Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Miro Asks Users To "Adopt" Lines of Source

Posted by kdawson on from the pray-you-don't-get-refactored dept.

soDean writes "The FOSS video player / downloader Miro is asking its users to support development by 'adopting' a line of source code for $4 a month. Each adopted line of code comes personalized with a little avatar character that will grow older over the year. PCF, which makes Miro, says they think the project is the first of its kind and they believe it's a chance to 'to have a truly bottom up funding base.'"

6 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Smart FOSS Marketing! by alain94040 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Finally an Open Source project with some real marketing geniuses on board! That alone deserves celebration.

    I don't think this will quite work, but it's a step in the right direction. Will users get to pick which line they adopt? You could even imagine an auction system. Some lines might become very trendy: "I own the main function declaration of the program, but that cost me $500".

    I'll ask the people on my entrepreneur network if they like the model!

    1. Re:Smart FOSS Marketing! by Propaganda13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Change $4 to $1 and they might get more bites.

  2. The Sims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now the developers at Miro will spend all their time making sure their emoticons age properly instead of actually coding!

  3. Whole Function or Class by some_guy_88 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they let you adopt a whole function or even a whole class, this could be a cool way of not only making money but also minimising bugs.

    People who adopt are likely going to read the code they get so this is a good way to get lots of eyes on the source.

    Just a thought..

  4. Re:$4 a line?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hah, I know! I write thousands of lines of code a day!

    My coworkers keep telling me I could do the same thing in just 10 lines of code of decent, maintainable code by refactoring and using abstraction, but I'm pretty sure they're all just slackers.

  5. Re:$4 a line?? by CecilPL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When the project you're working on has a total line count in the millions, most of which was written 10 years ago, you better be damn sure those 10 lines of code you're adding don't break some seemingly unrelated area in a seemingly unrelated way that takes someone else a week to debug.

    Don't forget the 1/2 of your time you spend researching, writing documentation, and going to meetings.

    Working as a professional software developer is a lot different than hacking around on your 10k line hobby project.