MorphBounties is Alive. I propose that we elect a ruling body of three or four people to help support Acill's initiative. The "committee" should consist of at least one of each: a developer, a 'regular' user, and, if possible, a retailer.

I think many things will come up for a general vote, but there will have to be an order in which problems and questions can be elevated.

I suggest the above as a ruling body, and since Acill spearheaded the idea--he should be considered the defacto project director. Right now, we should concentrate simply on getting some kind of administration set up for handling the issues that will be presented, leaving individual projects until later.

Thanks All,
Targhan

Woot! Cant wait. Okay guys before the flood of rewuests starts to come in we NEED to get some help like Targhan talked about. PM me AND Targhan if your interested. We can start to filter and get the rewuests moving just as soon as the pages are cleaned up and go live. Fro what I understand its all just about done. It will work like an online store and the "bounties" will be the items for sale. We vote on them in the form of a poll thread and kill off the ones that dont show a lot of interest from the rest of the users. Then the top requestests become bounties. Next those get "bought"and as the money comes in we show the results of that and a developer can take it on. When complete and a test if done of the app it gets paid off. Sound good? There are a few open items I need to get cleared up.

1. How long do we leave a bountie open if someone doesnt pick it up for action?
2. How long should we give a developer to complete?

Lookig forward to hearing a reply on these.

Please try to keep it simple. Improvements can be done later. For a start a copy and paste of the TeamAROS system will work.

The important question is who is going to keep the source code of the work that has been commited.
I think that not asking for the source code is a big no no as if the binary breaks with a new MorphOS version it should be important to be able to fix it. Open source is problematic for some developers.
The source code should be commited to 1 or more trustable person and be available to the MorphOS team for updates / evolutions.

As for voting I think that the $/Euros should be the way to vote. For the commitee I would include at least a developer from the MorphOS team (both for technical advise and for not duplicating existing efforts). Why do you want a retailer ?

Write some simple, short rules. Review them with the commitee before putting them online and do not discuss forever here with people.

The effort is appreciated.

I think, in your own way, you are agreeing with me. A coder needs to be on whatever panel, board, or committee is created. I think the work should be turned in, as the users are paying for it. Open or closed source could be disussed on a per project basis, and I'm an absolute believer in exceptions. I think the general rule of thumb should be that the program belongs to the community and code ownership should be considered while discussing each individual project.

I am quite sure a good ground rule will also be, a limited number of simultaneous bounties. We're not going to create twenty-some-odd number of entries for bounties. It would be difficult to manage, and the $$ generated wouldn't be worth it. That's why there should be a public vote to help reduce the number of items that a committee has to vote on.

I would just borrow from TeamAROS (assuming permission), but I am going for another system that fits within the existing code-base here. Maybe there will be some back-end stuff I could borrow to intermingle, but we'll have to see.

Anyway, all of this is neither here or there, until we have people in place that will be willing to play the "ruling body". You don't even have to volunteer -- suggest someone. I gave my suggestion of who should be included in an earlier post. (though I think a member of the MOS team would be great, they do have other things to do)

My only real request is not to bust my chops anymore than I'm already busting them

I agree lets get on with it and get some people in place. I am in and will guide the rest of the team as the project leader as mentioned. I recoment Poundsmack come in as the "regular user" He is quite up on the whats new and whats hot in development stuff from what I have seen.

As for sources I feel that the sources should stay with the coder of them. The finished binary is ours, that meaning the MorphOS users. If the developer decides that he or she no longer wants to maintain the app then they go to the next willing to do so. Thats only fair.

I agree with what has been said here so far (except me, too, not understanding why a reseller has to be involved as a requirement), and if needed I could imagine to lend a helping hand, too.

But there is one question I'd like to ask now, as long as the MorphOS bounty system still isn't set in stone yet: couldn't it turn out to be problematic later if this bounty system is an "U.S." one basically?

I am thinking here of possible bounties which could be problematic under U.S. law, be it regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or programs requiring encryption, etc.

I've no deeper knowledge regarding legal matters, especially not U.S. ones, so I'm just asking here if you, Targhan and Acill, couldn't be in danger of getting sued then. Respectively that therefore it simply wouldn't be possible to initiate certain bounties then. Just a thought.

Regarding suggestions for people deciding on the bounties: how about Tokai for example? (Hope he won't kill me. )

I would prefer to make each user that want to contribute, an account on the site that will cost about 10$/month perhaps and give him a voice for the month on his projects choice.

The problem with bounties is that you only choice your project and donate one time for a project. With my system, users will donate one time by month a little amount and can change their favorite project.

Let's go for an example:
First month : 10$ and I put my voice on hum mozilla
Second Month : 10$+10$=20$ and I remove my 10$ for mozilla to put 20$ on MOS 1.5
Third Month : I don't put 10$ so I can't change voices (20$ on MOS 1.5).
Fouth Month : I put 10$ on my account, I change my votes : 20$ on Mozilla and 10$ on MOS 1.5...
Fifth Month : a developper is doing MOS1.5 so I can't change this bounty. I've put 10$ on MOS 1.5 on a total amount of 100$ (10%)
6th Month : the work is done. The reseller sold it for hum 10$ to 50 people = 500$. We give 100$ to the reseller and keep 400$ for the bounty system. My account grow of 40$ (400*10%).

System advantage : we don't need anybody to choose the projects as if they aren't great a few people will put their money on it. After a while, they will put their money on a more promising project.

Last thing is that as users are paying for the program, the code must be communicate to MorphBounty who will keep it for further developments (other bounties like OS4 port bounties, ...). But we can keep an option where the developper don't communicate his code. Then he will for example get only 60-70% of the bounty

You may create a MOS association to give a legal status to this site and It's an insurance for users that all the money will be used only for projects. It's what we called in France Association loi de 1901 who is not supposed to do any benefit.

[ Edited by tetuzo on 2005/5/14 9:40 ]

Quote:

I don't think anything should be eliminated. If someone is willing to pay for a feature (let's say for example a driver for some hardware nobody has) it is up to the developers to take on the bounty or not.
If no developer is interested: too bad. If a developer is interested: good for him and the guy who opened the bounty. I do not think we should eliminate anything.

As for the code given to the community. Who is the community and who will be keeping it in good hands ? If it stays in the hands of the original developer what if he gets hit by a bus ?
This was why I was proposing to hand the code to the morphos team as they should have the oportunity to fix the code with next MorphOS releases.

For the idea of subscribing and pay xx $ per month. I think it may be difficult to put in place with a system like paypal. I also think that the money you put on a bounty should stay there. Moving it around is too complicated.

Also there should not be any bounty for "MorphOS 1.5" or such. The aim of the bounty system should be to develop things around morphOS (drivers, apps), not to develop MorphOS. I would suggest that for MorphOS a "donate button" would be put on the website but I am getting OT.


About copy paste TEAMAROS, I was thinking about the rules and how they are organized, not the web site code.
Do not make overcomplicated code. It has shown several time on Morphzone that it can get broken.

I should be able to open a bounty with an email and someone should be able if needed to be to copy and paste it on the bounty site.

Remember one thing: keep it simple. The more fancy rules etc the most people will complain, the more time it will take to put in place, more chance to be dysfunctional etc.

Make it Amiga/MorphOS like: lean, quick.

Some random opinions:

Keeping the number of bounties down: I agree, but I think it could be
done by taking votes and displaying them, without really disqualifying
bounties that are less popular. I mean, personally I do not want to
put my money in a pool that is so small no one will be interested, but
let's say a small number of donators want to donate fairly large
amounts each, then it could still be enough. So I think it should be
up to each donator, but there should be some voting system so that
donators can get a good idea of what is popular and what isn't.

About the license: I suggest using the BSD license. It guarantees that
the author will receive credits for the work, and allows others to use
and add to the work, but it does not require that sources are
published etc, although it allows doing so. I also suggest that the
sourcecode is handed to the MOS team, which can then at its own
discretion pass it on to developers that are qualified and interested
in continuing development (in case the original author doesn't).

About being US based: There might be some problems with exporting
crypto, and possibly with exporting software that records broadcast TV
or p2p software in the future. But for most types of software there
should be no problems, so I think that this is a problem that can be
considered if and when it actually occurs.

About including a dealer: It might be a good idea, because dealers
have a better idea of what the "average user" is willing to pay for,
than most people are.

About formulation of criteria: I think that it's necessary to post the
exact criteria for each bounty for open discussion, before any voting
or donation occurs. This is because it's easy to make mistakes here.
It's important that it's absolutely clear what is asked for and that
this is also what the people making the donations actually want.

Quote:

But how? The reason why I wonder if it wouldn't be better to find a solution right from the start before setting everything up is a current problem with the AROS bounty system.

Due to the (fully understood) concern with regard to the DMCA, I'm currently evaluating to maybe set up another bounty program in addition to the Team AROS one, to be able to initiate a MOS/OS4 wrapper bounty for AROS.

Another advantage of such additional european bounties could be - in case of a close cooperation with Team AROS on the other, unproblematic bounties - the option for european users to donate to an existing Team AROS bounty by sending their money to a corresponding european account. Once completed, the developer would get the money from both corresponding bounties, saving the currency conversion at least for that half of the two bounties which is in his native currency (if any).

Thus I wonder if we could and should not instead set up a joint european bounty program for both, MorphOS and AROS, to avoid any trouble with US law.

@merko

In my opinion project sources should be available to anyone. Is it under BSD license, GPL/LGPL, PD... doesnt really matter. But the source must be available because projects need maintenance in the future too.

Only if the project uses closed MorphOS APIs there could be an exception but general requirement should be that final sources are hosted at sourceforge or similar place.

Senex:
I don't think it's possible to come up with a generic solution, before
we even know what the problem would be!

I mean, if the proposed generic solution is "Let's keep the fund in
Europe" and "Europe" turns out to be France, and the problem turns out
to be that we want to request something that uses strong cryptography,
this doesn't work because
a) France has even stricter regulations than the US (unless things
changed in recent years)
b) It doesn't matter where the fund is anyway, the problem occurs if
the *programmer* creates the program in France or the US.

As I don't know of any other problems with current laws, I'm not
really sure what you intend to solve by placing the fund in Europe.
Certainly there is nothing that says European laws are somehow
inherently better or less troublesome than, say, US laws.

Therefore I don't see any reason to make this any more complex than is
absolutely necessary, and to handle problems as they occur. Unless of
course you can give more specific info about what problems you
foresee, and why keeping the fund in Europe would solve it.


itix: I think BSD would be better than GPL or LGPL, if possible, but I
don't think it's wise to make a general decision. Some requests will
no doubt be for software that can make use of existing GPL sourcecode,
and then the result must also be GPL, of course. I guess in most
cases, it's no problem to have open source code (which is no problem
with BSD, of course), but depending on the request, it might make
sense to not make this mandatory. But there should be at least some
kind of safeguard to make sure that the sources are not lost, I think,
even if it does not mean open source code for every project.

Senex brings up a good point, and why I wanted an EU dealer involved. The DMCA.

If a particular piece of software that the community wants is questionable, we can hand it off to the dealer to handle. Nothing too difficult there.

Also, if TeamAROS wants to add a "MorphOS wrapper" to bounties, that's fine too. I'll just make some nice links and whatnot for MZ. We just need to get the ball rolling.

@Merko

The concern regarding the current AROS bounty system is that Team AROS as those who would be keeping the money for a DMCA-problematic bounty would be responsible for this in a certain way and thus are - understandably - afraid they might get sued. Since this all is just a hobby, I can fully understand that they have a concern of not wanting to get involved into any legal risks, no matter how likely they would be.

Regarding a suitable european country I had been thinking of another one from the Euro-Zone besides France, since I've heard already of the comparable problems there. Even more ideal with regard to the uncertainty of future software patents in the EU would have been someone from Switzerland, of course, but I don't know how PayPal is handled there, i.e. if these accounts there can optionally also be used as Euro accounts instead of CHF.

@Targhan

I.e. you'd be willing to also tolerate one AROS bounty within the MorphOS ones? If I've got you right, then this of course would be the easiest solution for my problem to initiate that bounty.

[ Edited by Senex on 2005/5/14 19:30 ]

So are there any activities at the moment in setting up a MorphOS bounty program or did this idea again fade out...?

If wanted, I'll happily lend a helping hand, as far as I can be of use for this.

Senex, it is still alive and well. Just debugging like crazy

Great!

Well, below that's the mentioned "foreign" bounty (for AROS) for which I'd like to seek harborage in the MorphOS bounty program.

If it would become accepted by you, I'd initiate it with a donation right after you'll have finished debugging and told me to whom to transfer the money.

Code:

From what we've been told by various developers, this project
should be quite viable. E.g. for OS4 API emulation just one
additional field in ExecBase would be required and regarding
MorphOS it should be even possible to use some MorphOS native
libraries like native AROS ones anyway.

Btw: During the next days I'll also initiate a regular AROS
bounty over at Team AROS for a GTK wrapper which would also
benefit the other Amiga operating systems. Ants is currently
helping me a lot by setting up a list of initially to be
supported GTK functions. Once this objective is
completed, I'll finish the bounty description.
[/code]
[edited by targhan: fixing the linefeeds and code-tag for readability (hey senex! if you use code, remember to keep your bullets short unless posting actual program code! )]


[ Edited by Targhan on 2005/5/19 14:54 ]

Bah, someone hit me with a salmon. I don't need no funky cart to set this up. I'll set up a quick donation page this week, and we'll see what it looks like.

Not only is MorphBounties alive, but we're kicking it off with the MorphOS POP3 Initiative!

The secret plan is revealed, we want to provide all MorphOS users with their own POP3 account. Not MorphZone, but their own MorphOS-User.com email account! This initiative is to be supported by the users, but on a donational basis (just like the bounties).

The money raised will help pay for webspace, the url, etc. Those involved with this project are myself, Jobbo, GGS-Data, and of coarse the MorphOS-Team. Remaining funds will be added to the MorphZone General Fund, of which some can be applied to different projects from the upcoming Bounties Program.

Thanks for editing my comment, Targhan - I had not noticed any problems, here (Firefox) it looked okay...

Wow the email account sounds great! I cant wait to have Acill@ when its ready.

@Senex
It happens every now and again, I hope nothing was changed in your post other than the horizontal scrolling

@Acill
Soon.... You will be a MorphOS-User!!!

Don't forget to place a bunch of the blame on JoBBo! He wouldn't let me forget that it needed to get started!

Great idea ... I'm looking forward to a new email

Thanks Robin!

All of the details are being worked out, so I have the extra URL's parked here for the time being. Once we get everything worked out, we'll be going over the details with the MorphOS Team.

In about two hours I will be in chat on #MorphOS looking for help with the bounties. We will probably make a new channel if any of our current mods feel a need to do so. I would like to put up a page tonight, because it's time to pull the bottle off of this baby and let it walk on it's own!