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CA's $1mn Open-Source Bounty Results
Anil Kandangath writes "Last year, Computer Associates open sourced their Ingres DMBS and they also announced a $1mn bounty for open source conversion toolkits from other databases to Ingres. Well, the toolkits are up on SourceForge and the bounty has been won by three teams, two from India and one from New York. More details and links to the projects on the CA news page. This is one of the greatest bounties for open source software and will hopefully serve as a model for other companies taking this path of cheaper development and better code."
No wonder the winners are from India.
mn for million is British, commonly seen in the Financial Times (which also uses bn for billion). I imagine that it's a nod to the old British way of naming large numbers, which also included milliards (10^9) and billiards (10^15; a billion was 10^12).
In any case, it's struck a nerve even deeper than the accounting term "$1MM" for "one million," which apparently makes SI-loving geeks' heads explode.
For more information, click here.
I submitted the story, so I should take responsibility for the typos there.
1. $1mn... stupid me, that should have been $1M.
2. DMBS... aah..dyslexia? well, that should have been DBMS.
Also, the reason why I said that this model will produce cheaper (obviously) and better code is that since it will be open-sourced, even if the original code might have taken shortcuts to make the deadline, it is still out there for anyone to tinker with and fix (if needed). And it almost guarantees continuous development.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
You ever hear of a product called WebCT? It is a commonly used web application used for distributing course notes, grades, emails, and other related material. An overrated CMS.
Well, here is a brief history of WebCT. (some facts may be slightly off, this is recounted from memory)
It was originally developed at UBC (in Vancouver BC, Canada) by a prof and some students. As it was created at a public institution, using research money from the Government, the prof felt that it should be released for Free (as in beer). His thoughts were that the people had already paid for it through their taxes.
Well, the software took off, and gained a lot of popularity. Then the University stepped in and said 'only people from BC should get this for free, it was mostly funded by provincial money', and so the software remained free for BC organizations, but was sold to people outside of BC.
Then the software was outsourced/sold to a private company who promised to keep the same pricing model (free to BC people, not free to others). They kept up with it a bit, and maintained it a little.
Then that software company sold WebCT again, to a different company. The second company did not promise to keep it free and started charging everyone. The second company also stopped updating the software, and did nothing to improve it. Then they increased the cost. Now they charge people way way too much for software that sucks (read: doesn't work on anything other than IE in Windows).
And every CS student who has ever used the product claims 'I coulda made this crap for free...' and they probably could have, because it was University CS students that did make that crap, and for free.
Every IT department however, seems to think that they can only buy software.
OK, so if it had been released as free (as in speech) software, things would have been a little better, but still.