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'Open Funding' For Driver Development
Doc Ruby writes "The TreoCentral community has announced a bounty for the first BlueTooth SDIO driver delivered for the Treo 600 (PalmOS 5). The thread shows the development of both the requirements of the quarry, and the contributions to the bounty. If this process works, is 'open funding' of development the next wave of the emerging online community? How will the 'traditional' vision/scope> requirements> features> >recode> retest> demo> cycle expand to include the user community in the financing?" Update: 06/16 19:43 GMT by T : Updated the bounty link to a server better able to handle it.
This is great! I certianly wish more companies would adopt this kind of a driver development model.
I know the GNOME Foundation has also done a similar bounty system, recently.
The bounty is only valid until September 6, 2004 - so let's get coding!
Of course... Lager! The only thing that can kill a chicken quataloo.
Cliesource.com had created a contest for the development of a compact flash driver for the Sony Clie line. Some developers said that Cliesource did not give developers enough time to develop a working driver but the contest did help getting a working driver into circulation.
http://nyamenation.org/
Isn't the quality of linux software rooted in that there are no timetables to get things working? It seems like quality comes from slow-moving community discussion and eventually a product. On the other hand, I would like to be able to throw money at some projects to get software faster.
Error: Id10t detected
There is a new website available and the estimated savings to the public sector is pegged at $56B / Year.
Help fight continental drift.
While the goal is noble, the result wont be what you think. These free-for-alls to get things like drivers written for money, honestly, doesn't have much real ground for success. Think about it. 10 developers start throwing a whole mess of their own free time into trying to get driver x done for y money. 9 of them will NOT get the money. Depending on the work that they put into it, chances are they will come to the conclusion that it isn't worth the effort, because not only is there no guarentee of a payoff, you will never KNOW the odds you are up against to be the one to get paid in the first place. This certainly keeps people from taking on this model as a means of making a living, and most people doing it in spare time will find it a waste.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There's a more readable version of the story on treocentral's stories page
I remember when the Blender 3D software was bought from the company NaN for $100,000, there was some speculation that it might not be a good thing if this kind of trend continues. Granted, this is a bit different. But maybe instead of just developing drivers, companies would wait around for someone to generate a big pot of money to make it worth it for them.
Remember SourceXchange? Remember CoSource?
.COM madness, and have since gone the way of the do-do. I was involved with one SourceXchange project and they had the most robust/complete bidding process of the two.
They occurred during the height of the
I remember that CoSource had trouble attracting people to bid on projects. There were a number of interesting ideas, but little money.
With SourceXchange the typical project was a semi-large idea with semi-real funding from somewhere (in my case it was Ricoh's research lab). I participated as an expert/reviewer and the coder-guy received only $10,000 or so for a whole lotta work. Not a good hourly rate if you ask me.
- David
The problem with this is that it doesn't provide a stable paycheck. If you look at many open source projects, they refuse to take donations simply because the money wouldn't help them (other than hosting). If you are a volenteer free software developer, getting a few bucks might be nice, but it won't enable you to spend anymore time writting free software than you already do. You have commitments to your job, schooling and family, and in most cases you don't have the flexibility to work less job hours (and get paid less) as you get more donations. If developers will not accept donations for what they are already doing, why would they go after a bounty? So no, I don't see it being the future of free software. The future will continue to be a mix of businesses that use and need to improve open source software, and volenteers.
That sounds like a great way to get several parallel development streams with zero colaboration going. This will either end with one working driver and several lesser quality broken drivers, or a whole bunch of half finished pieces of code. Either way you'll have end-user confusion.
There must be a way to get that money used in a way that creates an environment where programmers help each other.
...particularly if the community can pony up the cash to pay whatever licensing fees (no, not the teabagging one) that kept them from getting access to different hardware specs until now.
This, to me, is what OSS has been missing- some form of incentive beyond the basic "I programmed it because it is neaty-keano". I may be a marxist, but I realize a basis of capitalism is rewarding people for hard work- or at least it's supposed to be.
A down side of this specific one is the time limit- what if it can't be done by the deadline, what happens to money contributed? My suggestion- take away the time limit, allow anybody to contribute money, and when the pile of money is big enough, somebody will release something and get the money. It's slightly better odds than the lottery, so sure enough somebody will come up with a driver (or any other piece of software) for the heck of it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So has DiscreetFX, for an Amiga port of Mozilla. $8000 donated as a bounty for a FSCKING AMIGA APP?!?!?
This is essentially what they do at TopCoder all the time. It's a neat way to show off your skills and make a little money on the coding side and a discounted development cost for the company. Pretty slick idea.
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
For those not in the know Rent-A-Coder is a site where people/companies put up software projects, and (get this!) coders bid on the project. Once a coder is selected, the client puts the agreed upon fee in escrow. All communication (in theory) is conducted through the website, so that in cases of despute, there is a clear papertrail. At the end of the project, the escrow company releases the money to the coder. Badabing, badaboom.
It sounds like a good place for young coders to get experience. In practice however, the overwhelming majority of jobs get placed to more experienced coders (read: RAC users with higher ratings). So even in the code-whoring business, the classic experience catch-22 remains in effect.
Bidding for software works. This would allow programmers to do the shopping for the bidders based on the programmers skill set. The system could be written into the license so that once the job is performed the code is open for general use.
Jeoin
But NO... these people will use a bounty, leading to perhaps many people competing for a puny amount of cash -duplication, anyone? And who wants to bet we'll end up with horribly unmaintainable spaghetti code everyone would rather re-write from scratch than reverse engineer because it lacks comments? Haven't we all kvetched about the horrible code that was shipped out to meet deadline with no regards to readability? A bounty would only make this worse.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
You're not going to get a real company investing, speculatively, on such a thing. You'll get hackers for better or worse.
...I agree with the poster who mentioned the competition aspect of this. Many, many people will code for money, but the really good ones code to not only put food on the table, but know that they can be or are the best at what they do.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
I suppose it's somewhat inappropriate to post "classified ads" or the like in a Slashdot thread, although maybe by doing so I'll help get /. to innovate in that field ;)
I've started working on a model that I'm quite confident will both be profitable and allow for easy and effective user- and project owner-funded development of open source software. I have the skills and most of the capital (it takes very little w.r.t. basic operations), but in order to speed up the to-market time and develop a better service, I'm looking for one or a few people with LAMP experience who have a strong desire to work on this sort of project.
If you're interested, e-mail me at daniel@istop.com, I'll give further details and we can discuss your participation.
Fuck it
The Horde Project does the same thing. They have bounties for writing specific features for their framework.
So long as the project is very narrow and specialized, I don't think it's a bad thing. This particular example, though, is very broad and we as the end users may not end up getting good code from the "losers" incorporated into that driver.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Issuance of a bounty > maniacal development all over the place to get solution first > solution delivered by party X.
Could it be any simpler? I actually prefer bounties to regular contracts. If you're the first one to get us X, you get $Y. What's the harm in that? It's almost like a reverse Dutch auction.
stuff |
I've been thinking about this for quite a while. Mainly because I was annoyed there wasn't a port of Freenet written in C# and I don't have the time to do it... I'd be more than willing to drop $5000 on a bounty to do it... If a few more people did the same you could make it worth it for someone to write the code.
Would be nice if the J2ME bluetooth specification would be implemented on PalmOS. That way we could write real cross platform applications for handhelds.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
I, for one, welcome our new capitalistic open-source funding overlords.
1. Release new hardware with crap drivers
2. Have community pay you to write decent drivers
3. Double++ PROFIT!!
makes sense to me. I'd pay 1000 bucks for someone to make my mother's VCR stop blinking "12:00" - forever!
The last visible post on the forum thread is...
"This was just posted to slashdot... "
Now of course, the server's down. Famous last words.
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death.
A developer rushing out code to win money isn't likely to test it thoroughly, and networking drivers are something that need to be reliable. Whilst it's a great way to get development started, this offer doesn't stipulate that the driver be Open Source, which IMO is vital for such an offer to be worthwhile. When the bugs almost gauranteed by rushed development become apparent, the winner isn't obliged to fix them... We don't need more rushed proprietary drivers, I'd like to see some more Open Source programming contests...
I think the [MS Word] paperclip is a great idea. - Miguel de Icaza
And I think the price of admission (just the spec) is more than the bounty is likely to be.
The Sharp Zaurus is stuck at 2.4.18 linux kernel because the SD module can't be updated by the community.
yes
It's not bloody likely. On two counts. The first being that the Treo 600 may not be compatable. I chased down individuals at the last PalmSource and tried to get to the bottom of why the 802.11 SD drivers where not being released. The main answer was that on some devices, the card would draw too much power (802.11 suck current, fancy that!) and could even fry the unit. ouch!
The second is more political than anything else. Starting with OS 5.0 (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) the drivers aren't as easy to hack, the least of which is that they have to be in native ARM (as opposed to the PACE layer) Hell Armlets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H PNO's where like pulling teeth to write till resently). Things get worse in OS 6.0/Cobalt where the vendor can choose (and PalmOne will, if they ever release a Cobalt device) to require the drivers be signed in order to run. Great for preventing viruses, sucks for hackers such as myself that might want to hack on a device that I may not care to sell/commit to developer fees that may apply.
And all this before reverse engineering the card itself. Better off to wait and hope that PalmOne releases a Treo with Bluetooth built in (nudge, wink)
That aside, no hurt in trying!
Hey! How's your mom's basement working out for ya?
For that much cash you could either buy a really sexy VCR that sets the time by itself .. .or a sledgehammer lightly coated in gold!
Anyway, it sounds like Peter Easton at Whizoo has already suggested a starting point - rip the BT drivers from the Tungsten|T and rewrite the Palm OS 4 SD-BT transport layer PRC for ARM/OS 5. If all this driver does is receive calls from the main BT driver and dispatch calls/receive callbacks to/from the documented SD API, then perhaps it's not too difficult to rip it apart and figure out what it's doing and rewrite it? That's a big if of course. I've never really reverse engineered a Palm app myself, though I've done a decent amount of Palm OS programming (games and apps).
But apparently IDA Pro supports Palm OS and M68k, so that might provide a reasonable route to disassembling the OS 4 transport layer PRC. Anyway, that's about as far as I've gotten with this - if anybody is interested, let me know, I do have some free time right now and I wouldn't mind putting it into solving this rather annoying problem (no, I don't really give a hoot about the bounty, but I'm going to go contribute 50 bucks to it anyway - I'd pay 100 bucks right now just for a copy of a BT driver that let me use my damn Treo 600).
int bluetooth_init(device_t dev) {
/* Note: To be completed */
}
I think that we should essentially use the current system the way it is. Hardware Businesses have dedicated programmers that churn out drivers (though the way it is now, they're for Windows only, and proprietary, though I'm not sure why), but they could release the source code to their drivers, and for Linux also now that there's a good size and growing customer base. They don't lose any cash by releasing the code, because you still have to buy the hardware.
Is that model flawed at all?
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Go here... If you are interested in pledging money for the cause.
Why should you pay taxes for development of public (free/open source) software? Fund your project through the Public Software Fund, and everyone who contributes gets to deduce their contribution from the US taxes.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
What stops these stalled project teams from contacting one another, collaborating to complete the project? There's a proposed acceptance test, which will determine the single endorsed driver. If you don't like that one, use any of the "losers". Either way, it's better than nothing, which is the actual alternative.
--
make install -not war
$ 56B! That's like half the government budget of my country. Good job!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Typically, companies have a 'bid' put out, allowing the end companies to try and come up with a cheapest figure and a timeframe. It seems this is a permutation of this, where the contracting company says 'first to come up with an acceptable solution wins!' ... this might mean that speed is more important than quality development, which i do not support.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Sure, if you have a job, you might not be able to spend extra time on writing OSS, but what if you don't? There are plenty of students who code, and could use some extra money. And with coding jobs being outsourced...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
can the top post be redundant, that's what I want to know.
I ran into a similar case where a free (called shareware, but like the shareware of old, fully functional and not a demo) driver for Palm keyboards. It's much faster than vendor drivers. It can be done
I've checked out and registered for rent-a-coder.. From what I have seen, most projects fall into two catagories.
1. EE or CS students that have no business being in their major looking for somebody to do their homework.
2. Small businesses looking to spend $100 on a job that would normally cost in the tens of thousands.
Personally for my consulting (I design embedded systems with PICs), I won't design something for less than around $4000(and at that price, even I'm cheap labor). I deliver high quality, working designs, and I'm not willing to put in 40+ hours for 50 bucks..
It looks as though most of the people getting work on rent-a-coder are in eastern europe. Which is fine, though I wonder how often the "employer" gets his money's worth (not that American or whoever coders are necessarily higher quality.. damn, i hate feeling like i have to qualify everything i say).
So, I guess I am curious who out there has positive experiences and how experienced renta-a-coders evaluate their time spent versus money made.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
How many linux prog'ers does it take to EARN $100? Imagine the line! Finally, a chance to make some REAL money programming for Linux!
It's FUNNY!
*cough* sourceexchange *cough*
oh yeah, it died a miserable death.
It seems to me that a better idea for this type of thing would be setting down criteria for a finished product, starting or selecting an OSS project for the product, and once the project meets the criteria, all coders who contributed to the project get a percentage of the prize based on the percentage of code or content they contributed.
Say I wanted a database interface for a recipe program. I want it to be able to import data from some of the more popular cookbook programs out there, Betty Crocker or whatever, and I want to connect to something that amounts to FreeDB for recipes to get recipes from the web. I want it to be able to convert recipes and I want it to be able to give me nutrition info for the meals. I want to be able to make a menu and print me a shopping list, I want to be able to put in prices and know how much I will be spending(approximately). I want an easy interface for entering new recipes, and if I designate it as an original recipe or one with no copyright restrictions, I want the option of uploading it to the database mentioned above.
So it seems to me I would be best off offering small rewards at the milestones, say 500 to 1000, depending mostly on budget, and a large one when it meets all the criteria. Now, and individual might choke on this, but maybe a hotel chain or restaurant chain would be willing to sponsor it, because it's a one-time expense that they can then use forever, or a long time, whereas before they were coughing up 2K everytime they wanted a new license, which adds up after 20 new restaurants. Then those same coders could turn around and put together a package of OSS software that caters to the needs of mom and pop restaurants, OO.o and the above idea, GNUcash, and whatever else they might need, train them how to use it and help them set it up for maybe 5k or so, wash rinse repeat, you have yourself a viable OSS business model.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809