Apple Gifts Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks 270
soundofthemoon writes "Just nine months ago, Apple started the WebKit Open Source Project. In that time, contributors have added some significant improvements to WebKit (and thus Apple's Safari browser). Today Apple gave their open source contributors a big thank-you, including rewarding the top contributors with some nifty goodies: 'As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors. We've also invited five of them to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference 2006 on Apple's dime.' Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore."
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you say "X-Prize" or "DARPA Grand Challenge" ?
How about "PayPal donate link on Sourceforge" ?
Or, even cuter, "shareware" ?
It's on a different level (of commitment), yet it's (basically) the same thing: you work for something you care about, expect no (financial and/or direct) reward, yet, if you do it right, you end up with something.
So, yeah, always a good idea to keep hopes up for those who work for free and/or as a hobby... it's way cheaper (and on a much grander scale) as paying a lot of employees
KHTML? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for one the result is an open source project. Not something Apple can just lock up. Secondly, if you're in this for the money you're seriously not thinking straight. They're giving these to their top developers. It's a trinket for what they've contributed, it's not anything like a lottery where you can "win" and get a decent wage. Apple is simply seeing a way to make people that are already interested in doing an open-source project be a little more motivated. It's a win-win situation for both. That's not a crime or anything.
Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gah! "Gifting"? Wtf? Gift is a fucking NOUN. What's wrong with "Apple gives MacBooks to top WebKit contributors"?
It seems that the disease of corporate-speak has infected even the minds of Slashdot contributors who (a) should know better and (b) probably think they're immune.
Action this at once.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to your example, where your company screwed up was in the fact that they confused incentive/recognition with unhealthy internal competition. It takes a very good people manager to instil a culture of competitiveness while making sure that it doesn't get degenerated into a political dog-eat-dog culture. The first encourages employees to benchmark themselves against their (better) peers and helps them pull up their socks when they feel they're sliding. The key here is that the manager should balance out the weaker employees' efforts with the company's goals, and make sure that they too are recognized and rewarded, along with the star performers. The second, OTOH, makes the weaker contributors feel a sense of futility, which makes them resort to cheating or give up the race. In my experience, i've met very very few people managers who can pull off this balancing act with success.
You have a valid point that all contributors should be rewarded and duly recognized. However, the key contributors also need to be rewarded more than the others, for that is the essence of meritocracy.
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.
I speak English, too.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/gift [askoxford.com]
Hey, look at that. Looks like Oxford says you need a refresher course.
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company doesn't open source, plenty of open source advocates say they should and will complain about closed environment, etc etc
If they do open source, then you get arguments like this - either that they are taking advantage of free labour, or using cheap labour.
If you accept the open source model, then things like this are the outcome. In this case, it is very nice of Apple that they rewarded some of the top contributors, which they were certainly not obliged to do.
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that the whole point of using an open source project is to get software using free labor -- yeah, you're being pretty cynical.
Apple didn't have to give anybody anything in exchange for their contributions. Nobody ever expected or asked them to. This isn't an incentive to get other people to be in the "top twelve" next year; it's a "thank you" to the people who have already worked hard.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:2, Insightful)
There are some complex reasons for doing it (like getting others using your code can give you feedback, bug finding, or because you are charitable, or to raise your profile).
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that would be employment.
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Within our own countries, labor laws and unions product workers from such abuses - and I'm guessing you could have easily taken your case to a union with the possibility that you employer's practices were downright unlawful. But international law makes no such concessions, instead favoring the holy grail of 'free trade' and 'free markets', including of course the totally unregulated labor market.
What Apple is doing is quite different. They are showing genuinely generous appreciation for what is an entirely voluntary effort, and they are certainly under no obligation to do so. Comparing the two situations is comparing apples to oranges (pun fully intended).
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gift is a word that is originally derived from the ancient German word geban - which, incidently, is a verb. The word grew to be a noun, but kept its verb meaning as well.
The word gift has been used for a long time now as a verb in legal proceedings. When a person bequeths objects to people in a will, it generally is referred to as gifting. That meaning of the word has recently raised its head in major media where it seems to be a "new" use of the word, when actually it is only new to you.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:KHTML? (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with kHTML vs WebKit was the Apple zealots who praised how much Apple contributed to kHTML when in fact Apple didn't do that at all. The kHTML developers didn't care if Apple contributed, but they did care that the zealots where shouting (And we all know how high the Apple zealots shout) about the wonderfull relationship beetween Apple and kHTML. There where no relationship, Apple forked kHTML a year before anouncing it, the kHTML developers was not informed about that.
When the kHTML developers enlighted us about the fact that Apple didn't contributed to kHTML (This was when safari passed Acid2) the zealots again as always missintepreted it as if the kHTML developers where jealous about Apples fork of the program. The fact is that all they said is that Apple shouldn't have credits for kHTML because they don't work on the program!
Apple realised they actully benifitted from having some status in the open source world and gave the kHTML developers the tools they needed to bring Apples patches back into the kHTML tree. This had nothing to do with "Apple promised to come-up with solution to the Acid2 problem". Apple realised they had an image problem. Their users (the zealots) where outright lying to the OSS comunity, and they couldn't be stopped because when the zealots have made up their minds on something they don't change it when some "OSS hippies" tells them they are wrong. Apple did exactly what the zealots had been shouting about, and began a relationship with kHTML. Now the zealots could go on with the tales without lying and Apple probably benefitted from loosening the grip a little on WebKit.
Basically all you wrote is just pure bullshit, and has little to no resemblance with what actully happened. But as the zealot you are you again change the truth to fit your twisted world.
Job? (Score:0, Insightful)
You know - there is a fine line between receiving gifts from your mate and being a whore.
A nice, unnecessary PR gesture (Score:1, Insightful)
KHTML (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice move Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, one of the cool things (although sometimes a weakness) with open source development is that the people doing it are very often doing it for fun. It's a hobby for them, and even without the MacBook, if they weren't getting some sort of a feeling of accomplishment or something, they would've stopped doing it. Apple isn't taking advantage of people any more than the habitat for humanity takes advantage of their volunteers. While writing code is different than building homes for impoverished people, there are a lot of parallels.
In both cases, someone willingly donates their labor, for their own reasons. And in both cases, a lot of people benefit. With Habitat for humanity, the volunteers get the satisfaction of having helped with something bigger than themselves, and often gain knowledge about construction. A family without the means to buy their own house gets a decent home and their quality of life significantly improves. And society in general has one less homeless person to try and support (or if you don't believe that others should be forced to help those lazy bums, there's one less homeless person sitting around in your neighborhood).
With open source webkit, the volunteers get the satisfaction of having helped with something bigger than themselves, they've likely gained some new knowledge pertaining to computers and programming, they've potentially gained some name recognition for their effort and talents, and some of them have even gotten new laptop computers. Apple benefits by having a better piece of software included in their operating system. The rest of the world benefits because they have that exact same better piece of software that they're free to use with their own programs. Oh, and coincidentally, the fact that this particular piece of software pertains to web browsing, it stimulates more competition in the browser market, so the world gets even more better browsers.
But yeah, there are two points. The people donating their labor to this project before must have been getting some sort of happiness/satisfaction/reward for it, or they would've stopped. I've yet to hear of any sweatshops in asia where kids are forced to write code for pennies by their cruel taskmasters who keep any free laptops sent in reward. And secondly, Apple is not the only one benefiting from this. They aren't using laptops to pay people to write code for Apple, they're rewarding people who write code available to anyone. That's approaching philanthropy.
Uh, it never was. (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you think we got this far, if it ever were? This verges on the 'you can't trust programmers who aren't paid' FUD.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Employers choose who gets to work for them. They don't just leave their doors open so anybody can walk in, do some work, and walk out with money.
Re:Apple GIFTS...??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Verbing weirds language.
Actually, gift is also a verb and has been one longer than it has been a noun. I find it very strange the number of people who made this same comment. I mean, who bothers to comment on a minor grammar issue, especially one where you don't even bother to make sure you are correct? Just because someone uses a word in a way you don't recall having seen it does not mean it is proper to assume they are incorrect in their usage. You are obviously in front of a computer. How hard is it too look up something in the dictionary if you think it is wrong? For me it is three clicks and much faster than posting a comment on Slashdot.
Re:Safari for Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is slightly off-topic, but while Apple's feeling generous with regards to WebKit- do you think they'd consider releasing some form of Safari for Windows?
I doubt it, for a number of reasons. First, they have already released the core, all that is really required is the GUI bits. Apple does not really have a lot of expertise for building GUIs for Windows so it is not a casual project for them.
Second, who would use it? I mean, sure Web developers might use it for testing and maybe some users would like it and choose it instead of Firefox or Opera. Most of the users would probably be mac users forced onto Windows at work. That means they are probably not really cutting into IE's market share at all. The people willing to download an alternative OS have done so and Safari is unlikely to attract many clueless people away from IE since they have already failed to move to Firefox. The end result is quite simply more fragmentation of the non-IE Windows Web browser market, which may actually be detrimental to the adoption alternative software.
Basically, I don't think it is a wise investment of time and effort for them in the current climate. If IE were to drop significantly in market share, then it might make more sense.
OK, I know there are some apple haters out there.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus. Get over it. If you never get "gifted" in life, maybe the problem is you.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's Tax Time Again (Score:2, Insightful)