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After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn
MikeCapone writes "Slashdot had an article about the GNOME bounties a few days ago, but now, thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation (created by Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who went into the ISS as a Soyuz cosmonaut a couple of years ago), the Mozilla project also has some monetary incentives. The budget for 2004 is USD$100,000."
For various annoying reasons I have to use hotmail for a great deal of my email. Recently, MS changed the hotmail interface so links to messages are done in javascript instead of regular HTML. This means that I can't control+click all my messages and have them open into tabs. Its been barely over 24hrs since they have done this and I'm already contemplating setting up a html-email/hotpop server localy just to get around this...
Anyway, to the point. Submit a (working) patch to mozilla that gets included and get a $50 amazon.com or thinkgeek gift certificate, or a paypal payment (minus fees).
The patch should:
-detect when javascript would open a new window
-If the link was to be opened into a new tab (via control-click, 3rd mouse button, or whatever option is set), open the link into a new tab instead of a new window
-have an option to open all new windows into a new tab
-This bounty expires at midnight GMT on 12/31/04. By which time I'll either have been annoyed to the point of death, or have been forced to setup an alternate solution.
Defuddle my email address and send me an email when its done. Also, if you know a better place to put this bounty, please reply. Mozilla.com should have a section for this...
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
...to the person who can make the incredibly bloated and sluggish 1.5 feel like the usable 1.3.1. 10x that if it can be as zippy as IE. Seriously. I love Mozilla but it's slow as hell, at least on Windows.
It's about time. Not that small contributions haven't helped, but ever since the support was pulled for Netscape, things have rather been free floating (barring the Firebird project). It's terrific to see that there is a solid future for the development of one of the best IE alternatives out there.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Seeing this openly advertised gives me a great deal of hope for future open development efforts. Having some monetary incentive is a pretty big barrier to lots of programmers who are otherwise interested -- it's just the standard geek reward of "people will praise me for my effort" isn't enough for them.
In this particular case, the bounties appear to be for very specific features to existing products. Looks like it's working! But it seems the bounties are oriented solely toward individual programmers. I have to wonder how such a bounty would apply to larger-scale projects? I mean, for instance, what would the ramifications be of creating a bounty for a less-specific domain, or one in which there are numerous contributors so that one person couldn't solely claim responsiblity for the feature or program?
I suppose someone would have to decide how much effort each person put into the feature or program, and pro-rate the bounty to each person based on that decision. Could be a recipe for some hard feelings.
I think bounties are a great idea, but the way those bounties are implemented will make a pretty sizeable difference in developer response.
I like this approach, though. It's an individual, saying "I have a fund this large, and am willing to pay this much for these things to get done". Much better than some big corporate bid match-up service that falls flat on its face like some notables over the last few years...
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
Someone ought to start some kind of system where people can sponsor certain open-source projects, and have a lot of people contributing to them. $10 here and $10 there adds up to quite a bit of cash for the programmers who work hard at creating something great and then giving it to everyone for the betterment of all. This would also help the programmers gain feedback into what people really want to see in their programs.
That would be excellent - although I'm stuck with Outlook at work.
I try to sort my mail into folders based on the projects I'm working on. Something that could examine the contents of the email and suggest folders that it should go into would be very useful.
In fact, based on the sucess rate of SpamAssassin, I'd be prepared to allow it to classify them automatically.
Hmmm ... I wonder if you could do something in VB that would do the filtering for you by accessing the Outlook object?
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The Open Code Market is being developed just for that purpose. :)
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Not to be flamebait. But why would be put a bounty on putting Python everywhere?
It's a competative "glue language" to Perl whereas the other elements he's posted are either unique or niche markets.
I would consider this effort a dilution of resources when considering the overall goals of Open Source Development.
I would personally advocate the attentions be placed towards better financial management software or to focus on Evolution to make it faster, lighter, and leaner.
These two areas of applications (in addition to what was already posted) seem to be the biggest weakness in getting Linux on a desktop.
I don't see how Python would benefit everyone. And please, don't start frothing at the mouth. I'm not saying anything against Python, I just don't agree with the priorities.
I'm glad this is happenning. I was just thinking to myself (I win all my arguments that way) the other day about the perception that FOSS users won't pay for software and just want free as in beer. Of course to an extent that is true, but then it dawned on me that it's actually businesses that just want free beer.
:-(
The idea is constantly bandied about that FOSS programmers are just part time hackers with nothing better to do, but when you look at the quality of some FOSS projects that can't be true. It takes time and money. So why aren't companies like Sun and IBM making with the money to pay KDE to create a Micro-Soft like "Control Panel" for the desktop? Not that we may need one, it's only an example. Companies like IBM love to use Linux to nettle Micro-Soft and push their own agenda, but if they were serious about Linux on the desktop they'd put a bounty out for cohesive and intuitive applications that will help build a core of non technical users.
The German government took this route with Kroupware, and I just hope that Novell will do something like it with SuSE, but I still believe a serious sea change of perception and thought needs to take place in the corporate world. FOSS is a resource not only to push your other agendas, but can be harnessed relatively cheaply to get what you want. For those of us that can't code (yet) it doesn't matter if the source code is available, but it might be feasible to pay a developer to create a feature I want, maybe through a clearinghouse type website (any VCs in the house?). I know I'd pay if I had money for MozMail to be able to schedule the times it sent mail a la Outlook, and I even had someone ready to switch from Outlook until they discovered MozMail couldn't do that
Enuff rambling, maybe this is just a start of the community bootstrapping itself and the corporate world will notice and loosen the purse strings...
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Mark's Shuttleworth's an interesting guy. He knew one of the developers of the POV-Ray raytracer, and before he went into orbit he comissioned an image to be rendered on his laptop while in orbit. It was done by Gilles Tran and Jaime Piqueres, two well respected POV-Ray artists. Gilles has the story on his website.
The Mozilla team once included (in versions <= 1.4) a build-optional SVG module; you could then use SVG as part of a multi-Doctype document (alongwith XHTML, MathML...).
The interesting side of it is that you can script SVG; like you would do with DHTML on a regular XHTML document. Text and data and instructions embedded in a SVG document are *still* accessible; oppose Flash.
Now that branch is put aside - there is no easy way to include SVG in a stable release: you must use trunk and/or do multiple source patches.
As a free replacement for proprietary technologies, it would really be nice to see some effort put into reviving SVG in Mozilla.
If the system were set up so that you could contribute to a 'bounty', then the system would scale even better.
Some central board on a project, like the gnome project, would administer the bounties. If its bothering you, add to the bounty. Eventually its enough money to be a proper incentive.
Like the gnome bounties, the board itself would have to choose the best solution, so as a bounty contributor (the person sending the money) you'd give up that control. A minor giveaway, and something you probably don't have time to do anyway.
Sounds good to me.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I find myself wondering, in response to this suggestion, if an ebay-like approach would work really well. Make it easy to register for the service, keep your costs low to none (a few bucks, like ebay, rather than a few hundred, like some former notables), skim just a touch off the amount transacted, and you're done.
The principal pitfalls of such a system would seem to be:
1. Delayed delivery. Commitment to engineer something, and then delivering on that commitment, can take days, weeks, or months.
2. Confirmation of work completed -- how do you track that in the system?
3. Achieving sufficient volume to pay for operations.
I dunno, those don't seem insurmountable. To someone who has a hosting account somewhere, some spare time, and one of several ebay-like open source projects currently going, it seems like it would be easy to open up for business...
Hmm, I wonder what a fun domain would be that I could set something like this up on my server...
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
What if something like Bugzilla had a system whereby people could make micropayments towards bounties for fixing bugs and implementing features? The final effect would be the same as someone setting up a single large bounty, but the tasks would be prioritized somewhat more democratically.
:)
Setting this up would not be easy: you'd have to have a financial partner (Amazon comes to mind in that they had a system where money was held in escrow or something until the buyer was satisfied), and the system would have to have decent financial auditing to prevent abuse, but it could be done.
Microbounties would also bring back a measure of consumer power to the world of open source development. Projects/tasks that attract donators will also attract developers, and the disconnect we always talk about between what users want and what developers want to work on would become smaller.
And while I'm talking big, let me point out that this model could be adapted to the provision of other information goods. I can imagine a small band setting up a bounty for their next album, with funds not released until the album is complete (in this case, it would be the suppliers setting up the bounties, not the demanders. I guess you'd call them 'ransoms' not 'bounties').
Sombody ought to set up a bounty for the implementation of this idea
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I wouldn't exactly call 100 grand a bounty...if you live in NYC, its the minimum you'd need to pay rent & support a wife and two kids.
On another tack, I see this as a trend, perhaps an offshoot of angel-investors+freelancing, where rich individuals ( the angel-investors ) pony up cash to get stuff done by the rest of us(freelancers), mostly for themselves, but sometimes society benefits too.
eg. Superman Christopher Reeves is single-handedly funding ( http://www.christopherreeve.org/ ) spinal cord research in this country.
George Soros pours tons of cash into his pet projects in Eastern Europe.
The results can be decidedly mixed - Reeves decides not to pursue research in basic medicine, - he just wants people to work on problems pertaining to his specific spinal cord injury.
I hope mozilla doesn't end up having a button on its toolbar for each investor who coughed up $5K ( where I come from, if you pay 5K for a temple project, you get a stone in the temple with your name on it. )
I would like the browser to perform a glitch-free redraw of the current page when a link is clicked on
and opens in another window or tab, so that the
link text will now display in the proper color indicating that the link has been visited.
Since 1994 I'm waiting for the "Save content of this form locally".
How many time did you spend 30 minutes filling HTML form and your only solution at the end to keep what you've written is to print the page !
Is it that complex ???