Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Mozilla The Internet Programming The Almighty Buck IT Technology

After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn 290

Posted by timothy from the cheap-labor dept.
MikeCapone writes "Slashdot had an article about the GNOME bounties a few days ago, but now, thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation (created by Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who went into the ISS as a Soyuz cosmonaut a couple of years ago), the Mozilla project also has some monetary incentives. The budget for 2004 is USD$100,000."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn More

After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn

Comments Filter:

  • My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <byrdhuntr AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:12PM (#7620075)
    For various annoying reasons I have to use hotmail for a great deal of my email. Recently, MS changed the hotmail interface so links to messages are done in javascript instead of regular HTML. This means that I can't control+click all my messages and have them open into tabs. Its been barely over 24hrs since they have done this and I'm already contemplating setting up a html-email/hotpop server localy just to get around this...

    Anyway, to the point. Submit a (working) patch to mozilla that gets included and get a $50 amazon.com or thinkgeek gift certificate, or a paypal payment (minus fees).

    The patch should:
    -detect when javascript would open a new window
    -If the link was to be opened into a new tab (via control-click, 3rd mouse button, or whatever option is set), open the link into a new tab instead of a new window
    -have an option to open all new windows into a new tab
    -This bounty expires at midnight GMT on 12/31/04. By which time I'll either have been annoyed to the point of death, or have been forced to setup an alternate solution.

    Defuddle my email address and send me an email when its done. Also, if you know a better place to put this bounty, please reply. Mozilla.com should have a section for this...

    • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Informative)

      by jaywee ( 542660 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:19PM (#7620144)
      The requested functionality is already done - as part of Tabbrowser extensions... here [sakura.ne.jp]
      • mod parent up - I was going to suggest the same thing!

      • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Informative)

        by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <byrdhuntr AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:36PM (#7620305)
        Just installed it. It has some great tab functionality - I'll enjoy using it. However it does not work on hotmail.

        Hotmail uses JS to open the mail in the same window. If it opened into a new window, tabbrowser would be able to handle it. I probably should have been more descriptive in its horrible use of javascript.
        • Could be the place where he is firewalls POP3 (not uncommon). My question is why Hotmail, I have a domain hosted from Hostsave [hostsave.com], they include email acccounts I can get through POP3 or their own webmail interface. I'm sure many hosting companies have something similar (dotster [dotster.com] has an email only for 19.95 a year)

        • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Informative)

          by prockcore ( 543967 )
          However it does not work on hotmail.

          Sure it does, use the "Lock Tab" feature. Turn it on, and then bookmark hotmail, from now on all links in hotmail will open in a new tab... including javascript ones.

      • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Informative)

        by Garion911 ( 10618 )
        I had that extension installed on my box (Gentoo for those that care)... It caused Firebird to slow down considerably... Closing a window took 5 secs.. Switching tabs took several seconds.. Not fun.. As soon as I disabled that extension, everything was nice and fast again...

        I liked the extension and what it did, but damn it slowed everything down..

        • I use firebird with the tab extensions and it doesn't seem (to me) to slow things down much at all.

          However, if you set up the tab groups and set it so that it reopens the current group of tabs when the browser crashes, I've seen reports that that does slow things down considerably. So try unsetting that option.

          If you use the tab extensions you might also want to check and see if you have the "auto-reload" enabled. In the options under tabs there is a "frequency of auto-reload". Make that 1 or you can

      • You can re-order tabs and move them between windows via drag-and-drop with these extensions. That's exactly what I've been wanting. I actually still use multiple browser windows, and use tabs as "subcategories". For instance, I'll have one window for Slashdot, with tabs for stories, and open more tabs for comments I want to read (I browse threaded with comments at 3 and above displayed in full). Sometimes, I'd really like to rearrange the tabs to move the stories around, as it's most convenient to have
    • The All Music Guide [allmusic.com] does this too! GYARG!

    • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:20PM (#7620163) Journal
      I don't think per-site patches are any way to fix a site with bad HTML and JavaScript. Mozilla follows the standards, adding a custom patch just for hotmail.com would be a bit silly. Before long we'd have a patch for every non-conformant site on the Internet.

      • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Boing ( 111813 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:26PM (#7620223)
        I don't think per-site patches are any way to fix a site with bad HTML and JavaScript

        No, the problem is not hotmail, it's that the "one browser window" idea that tabs were supposed to make possible is not possible with respect to javascript-created windows. That has nothing to do with standards conformance, since "tabs" in themselves are not part of any web standard. They're just an adaptation of the "window" model into a better organizational system.

        • No, the problem is not hotmail, it's that the "one browser window" idea that tabs were supposed to make possible is not possible with respect to javascript-created windows

          I can still think of a couple ways to achieve what SeanTobin wants:

          - If Javascript attempts to change the current document to a different URL, and the control key is currently held down, instead launch a new tab/window and open the specified URL into that.

          - When a click on a link spawns a Javascript, have Mozilla remember whether or no
      • Before long we'd have a patch for every non-conformant site on the Internet.

        If it makes the browser handle a non-standard idea that is site specific, the correct name might be a 'PLUGIN'. Eww... the ramifications. I think somebody already patented the idea of fixing a specific problem.

    • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Funny)

      by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:24PM (#7620206) Journal
      my bounty: I'm sick of clicking on links and not being redirected to goatse. I will pay $50.00 to anyone who can submit a patch to mozilla.org (and they accept it) so clicking on a link will randomly redirect me to http://goatse.cx. Ideally, the screen would also maximize and the back button would be disabled as well, and maybe a really loud beep so other people will know I'm a sick pervert.

      • clicking on a link will randomly redirect me to http://goatse.cx

        I think I remember reading recently that Belkin routers do this for you. :)

    • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:4, Interesting)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) * on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:25PM (#7620208) Homepage
      To use the tired old analogy of cars:

      Your request is a bit like getting a flat ( by design of the car, btw ), and wanting someone to redesign the car to run on only 3 wheels because of it.
      • No actually it's more like this:

        Cars traditionally run on roads. However, we've designed a better car, an SUV that doesn't need to use roads. Right now, there are some roads that have signs on them that say, "Stay on the road" and no matter how hard we turn the wheel in our SUV it just refuses to leave the road just because the road says so. We should be able to leave the road on our terms if our car supports it, not whether or not the road says it's ok.
    • Already been done in a plugin called Tabbrowser Extensions:
      http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_ tabextensions .html.en#download

      It has MUCH more than that feature. It pretty much has anything you'd ever need from tabs.

      • Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) *
        I just tried tabbrowser. It does some great work with tabs. I like the features it offers, however it does not work with clicking on messages in hotmail into new tabs. Either the tab doesn't open or I end up with somethin like javascript:G('/cgi-bin/getmsg?msg=MSG1070435987.20 &start=1299751&len=1439&msgread=1&imgsafe= n') in a new tab.

        Yes, I did go through all the options for it and made the sensible selections in regard to javascript.
    • Do you feel like a bit of RegExp work? You can probably use Proxomitron [proxomitron.info] to catch pages that you get from hotmail (it acts as a proxy), and rewrite the JavaScript functions, changing them to output HTML links perhaps.

      It also has the added benefits of ad-blocking. :)

    • Hotmail Working Solution (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jotham ( 89116 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @08:25PM (#7623870)
      ok, I have a complete solution for you...

      1) Download and Install Tab Extension [sakura.ne.jp] and restart Mozilla.

      2) In TabBrowser Extension Options change two settings: a) in 'Advanced', tick 'New windows opened by JavaScript' and b) in 'Focus', tick Javascript in 'load new tab in background when it is opened by'

      3) In Booksmarks > Manage Bookmarks: create a new Bookmark. In the Location type: javascript: function G(UL) { window.open(UL,'_blank',''); } stick it in your Bookmarks Toolbar for easy reuse.

      4) open Hotmail and go to your Inbox

      5) click that Bookmark you just created (this will replace hotmail's function with your own)

      6) click on messages - they should now open in the background in a new tab.

      enjoy

      As a better suggestion, I wrote a webmail client for ourbrisbane.com [ourbrisbane.com] which is free sign-up to (5MB storage), W3C compliant (IE and Mozilla), has a good spam filter, and has a preview pane, right-click contextual menus, drag-drop, background-mail checking, folder export (as zip), select and ctrl-click, short-cut keys, searchable list filtering, etc, etc.

    • You may already have seen this. It works like a charm for me.

      hotwayd [sourceforge.net] is a hotmail-to-pop3 gateway that runs through xinetd. I'm actually piping my mail through hotwayd *and* popfile without any problem.

      And, much as I'd like the money, I think this advice should be free. :)

  • Alright! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:14PM (#7620092) Homepage
    It's about time. Not that small contributions haven't helped, but ever since the support was pulled for Netscape, things have rather been free floating (barring the Firebird project). It's terrific to see that there is a solid future for the development of one of the best IE alternatives out there.

    Damon,

    • Re:Alright! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chalybeous ( 728116 ) <chalybeous@@@yahoo...co...uk> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#7620240) Homepage Journal

      You know, I think Mr. Shuttleworth has the right idea. Why? Well, the OpenSource community does include a few businesses, but my impression is that it's largely hobbyists.

      Let me bring a comparison into play. On most CGI forums (I mean 3D CGI, not CGI scripting), a lot of people post requests for custom designs or images - for example, Star Trek fans with play by email RPGs, or fan clubs who want a poster image of their favourite ship. Some of the guys on these BBSs who do the 3D work produce stuff that's as good as you'd get from, say, Blue Sky, EdenFX, or the sadly departed Foundation Imaging - and they get people asking them to share it for free.
      One artist of my acquaintance modelled interiors, and got so sick of people asking for freebies, he started charging $50 per "set". For that you got a few renders and the model he'd built for you (I think he had license terms). He had to do some work, but by the time he was building these rooms-to-order (mostly Star Trek-style bridge decks), he had a big stock of objects and textures - so he'd make a few bucks for a couple of hours' extra work, and the RPG owner (or whoever) would get what they wanted without having to invest in pro-quality CGI software, plus the time of learning it, plus... yadda yadda yadda.

      Now, back to the OpenSource community. Same deal applies. Most OS developers are volunteers or hobbyists, I think; so they're giving up their time for free, for everyone else. What's wrong with giving them a financial incentive? Another poster in this thread offered $50 to solve a bug that's bothering him, and that's marvellous - $50 isn't a lot of money to most people, so while it may be a token offer, it makes a very nice gesture of appreciation for work done.
      Mr. Shuttleworth is doing a great thing by offering financial backing to sort out things he'd like to see done. I admit, I'd like to see more financial incentives to general projects or targets, rather than such specific bugs and requests (maybe a donation to the Mozilla Foundation, or a favourite developer, or offering to help fund a particular distro or application), but the right steps are being taken.
      In other words... it's laudable and it's a start. Let's hope the impetus grows from here.

      • I couldn't agree more. Thank you for the terrific post!

        Damon,

      • And it scales even better... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by zipwow ( 1695 ) <zipwowNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:57PM (#7620491) Homepage Journal
        If the system were set up so that you could contribute to a 'bounty', then the system would scale even better.

        Some central board on a project, like the gnome project, would administer the bounties. If its bothering you, add to the bounty. Eventually its enough money to be a proper incentive.

        Like the gnome bounties, the board itself would have to choose the best solution, so as a bounty contributor (the person sending the money) you'd give up that control. A minor giveaway, and something you probably don't have time to do anyway.

        Sounds good to me.

        -Zipwow

        • This is an interesting idea, one that I hadn't thought of. I am glad that additional methods of paying developers is becomming popular. But it does have it's problems.

          With headhunter bounties 'success' is easy to measure - did they bring person in, and is he alive if required. Software is not so easy. Often times Linus and other maintainers will turn down patches because they are ugly, even though they work. The reason for this is that clean code saves more time in the long run than you would save banging
          • I'm afraid you're right. This might not be a fatal flaw in the bounty system if there are project-appointed bounty cops which make a ruling on whether the bounty was properly discharged (maintainable code, etc.).

            Real-life bounties have this problem as well. The US offered bounties on Afghan "Al Quada members", and for this reason, many of the people caged up in Guantanamo are just farmers, taxi-drivers and 13-year-old kids who were turned in by some very nasty people who wanted bounty money. To solve this

        • Try opensourcexperts.com [opensourcexperts.com]. They do exactly what you were talking about.
        • And hell, have the bounty put up front, have the "holding" company stick it in an interest bearing account, and you could theoretically pay the bandwidth/hosting/admin bills with the interest (someone's gotta cut the checks and what not)...

      • Cevelopers vs Contributers (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You right about the developers, but people always seem to forget the contributers. The people who track down bugs and sumbit fixes. People who add new functionallity. Many of these people have real jobs where they used open source and need these fixes, so they do it.

        I've only developed one open source application, but I've contributed about 10x that much code to existing projects.

        Without small time contributers, it's really not an open source project.

      • Re:Alright! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Evil Pete ( 73279 )

        I know this might seem like an obvious thing to say but looking at the guy's website don't you think he has the coolest job ? I mean here he has been in space, does lots of python, has lots of money to support open source and interest in it and has some nice ideas.

        Apart from that the money incentive is fun. I mean I remember years back working on posed magazine programming problems that had nominal cash rewards ... but the race and the reward were so appealling I put lots of effort into it. $50 is plenty

        • I know this might seem like an obvious thing to say but looking at the guy's website don't you think he has the coolest job ? I mean here he has been in space, does lots of python, has lots of money to support open source and interest in it and has some nice ideas.

          Most people are nothing more than economic slaves under capitalism. The best one can do is to free themselves. Mark Shuttleworth has freed himself :) It's time for the rest of us to do so...

          Once you have freed yourself, you can do whateve

    • Re:Alright! (Score:3, Informative)

      by BZ ( 40346 )
      You know, this comment is an insult to all the work that has been happening over the last 6 months. Not all that much has been "free floating" as you put it; many of the core modules were either already owned by non-Netscape people or are still owned by people working on Mozilla (though no longer as Netscape employees).

      I suggest taking a look at the actual CVS checkin logs next time before making statements like that.

  • Independent Contractors? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:14PM (#7620097) Homepage Journal
    Why not just hire contractors to do this if you have the cash? That way you have a better timeframe and knowledge of how the job is done, instead of waiting on a contest with no idea what will be done and what won't be done?

    • Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:17PM (#7620127) Homepage Journal
      Dude, this is like so little cash. This is roughly the salary of one person for a year. In exchange for that, you get hundreds of worker bees.

    • Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stile 65 ( 722451 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:19PM (#7620146) Homepage Journal
      $100K for a year will hire maybe two contractors or one really good contractor. Contractors don't usually charge per task, either, but per hour - so you don't have any guarantee this way that the code will be done either.

    • Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      One of the great things about getting the comunity to participate is that after they accept a patch you made you'll feel like you're part of the whole construction and you'll probably continue contributing. With contractors, this almost never happens.
    • Unless it's a contractor who is already intimately familiar with the Mozilla codebase, you'd be paying for all the time learning it. Depending on the component you're hacking on, there's some hairy stuff in there :). You're paying for the work that got done, not that plus the time the contractor spent learning and messing up before coming up with a workable result.

  • I am still waiting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mental_telepathy ( 564156 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:16PM (#7620112)
    for a good tool for combining people who want to same software and are willing to pay. Like sourceforge and paypal rolled into one.
    My dream software - a decent open source fantasy sports dollar based draft solution. And I know I'm no the only one.

    • Re:I am still waiting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Stile 65 ( 722451 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:24PM (#7620204) Homepage Journal
      The Open Code Market [slashdot.org] is being developed just for that purpose. :)
    • > for a good tool for combining people who want to same software and are willing to pay. Like sourceforge and paypal rolled into one.

      Been tried. SourceXchange was one one such attempt. Flopped miserably. On a bigger scale, paying for services delivered by semi-anonymous contributors is alive and well -- it's called outsource contracts. Simply stipulate that you require open source, and you'll still have people beating down your door to bid. It just won't be cheap, regardless of the OSS factor.

  • Interesting Idea.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by VivianC ( 206472 ) <internet_update@y a h o o.com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:16PM (#7620115) Homepage Journal
    Hmmm. Paying people to develop code? What a clever idea! I'd beter patent this quick!
    • Quick.. get in there before the Patent Office awards patents for 'method for developing software' and 'paying people to develop software'.

      Oh, sarcasm btw ;)
    • There's a joke here somewhere about dumbass business ideas and the fact that your initials are VC, but damned if I can find it...

  • not just Mozilla (Score:2, Informative)

    by jas79 ( 196511 )
    RTFA. He is also giving rewards to other projects.

  • A Bounty In The Spirit Of The Open Source Movement (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think there should a bounty on a patch that creates a new incompatible and competing theme system for Mozilla based on ideological differences.


  • ...if you read that as "Gnome BOOTY hunt", and wondered what bozo posted this on /. instead of Fark.

  • Bounties for open/free software work... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Hopper ( 59070 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:22PM (#7620184) Homepage Journal
    Seeing this openly advertised gives me a great deal of hope for future open development efforts. Having some monetary incentive is a pretty big barrier to lots of programmers who are otherwise interested -- it's just the standard geek reward of "people will praise me for my effort" isn't enough for them.

    In this particular case, the bounties appear to be for very specific features to existing products. Looks like it's working! But it seems the bounties are oriented solely toward individual programmers. I have to wonder how such a bounty would apply to larger-scale projects? I mean, for instance, what would the ramifications be of creating a bounty for a less-specific domain, or one in which there are numerous contributors so that one person couldn't solely claim responsiblity for the feature or program?

    I suppose someone would have to decide how much effort each person put into the feature or program, and pro-rate the bounty to each person based on that decision. Could be a recipe for some hard feelings.

    I think bounties are a great idea, but the way those bounties are implemented will make a pretty sizeable difference in developer response.

    I like this approach, though. It's an individual, saying "I have a fund this large, and am willing to pay this much for these things to get done". Much better than some big corporate bid match-up service that falls flat on its face like some notables over the last few years...

    • I like this approach, though. It's an individual, saying "I have a fund this large, and am willing to pay this much for these things to get done". Much better than some big corporate bid match-up service that falls flat on its face like some notables over the last few years...

      I hear you, but it would still be nice to have a central clearinghouse where all of the bounties are listed. I suspect that these types of funds will grow more common as open source moves towards the mainstream desktop market, and h

      • An Ebay for Open-Source Bidding... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Doc Hopper ( 59070 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:10PM (#7620661) Homepage Journal
        I find myself wondering, in response to this suggestion, if an ebay-like approach would work really well. Make it easy to register for the service, keep your costs low to none (a few bucks, like ebay, rather than a few hundred, like some former notables), skim just a touch off the amount transacted, and you're done.

        The principal pitfalls of such a system would seem to be:

        1. Delayed delivery. Commitment to engineer something, and then delivering on that commitment, can take days, weeks, or months.
        2. Confirmation of work completed -- how do you track that in the system?
        3. Achieving sufficient volume to pay for operations.

        I dunno, those don't seem insurmountable. To someone who has a hosting account somewhere, some spare time, and one of several ebay-like open source projects currently going, it seems like it would be easy to open up for business...

        Hmm, I wonder what a fun domain would be that I could set something like this up on my server [barnson.org]...

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:23PM (#7620189)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • These guys are a little off in their facts.

      From the website The largest known prime number, discovered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has 909,526 digits. The Mersenne search just officially announced yesterday (it had come out to the group last month was was still being confimed by several re-checks) that Michael Shafer discovered the 40th known Mersenne prime, 2^20996011-1. Congratulations Michael. This prime is over 6.3 million digits, beating the previous world record prime by ov

  • Here's an idea... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dubdays ( 410710 )
    Someone ought to start some kind of system where people can sponsor certain open-source projects, and have a lot of people contributing to them. $10 here and $10 there adds up to quite a bit of cash for the programmers who work hard at creating something great and then giving it to everyone for the betterment of all. This would also help the programmers gain feedback into what people really want to see in their programs.

  • Intelligent filtering (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:24PM (#7620201)
    I would like to see Bayesian learning for message filing.

    That would be excellent - although I'm stuck with Outlook at work.

    I try to sort my mail into folders based on the projects I'm working on. Something that could examine the contents of the email and suggest folders that it should go into would be very useful.

    In fact, based on the sucess rate of SpamAssassin, I'd be prepared to allow it to classify them automatically.

    Hmmm ... I wonder if you could do something in VB that would do the filtering for you by accessing the Outlook object?

  • It just goes to show, there is no free lunch.

    You want good quality software? You gotta pay for it. Even if you only plan to give it away for nothing, the coding part really requires that you pay.

    Because we programmers have to live, you know.

  • Put an end to the free beer rides (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jaymzter ( 452402 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:34PM (#7620292) Homepage
    I'm glad this is happenning. I was just thinking to myself (I win all my arguments that way) the other day about the perception that FOSS users won't pay for software and just want free as in beer. Of course to an extent that is true, but then it dawned on me that it's actually businesses that just want free beer.
    The idea is constantly bandied about that FOSS programmers are just part time hackers with nothing better to do, but when you look at the quality of some FOSS projects that can't be true. It takes time and money. So why aren't companies like Sun and IBM making with the money to pay KDE to create a Micro-Soft like "Control Panel" for the desktop? Not that we may need one, it's only an example. Companies like IBM love to use Linux to nettle Micro-Soft and push their own agenda, but if they were serious about Linux on the desktop they'd put a bounty out for cohesive and intuitive applications that will help build a core of non technical users.

    The German government took this route with Kroupware, and I just hope that Novell will do something like it with SuSE, but I still believe a serious sea change of perception and thought needs to take place in the corporate world. FOSS is a resource not only to push your other agendas, but can be harnessed relatively cheaply to get what you want. For those of us that can't code (yet) it doesn't matter if the source code is available, but it might be feasible to pay a developer to create a feature I want, maybe through a clearinghouse type website (any VCs in the house?). I know I'd pay if I had money for MozMail to be able to schedule the times it sent mail a la Outlook, and I even had someone ready to switch from Outlook until they discovered MozMail couldn't do that :-(
    Enuff rambling, maybe this is just a start of the community bootstrapping itself and the corporate world will notice and loosen the purse strings...
    • > The German government took this route with Kroupware

      Gee, I'm guessing that's a KDE project. Pronounced like "croup" i imagine...

      Main Entry: croup
      Pronunciation: 'krup
      Function: noun
      Etymology: Middle English croupe, from Old French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German kropf craw -- more at CROP
      Date: 14th century
      : the rump of a quadruped

  • Raytracing in Orbit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Captain Tripps ( 13561 ) * on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:43PM (#7620359)
    Mark's Shuttleworth's an interesting guy. He knew one of the developers of the POV-Ray [povray.org] raytracer, and before he went into orbit he comissioned an image to be rendered on his laptop while in orbit. It was done by Gilles Tran and Jaime Piqueres, two well respected POV-Ray artists. Gilles has the story [oyonale.com] on his website.

  • Bounties? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DogIsMyCoprocessor ( 642655 ) <dogismycoprocessor@yah o o . c om> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:44PM (#7620377) Homepage
    Huh, what (wakes up) ... is Microsoft taking out contracts on open-source developers now?

  • SVG maintenance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ptaff ( 165113 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:54PM (#7620461) Homepage
    The Mozilla team once included (in versions <= 1.4) a build-optional SVG module; you could then use SVG as part of a multi-Doctype document (alongwith XHTML, MathML...).

    The interesting side of it is that you can script SVG; like you would do with DHTML on a regular XHTML document. Text and data and instructions embedded in a SVG document are *still* accessible; oppose Flash.

    Now that branch is put aside - there is no easy way to include SVG in a stable release: you must use trunk and/or do multiple source patches.

    As a free replacement for proprietary technologies, it would really be nice to see some effort put into reviving SVG in Mozilla.

  • How About Microbounties? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tabdelgawad ( 590061 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:12PM (#7620684)
    What if something like Bugzilla had a system whereby people could make micropayments towards bounties for fixing bugs and implementing features? The final effect would be the same as someone setting up a single large bounty, but the tasks would be prioritized somewhat more democratically.

    Setting this up would not be easy: you'd have to have a financial partner (Amazon comes to mind in that they had a system where money was held in escrow or something until the buyer was satisfied), and the system would have to have decent financial auditing to prevent abuse, but it could be done.

    Microbounties would also bring back a measure of consumer power to the world of open source development. Projects/tasks that attract donators will also attract developers, and the disconnect we always talk about between what users want and what developers want to work on would become smaller.

    And while I'm talking big, let me point out that this model could be adapted to the provision of other information goods. I can imagine a small band setting up a bounty for their next album, with funds not released until the album is complete (in this case, it would be the suppliers setting up the bounties, not the demanders. I guess you'd call them 'ransoms' not 'bounties').

    Sombody ought to set up a bounty for the implementation of this idea :)
    • Someone suggested it a while back:

      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213437

      (direct links to bugzilla from slashdot don't work, so copy and paste the URL.)
      • Thanks for the link. Bugzilla says:

        Status: RESOLVED
        Resolution: WONTFIX

        Which is perfectly sensible, given how complicated this would be. This is not really going to be implemented through the bug tracking system. It's a big idea that requires a big name/organization/company to adopt it. And this will only happen if the idea gets traction (and a lot of discussion) at the grassroots.

  • A trend perhaps (Score:2, Interesting)

    by agslashdot ( 574098 )
    I wouldn't exactly call 100 grand a bounty...if you live in NYC, its the minimum you'd need to pay rent & support a wife and two kids.

    On another tack, I see this as a trend, perhaps an offshoot of angel-investors+freelancing, where rich individuals ( the angel-investors ) pony up cash to get stuff done by the rest of us(freelancers), mostly for themselves, but sometimes society benefits too.

    eg. Superman Christopher Reeves is single-handedly funding ( http://www.christopherreeve.org/ ) spinal cord rese
  • From his homepage [markshuttleworth.com]: "Likes: spring, cesaria evora, slashdot, chelsea[...]"

    Hey, Mark! That's karma whoring! ;)

    Anyhow, GREAT JOB!
  • I would quickly pay $100 for a solid cross platform roaming profile implimentation in the mainstream mozilla. I think plenty of people would jump at this as well o increase that amount quite easily.
    • Go to buzgilla.mozilla.org (you have to cut and paste it, links from slashdot will not work) and read over bug # 124026. Contribute your $100 if you wish. I can't believe with a bounty over 3 grand no one has delivered a solution yet..

      Shayne

  • SchoolTool (Score:2, Informative)

    by krasni_bor ( 261801 )
    Most of the bounty cash will probably end up going to SchoolTool [schooltool.org] development. SchoolTool is a Python-based school administration application, primarily for schools in the developing world. Steve Alexander, a leading Zope developer, is currently leading the work with his team in Lithuania. The server is based on Zope 3 code and the Twisted framework. It'll feature a REST web service interface. Hopefully, this will provide a relatively simple, robust and clean platform to allow schools to manage their da
  • A few in this thread have mentioned a few times that the total amount offered for bounties is barely a salary for a good developer. Two points to remember - chasing bounties isn't necessarily to be a lucrative bounty, it's more about providing some motivation to the guys who were going to do this anyway; secondly, don't assume that the best developers for the job are American - Mark comes from South Africa where US$100k would hire quite a few world-class developers (not that he is hiring teams).

Slashdot Top Deals

BLISS is ignorance.

Close