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Miro Asks Users To "Adopt" Lines of Source
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.'"
when your line of code dies?
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!
"For only $4 a month, you can give this line of source clean electricity and information to process and grow."
the end of one line if statements and ternary operators as we know them.
Do I get a discount if I adopt a comment?
I can see the fnords!
Now the developers at Miro will spend all their time making sure their emoticons age properly instead of actually coding!
Hopefully companies are paying their developers more than $40 per day :).
Depends on whether those jobs have been sent overseas.
On a related note, I'm genuinely curious: what's the average salary for developers look like in the countries to which companies often outsource work, like India and China?
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
// This is line #273523
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
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..
// This line of code brought to you by Error Establishing Database Connection
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
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.
Why support a child when I can support i++?
We have a group in Shanghai - we've got pretty well qualified guys in our office, we pay them 14,000 RMB per month (~US$2,000). They get about 8,000-10,000 of that with the rest going to the government in payroll taxes.
More average developers come in at between 6,500 to 8,500 RMB per month.
#!/bin/csh cat $0
I get this on the page:
Hello there! It looks like you are visiting from Europe
Did you know that there are more Miro users in Europe than in the United States, but more than 99% of our financial support comes from American donations and philanthropies?
Europe loves open-source, right? Help us make something great!
Sounds like they're trying to cash in on our hatred for the U.S. :)
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.