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."

Comments

Cheaper, definitely.

[shmlco]

...serve as a model for other companies taking this path of cheaper development and better code.

Cheaper, definitely. Whether or not a team scrambling to meet a bounty deadline results in better code is open to debate.

Re:Cheaper, definitely.

[youknowmewell]

Yea, because we all know that inhouse developers scrambling to meet an inhouse deadlines build better code. I mean, you do 1 year of work in 3 months, not bad. Of course you get a bonus double that of last years, from $25 to $50.

Now that's progress.

All Indian ?

[EphemeralPhart]

Judging from their surnames... maybe US companies oursource to India not only because they are, oh so much cheaper, but 'cause US coders, uhm, suck...

Well, do they ?

50k US$ seems to be a good fraction of a year's salary, ain't it ?

Re:All Indian ?

[TrappedByMyself]

I think it's still a regional thing. You see alot of Indians who are masters at database work, especially Oracle. Many Asians are good at numerical analysis. Eastern Europeans are good at automata theory. Western Europeans are good at geometry. Americans seem more well rounded, not as specialized, or different people in different specializations.

I know these are huge generalizations and that stuff is changing, but I think it has alot to do with where the pioneers end up. Probably some of the early Indians to do computer science work did database work. As they go back home, that's what they know the best, and that's what spreads, and that's what kinds of jobs form.

Most of the pioneering in computer science was in the US and UK, so that's where it spawns from. As the knowledge spreads, skills will too.

As much as the "I hate America" idea is popular around here, Americans and Brits are likely better programmers than the average person from somewhere else, only becuase they have the best teachers. However the rest of the world is quickly catching up.

Migrating applications..

[wfberg]

Sounds great.. Until you think about migrating applications; all those nifty stored procedures, never mind c or java tie-ins. The winners still have a long list of unmapped functions that aren't converted.

So, to what extent are these apps actually ready for the lime light, and to what extent did CA just choose a date to give away some money to grab some "free" publicity?

Also, it reflects quite poorly on all the databases (Oracle, DB2, and Ingres itself) that you *need* tools like this. If they could only have figured out how to stick to standards (or *jointly* come up with new, open standards) none of this would be necessary..

Nice payday!

[PenguinBoyDave]

I'm glad to see that CA followed-through on this. While I am not sure how many people will actually migrate to Ingres, the fact that they put up the money, had non-CA judges review the entries, and gave them the recognition they deserve, to me anyway, shows that CA is making a good faith effort to show the Open Source Community that they indeed want to change the direction that CA has gone in the past. I see this as a good thing.

Re:Universities?

[stratjakt]

You know what would also be cool? If they took your tuition money to Atlantic City and plunked it all down on red 36.

You don't know what you're going to get when you issue a bounty like this. It's a gamble. A good contract has obligations spelled out for both parties.

For every bungled deployment, there are dozens even hundreds that go smoothly. People just don't hop online and bitch when things work right.

Re:Wow...Has Tech Labor Truly Become so Cheap?

[Jherek Carnelian]

(d) "Hire" one person, enjoy working code.

Sounds like an urban legend.

Project management is already such a complex process to get right when the developers are all under one roof and able to talk to each other that it would be nearly impossible to get anything remotely like a working system from the process you described. The end result would be more like a mish-mash of routines, all written with subtle differences "standard" input/out data structures and different assumptions about requirements and behaviour.

I can only imagine how much invaluable code this company got from making this $1m offer. I can guarantee you it was probably worth a helluva lot more than $1m. But, of course, none of the other entrants received a penny. This is just a glorified example of what I described above.

I doubt that much of the code they received was particularly valuable on its own. Sure it is possible that the code might be incorporated into another project, but it is more than likely that re-inventing the wheel would be easier then re-using code that was a) not written with a plan of re-use and b) the original developers are not even around to ask about how the code works and what kind of ways it expects to interact with other code or systems. Its pretty much an all or nothing proposition - either submissions get used for what they were designed for or they are going to rot away at the bottom of some DVD-R spindle.

Re:What about the editors?

[sketerpot]

Sometimes they do. You just don't notice the non-typos.