Are you in for some coding this summer? yellowTAB has today started their first development contest. The price for the first one to develop a fully working ICH AC97 driver, is 300 euros and a free copy of Zeta from yellowTAB. yellowTAB is a small company with few resources, so this contest is a promising call out to the dev community.
yellowTAB has Kicked Out their First Development Contest
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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So this company doesn’t even have enough ressources for developing a driver? I mean 300EUR is a bad joke for someone who is really investing hours of work into a working driver.
Always remeber, this company tries to make money with their product, it is not open source or for free. So why should a hobby developer spend some weeks of work on a driver for a ridiculous low amount of money, while yellowtab then can claim again “and Zeta even has ICH AC97 support” almost for free.
I really would only develop applications for Zeta in my spare time with a license that forbids to bundle the app with Zeta.
Did you visit the linked website? It says:
“If you feel that you are up to the coding challange[sic], you can find the base sources for the driver in the Haiku (OpenBeOS) CVS repository at SourceForge.net. The winning entry will be donated to the Haiku project under the MIT license allowing all BeOS derivative projects to benefit from the effort, so that the whole OSBOS community will gain from the competition.”
Yes, yellowTab benefits, but I’d hardly consider it deceptive or insulting. There’s a base driver from which the contestants can get started and the driver itself will be released under the MIT license, which is an open source. MIT means that you’re explicitly allowing people to sell your code. If you have a problem with that, you can release it under the GPL or any other license you’d like.
I’m not sure why you seem to resent Zeta so much. It looks like they’re trying to be good community members. As far as I know, no other group has offered a code bounty.
This is great! Me as a BeOS user (yeah, as my main OS) can appreciate this. Zeta is doing great things for the BeOS community, and I’m really thinking of spending the $$ to buy it.
I’d like to see mroe of these initiatives.
@Kaya;
If you don’t like it, then don’t participate.
As far as I know, no other group has offered a code bounty.
There were people offering bounties (for small applications) on TBJ forums.
Helmar offered bounty for porting Sonork client (and later someone on ICO forums added to it).
So bounties were offered before. And they were much better IMHO (more money/work value).
>I mean 300EUR is a bad joke for someone who is really >investing hours of work into a working driver.
Others are doing it for free. So why not take that 300EUR and release it under an open source license? (e.g. BSD/MIT/Mozilla or the OpenTRacker licenses which is what YellowTAB would prefer). It won’t be any different than writing a driver for an open source cause if the code is open, plus you get the 300EUR. The driver would easily be compatible with the HAIKU OS and BeOS 5 too, so it is all good for the users & the platform(s).
There was really not a reason to reply in this fashion. WE ALL know that developing a driver while working for a business or as a contractor is several thousands dollars worth. But this is not the case here.
The title should be “yellowTAB has Kicked Off their First Development Contest”.
“Kicked off” means to start something. “Kicked out” in your context would mean they’ve decided not to have the contest.
The word “price” should be “prize” etc.
=)
Alan
There were people offering bounties (for small applications) on TBJ forums.
Helmar offered bounty for porting Sonork client (and later someone on ICO forums added to it).
So bounties were offered before. And they were much better IMHO (more money/work value).
Actually there has been quite a lot of code bountys and quite a few more will probably come with time. For instance 1000 Aussie Dollars is donated to whomever manages to get Haiku do the first graphical boot. However I believe the prime coders (Axel etc) has said that those money will go straight to the foundation of Haiku OS.
The Haiku community differs quite a lot from other communitys and in difference of e.g. the Linux community, money is not the biggie. People are VERY generous.
I do think that A LOT will happen in the Haiku community the upcoming year (with yT as well for that matter). Time will tell, no need to rant =)
The Haiku community differs quite a lot from other communitys and in difference of e.g. the Linux community, money is not the biggie. People are VERY generous.
And the Haiku/BeOS community is interesting because the people are so different. Some are there since forever ad are old amigans, others just got in in 2000. Some believe strongly in free software, others just care if it “just works”. Some use BeOS as their primary OS, there are BSDers, Linux geeks, some have Macs, and there are also people who have never run a non-Microsoft OS except BeOS. And they are all very friendly and get along well.
Usually you are correct, but it can also be used in that manner in contemporary slang. Such as in the song ” Kick out the jams”.
Some one more bounty – http://www.beosmax.org/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=…
I thought they had just fired a developer.
Considering many, many devs never make anything for their commendable efforts. I bet Leo Schwab could knock this out in a day or so, personally.
I long for the day when Zeta comes out of beta. Although I really feel Yellowtab has the right idea in writing so many apps for it. If they cover all of the bases well, and use OSS stuff to fill in the gaps, Zeta will be a complete solution in a way that BeOS 5 Pro never was.
So, while the waiting is the hardest part, I think it will be worth the wait. A stitch in time saves nine, to throw out further cliches.
Kick off the Jams, Brothers and Sisters! I also read SCO/Microsoft are suing BeUnited, and the details are in the URL above this post. Doh. The URL link seems to be a mailto. Click here instead:
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2004/twentysixth.htm
The clickable links don’t seem to work, either. I’m going to get modded down for this, aren’t I?
No, Eugenia, Noooooo*^%$&*!%#NO CARRIER