailing list is probably a better place to find help than a general purpose site, these sorts of transactions are invisible to all but the two parties involved (i.e. 'hirer' and hacker) - thus leaving no way to quantify this sort of activity.
Without such a quantification, it's very easy to FUD people that OSS is largely 'unsupported' software from a tech point of view, that as a programmer there's no money to be made from OSS, etc. Pointing to a site that says "$10,204 was paid last week for the following enhancements to the following projects..." would prove wrong the FUDers (Fudders?).
The thing is, it might even make more sense to post this info after the transaction took place, when the client is happy and the hacker has been paid. Also, including the identities of the two parties on the site (if they agree of course), would allow a [famous auction site]-style rating system to be implemented, i.e. I (the client) feel better about hiring Joe Hacker b/c I've seen the other paid hacks he's done listed here, and I (the hacker) feel better about doing this hack for the client, b/c I can see from their listing that they actually pay up when the work is done...
This simple rating system might work better than the complicated system of third-party judges they used to use at SourceXchange (if I'm not mistaken).
If you save money by using free software instead of proprietary, just pay 50% of that to a free software project you consider important. Just imagine more users acting like that. Free Software is not made for spongers! So I ask all of you, if Free Software benefits you, please give something back.
You're right, it'd take far more money than most people are willing to offer to actually pay for development at a reasonable rate. However, I could see it working as a way to encourage authors to continue working on their projects, while getting your pet features a bit higher up on the priority list. If I were a project manager and I had 5 or so features I was planning to implement in the near future, if someone paid $100 in favor of one of them, I might well not mind getting that one done first. Sure, for $100 few people will develop an entirely new feature that otherwise they wouldn't have done, but it might be enough to encourage them to shift priorities around a bit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
(2) Make an engine which can search all of them
(3) Put this engine on a website
(4) Add a "Jobs" section to this website
(5) Et voila!
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
What's the difference between free/open source software and shareware, again?
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
That's crazy. Businesses are already extremely efficient at providing new features and support. They are experts at those kinds of contracts and open source volunteers can't compete against them in such a simple minded way.
The real funding need in the open source world is sustained, long-term funding for creative, exploratory research and development. We don't need customers who want to buy "features" or "support" -- we need customers who want to simply PAY US TO HACK on new and interesting projects that may be too new to help many customers directly today, but that will help the open source world evolve tomorrow. It's because we in the open source world don't pay people to "just explore" that Bill Gates gets to say the GPL is bad for the industry and unamerican and that fascistic copyright protections are a necessity.
This sounds a bit like what is being done with the Free Blender Project , as covered in this story.
I have always dreamed of a sort of reverse eBay for programming work. A party who is interested in seeing a certain feature implemented posts the specs on a website. The first programmer to submit a working solution to the open-source project mentioned in the spec collects the bounty.
Maintainers of projects would have the advantage of being intricately familiar with the code, thereby giving them an advantage in this "job market" for their time spent as a maintainer.
That's free as in speech, not free as in beer. If free speech were so worthless, why would the regular US citizen defend it so much? (And they are right!)
I think the key will be in the establishment of a viable business model that is based on a viable distribution model.
Point A. Software Product
Point B. User of Software Product
I propose that going from Point A to Point B requires a 'bridge' of competence.
The disconnect between a software developer and an end-user is a gulf that has to be bridged with an interface that can:
a. determine user requirements
b. determine vendor requirements
c. translate requirements to a common vocabulary
d. develop a technical plan
e. develop a business plan
f. develop an implementation plan
g. execute implementation
I find that the developers and end users in smaller organizations are poorly suited for those specific tasks and this is why we are not seeing a wider acceptance of open source.
There is an obvious need for a competent 'third' wheel here. This can be the focal point of the distribution model (where distribution also includes the money flow), the sales model and hence the business model.
I've recently organized a company based on this model. We offer a stock office network that includes all of the usual suspects (word processing, email, spreadsheets, etc) you usually find in an office environment desktop. We've coupled that with a nice open souce accounting package and tons of other pieces parts system software and have a very nice professional low-cost business office system.
To get money flowing back to the developers, we pay for support contracts where they are offered, include small fees which are passed back to some developers and are considering a fee (donation) to be passed on to one of the larger open source support organizations.
Ask me in a couple of months and I'll let you know how its working out.
j.b.
$500 to convert J2EE server to use HPs proprietary RMI. You sir are an IDIOT! You probably don't even know what RMI is. First of all you would need a team do it then you would need a qa team to debug it unless you want to install buggy code on enterpise machines. Lastly, just to do that you would need full time programmers.
LOL! You are funny, aren't you? Do you realize that when SourceXchange opened, HP contracted to have extactly that done? They were paying $1000 to the person who could get it done first. As you can guess, there weren't too many takers.
BTW, RMI stands for Remote Method Invocation. It is a way of allowing a remote "stub" object to be used to call method calls on an object on some other machine. The work of converting could have been done by one person by just putting in a translation layer. It just wasn't worth it when the day was done.
Moral: Piss off
Moral: "Every prudent man acts out of knowledge, but a fool exposes his folly." -Proverbs 13:16
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
>became part of the history of Open Source Software Markets. However, I
>still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of
>existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and
>payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give
>me support if it doesn't work in my environment. Since no such place
>
>
Why does this seem like something that someone involved with marketing/distrubuting Windows shareware would come up with? More you look at this the more it smells of being a front of some Fly-By-Night outfit that will "disapear" with any money within a few months of opening up shop.
-A User creates a wish list item for a given Project.
-The Project Maintainer, whether an organization, company, or individual, controls the cost estimation for the new project feature. No other developers may submit estimates (ie bids). These estimates include a dollar amount and a time to completion.
-Users pool their funds to pay for the given feature. These funds should be held in escrow to ensure they actually exist when the estimation amount has been reached.
-The work is completed
This approach varies from the other approaches primarily by having the Project Maintainer act as the point of control for all development. This allows the Project Maintainer to allocate funds received for work done between developers and other overhead costs incurred in the general maintenance and development of that app in general. This also ensures that the code will be included in the primary distribution and supported in future releases, meets the development standards, and rewards those associated with the project.
I have left out accountability on the part of the developer...I imagine there could be some contention between those who made and paid for a feature request and the person implementing it...One group saying the feature is not done as requested and the other claiming conformance to the request...but that's just a detail :-)
I'm not sure it extends well to custom fittings for a specific user need, but I think that sort of work can be addressed as well with a more traditional bidding model. There is much less need in the customization case for the code to be included in the primary distribution. I do think the Project Maintainer should still be considered the preferred developer for such work.
A directory is good though. Freshmeat or the like would be the obvious place home for it, just another field or so attached to each project's record.
Which country has donated the most? Is it Finland which population is about 5 million? Finnish people have created Linux (Linus Torvalds), IRC (Jarkko Oikarinen) and SSH (Tatu Ylonen)? Quite amazing for such a small country.
Nobody want's to pay the cost needed to develop something. The way this could work, is if it were a way to allow several (100's?) of groups to combine their contribution. It would probably need to be structured rather like those mathematics prizes, where the money can sit around uncollected for decades. But it would also somehow need to accumulate some of the prestige of those prizes. The money is only a part of the payoff when you win a mathematics prize. Another part is that it was you who did it.
Probably the best way to do it would be as a PR event at some convention in hackerdom. Announce the challenge in advance, say, a month, and present the award at an event. This would mean that it would need to be an interesting problem, and also that it wouldn't be too difficult to solve in that time. The award would be for the best solution.
At the end of the event, announce the problem for the next year. This one could be more difficult, but it would still need to be quite interesting. After a couple of years, the award might begin to be rather prestigeous. Then, in addition to the yearly problem, you could announce a challenge problem, with a two year deadline. Etc.
Perhaps there should be ancillary events. High School challenges. College challenges. etc. as well as the free-for-all challenges.
This is a considerably more elaborate effort than SourceXchange ever was. It requires more investment than that did. To justify itself, it would need to be a part of the PR budget as well as a part of the "get this software" budget. Probably more so, as you couldn't count on an answer that was sufficiently good at any particular time.
SourceXchange was nearly an effort to get something for nothing. It wasn't a bad idea, but the people who bid on the software had no idea of development costs (in time-effort). So they underbid and got ignored.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The main problem mentioned in many of the posts here is that a user might only be willing to pay say $100 for a new feature, but the time required by the developer wouldn't make such a small donation worthwhile. But what if multiple people wanted the same new feature and were each willing to pay $100 (or even many people willing to pay say $5)?
What would be useful would be a site that allowed these people to get together and pledge a certain amount for a new feature. Once enough money has been pledged that the developer thinks it's worthwhile, they can develop the feature and collect the pledged money.
For a discussion on how such a system might work, see The Rational Street Performer Protocol
FREE as in FREEdom, something thats good for everyone!!
Donate to charity = Tax Deduction = $ .:
Donate Code to Open Source = $
Under current tax law - I believe it is quite possible to Donate software to public NPO's and receive a significant tax refund.
That is what the market for Open Source should look like in the year 2002.
We need a non-profit to validate code donations as "Works of Art" or "Collections - ie Vinyl Records."
That's it really. If you want to leverage it further - modify the GPL to "require" qualified NPO's to validate donations as condition for use. This means every time an NPO uses free software they should write a receipt to the author. This means yearly recurring tax deductions - so your 1000 hour Open Source project could be paying your taxes for years to come!
AIK
For more information, check Open Soars
Personally, I don't like the word "donate", as it basically means giving away money, and not caring how it is used. If you pay for Damian to work on Perl, you more or less know what you get (well, not really, but you know it's going to be really cool stuff). If someone put up a similar project to pay for some gcc überhacker, I might be interested. On the other hand, just donating my windows tax to the gcc project without knowing how it will be spent seems a little silly.
And more over, if people aren't interested enough in the same feature I want, I don't want my money to be used for other things (I guess most people organizing this sort of thing are pretty ethical, and try to use the money for something similar, but I still don't like the idea of random donations.
We need a safe scheme for both parties (donators and developers) to raise money from the public, where the developers only get the money if it is enough to keep them occupied on the project it is supposed to help, and otherwise, nobody looses anything. I'm not sure how something like this would work, trust is hard to establish across economic and legal borders.
It seems to me that we need some trusted financial entity (third-party) to organize the fundraising, that is acceptable to both developers and donators. I guess the ideal entity would be a bank, put your donations into the banks account, and unless the minimum amount of money is reached (after some agreed-upon date) the bank promises to pay everybody back (minus some fees of course). Anybody knows if this is a realistic option?
This is a GoodThing.
Wish they would lose the idea of 'buying features' tho.
Personally, I don't donate money to get more features. Yeah, I'm a nut.
I look at free software more like a friend helping me move furniture. He may not ask but I'm damn well gonna fill up his gas tank, and prolly buy him some beer or a steak, too. It's got nothing to do with charity or commerce. It's just a good way to say thanks.
(Haven't figured out how to get the beer into the modem yet, it always starts smoking after the first can...)
Just my twisted view.