Posts: 1370 from 2003/2/15
From: Central Europe
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pikewerfer wrote:
I am going to Nepal a few times next year, so I could just bring them the hardware.
Fair enough.
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Concerning price - I should have been more precise: so this is what I paid them because that is what I believe Devs should earn.
The Europe-based developers who are already familiar with the platform and have worked on MorphOS (or AROS, etc) bounty projects in the past have most likely earned lower hourly rates than the minimum rates you personally think developers should earn...
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But I do get your third and final argument, although my experience so far has been that these guys learn really fast. But having no knowledge is definitely a disadvantage.
Two points:
One, comprehensive developer documentation is generally a prerequisite for quick learning. MorphOS and similar operating systems are just not comparable to, say, Linux or Windows in this regard.
Two, apart from the documentation issue, there are certain projects that are simply much more likely to require assistance from the OS/SDK developers.
If a bounty project depends on OS developers to add necessary functionality, it can be unfair to even assign developers as there is no guarantee that they will ever be able to finish their work.
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It was just an idea. Because it seems we are pretty low on options otherwise. In order for MorphOS to survive, we need to make sure it stays up-to-date in essential matters - like apache, samba, email, browser, office package, etc. If we cannot make sure to keep up, this will continue to deteriorate.
I agree about the browser, office, and samba.
Apache is a total niche application for everyday desktop computing though.
As jPV pointed out, MorphOS is not a server OS. Even if it had all the technical features you would expect, it would require an absolute and unwavering commitment (and most likely substantial funding) to consistently push out timely security updates that just does not exist. Given how many free options there are and that even Microsoft struggle to survive in this competitive landscape, this just seems unimaginable.
Of course, I can certainly see a need for basic web server functionality within private home networks but we do have that covered as it is. So, the question is: What are you missing exactly that is relevant for home network use cases?
Scripting languages such as PHP or Python have basic web servers built-in these days. I could see a need for those perhaps.
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I would be willing to take the risk, and pledge 100-200 bucks for the first project and also PO it. If we could train a bunch of these guys to then earn all the bounties we throw at them, we could make this system more attractive to people.
Ah well... other ideas?
I suspect that Apache is just the wrong project. If you can think of software that has as few dependencies as possible, is perhaps smaller (i.e. not 16 MB of source code), and has a wider appeal to attract other donors, those might be better candidates for porting.
