Sponsor An Open Source Driver Dev For a $1 a Day???

[89c51]

A committee is a good idea. A few people with technical insight who can act as a barrier between the people donating and the developer. Those who donate might be screaming about OpenGL 4.2 but have no clue to what it really is about or how hard it is to implement. They just need it for game X or Y because it says so on the box.

i dont think anyone said that OpenGL 4.x (or any other feature for the matter) is or will be easy. Most people would like to know how much will it cost in total. Number of devs, time etc must be included in the final price.

Then we can set up a website and start collecting donations until we reach the money target.

[ChrisXY]

I've been freelancing for 5 years and I would never put myself in a situation where I'm unsure when or if I get paid at all.

Well, the idea is that it is transparent how much money is in every pool so that developers are really free to choose what and how much to do and that if you sign up to develop a feature you get legal security that you get the money from the pool. So if a feature has low priority it will get less money and developers would probably prefer the features that have more money, which probably means it is more important to users since they put their money there...

And if you are like a developer today that would do a low priority feature anyway you would still get the little money there as a bonus.

Every hour spent must give something back or I cannot pay my rent. It's that simple.

Developers needing the money fast is unfortunate but on the other hand you wouldn't want to give money to people who just claim to be able to do things. I put that later in that when a developer is deemed to be trustworthy and skilked enaugh a committee could give out money in advance or that when you and the committee come to an agreement that what you did was about 15% of the work you could get about 15% of the money. That would require a technically competent committee, obviously.

But, hey I'm not really convinced of that myself. Just an idea that in my eyes has some benefits. I'm just speculating on this getting big. And by big I mean reaching and exceeding the salary of normally hired programmers. But I don't even know if there is so much interest from people willing to pay in the open drivers. But then, this would be a worldwide initiative. World wide! Considering that mesa&gallium is the open 3d stack and there's still not more financial support is kind of discouraging but maybe crowd sourcing could help that a little.

A committee is a good idea. A few people with technical insight who can act as a barrier between the people donating and the developer. Those who donate might be screaming about OpenGL 4.2 but have no clue to what it really is about or how hard it is to implement. They just need it for game X or Y because it says so on the box.

That's not exactly what I meant it for but yes. Another task could be providing a set of default pools with descriptions what that feature is, why it is needed and what it is not.

My idea was rather for it to 1. provide fair distribution of the money in both directions: Making sure a developer gets paid his fair share for what he does as well as making sure there are no developers trying to scam money out without doing all the work
2. and doing compromises.

[rainbyte]

I think that there is a lot of people that wants to contribute to different projects...
But not having a credit card to do it makes things difficult...

Maybe adding other ways to contribute (without credit card) could help...

[patrik]

i dont think anyone said that OpenGL 4.x (or any other feature for the matter) is or will be easy. Most people would like to know how much will it cost in total. Number of devs, time etc must be included in the final price.

Then we can set up a website and start collecting donations until we reach the money target.

I agree. In order to get the most amount of money from donations we need hard facts and numbers. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not a fixed amount of work and it will be very hard to gives those numbers to the public. And if we do, people will get very upset when the developers cannot keep their promises. Not even the Intel guys can give those kinds of guarantees. And they are the experts on that particular hardware.

Guarantees can be given but they come at a price. You have to spend a lot of time planning and read up on every piece that you are going to do (time that also needs to be paid for somehow). Then double or tripple it.

The Pandora project is a good example. People have been waiting for years on their hardware, and I have no doubt that the pandora team is doing the best they can.

[patrik]

Well, the idea is that it is transparent how much money is in every pool so that developers are really free to choose what and how much to do and that if you sign up to develop a feature you get legal security that you get the money from the pool. So if a feature has low priority it will get less money and developers would probably prefer the features that have more money, which probably means it is more important to users since they put their money there...

And if you are like a developer today that would do a low priority feature anyway you would still get the little money there as a bonus.

I totally get you, but It depends on what you think a feature is. I'll try to explain with an analogy: You're building a house and someone installs the toilets, sinks and showers. This is what the residents (users) need. The problem is that the guy installing those things can have it done in 2 days, but they guy doing the plumbing had to work for 2 weeks. The people paying for the job shouldn't be the ones who decide who gets what since they don't understand the complexity of how things are interconnected. It might be possible to break things down into logical units and make a map describing the hierarchy but as I wrote in my previous comment, very detailed planning also costs money and I don't believe we can properly measure the amount of work. Mesa core, Gallium or DRM might need extensive work in order to handle OpenGL 4.2 properly and that has to go through the proper channels and is not a fixed amount of time/work.

Developers needing the money fast is unfortunate but on the other hand you wouldn't want to give money to people who just claim to be able to do things. I put that later in that when a developer is deemed to be trustworthy and skilked enaugh a committee could give out money in advance or that when you and the committee come to an agreement that what you did was about 15% of the work you could get about 15% of the money. That would require a technically competent committee, obviously.

But, hey I'm not really convinced of that myself. Just an idea that in my eyes has some benefits. I'm just speculating on this getting big. And by big I mean reaching and exceeding the salary of normally hired programmers. But I don't even know if there is so much interest from people willing to pay in the open drivers. But then, this would be a worldwide initiative. World wide! Considering that mesa&gallium is the open 3d stack and there's still not more financial support is kind of discouraging but maybe crowd sourcing could help that a little.

Yes there is a certain amount of risk involved. I'm not the guy to speculate on how big it is. All I'm saying is that the developers and the people donating should be aware of this.

That's not exactly what I meant it for but yes. Another task could be providing a set of default pools with descriptions what that feature is, why it is needed and what it is not.

My idea was rather for it to 1. provide fair distribution of the money in both directions: Making sure a developer gets paid his fair share for what he does as well as making sure there are no developers trying to scam money out without doing all the work
2. and doing compromises.

It's a very good idea but somehow the committee also have to get paid. Otherwise it would be like not paying the project manager in a project. Maybe it's better to just to just find a developer that the community trusts. Not an easy task, but perhaps better use of the money.

[entropy]

I don't want to be too pessimistic but I'm not sure someone is actually willing to start this project.
There are plenty of more or less tough questions to be solved first.

Contracts:
There must be contracts, obviously.
Developers have to properly pay taxes on income (in most, if not all countries).
Otherwise this may suddenly turn into a problem of the project itself.

Financial aspects:
Someone has to administer the money/pools.

Committee:
I agree, there should be one.
But who should be approached and what exactly should they decide on.

Infrastructure:
A well-reasoned website is required with all the voting and money-transaction backends.

It could be a good idea to ask for support at some companies with a proven Linux/OSS-affinity.
The Humble Bundle guys, for instance. Maybe they are willing to provide advice concerning
infrastructure and financial aspects. They sure do have the knowledge.
Concerning 'contracts'; the X.Org EVoC people should know what to take care of, I assume.

It may be a bit far fetched, but still.
How about asking Michael to help approaching VALVE and asking for support?
This does not mean "money" but the professional backing to get this thing started.

[timothyja]

Contracts:
There must be contracts, obviously.
Developers have to properly pay taxes on income (in most, if not all countries).
Otherwise this may suddenly turn into a problem of the project itself.

This was covered in my initial idea, contractors could be hired via www.odesk.com it is then up to them to pay taxes on their income. Or if hired via a company such as www.intelligraphics.com the company would take care on the taxes. I think it would be great if we could use odesk as it provides an easy way to have transparency.

Financial aspects:
Someone has to administer the money/pools.

You are right this is a big one. I have sent an email to www.linuxfund.org as they as a 501(c)(3) Organization that currently manages funds for various open source project i.e they have no particular agenda toward one project. But I'm yet to hear back, I'm open to suggestion for other organizations that might be appropriate.

Committee:
I agree, there should be one.
But who should be approached and what exactly should they decide on.

I think a committee is a good idea, and agree there is some research to be done here.

Infrastructure:
A well-reasoned website is required with all the voting and money-transaction back-ends.

I agree this is needed but at this stage getting the structure of the project defined first is the priority.

.

[ChrisXY]

I totally get you, but It depends on what you think a feature is. I'll try to explain with an analogy: You're building a house and someone installs the toilets, sinks and showers. This is what the residents (users) need. The problem is that the guy installing those things can have it done in 2 days, but they guy doing the plumbing had to work for 2 weeks. The people paying for the job shouldn't be the ones who decide who gets what since they don't understand the complexity of how things are interconnected.

I don't see that as a problem, if it gets big. If people are missing a feature they would just keep adding money until somebody thinks it's enaugh for the time it will take to develop it.

[timothyja]

I don't see that as a problem, if it gets big. If people are missing a feature they would just keep adding money until somebody thinks it's enaugh for the time it will take to develop it.

I'm sorry but I disagree with what you are purposing. You are talking about a bounty system. This is not what I have purposed. I'm yet to see a successful open source bounty system, the problem with bountys is the developer has to do the work with no guarantee of being paid, also once the job is done there is no guarantee that there is more paid work to come. Also bounty's need defined outcomes that to decide when a developer should be paid, the problem with this is the outcomes usually depend on significant underling work that the users (sponsors) don't know/care about.

If the ideas in this thread get of the ground we will be hiring developers to work TOWARD goals and they will get paid regardless of completing of those goals. This is just how things work in the real word. I do agree that sponsors should be able to preference what they want worked on but these will be the goals that developer work towards. Bountys are not sustainable.

[89c51]

If the ideas in this thread get of the ground we will be hiring developers to work TOWARD goals and they will get paid regardless of completing of those goals. This is just how things work in the real word. I do agree that sponsors should be able to preference what they want worked on but these will be the goals that developer work towards. Bountys are not sustainable.

Sorry but then whats the point if the goals are not completed. What we need is to set a goal, approach companies or individuals that will give us a price, decide who wins the "contract", collect the money, pay them, and wait for them to deliver the code. And also make sure that the whole thing is as transparent as possible.