Port Mozilla, Collect $3696 358
An anonymous reader writes "The goal of the AmiZilla effort is to raise such an obscene/huge amount of money to give away to the first programmer/team that can port Mozilla to Amiga that Amiga programmers will be falling over themselves getting this application coded in record time.
The booty currently stands at $3696. Parties interested in making some extra cash to pay off student loans/go on a wild bender can find more infomation here."
I would rather see it coded well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would rather see it coded well (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I would rather see it coded well (Score:5, Insightful)
Opensource would rather see it coded fast (Score:2, Insightful)
Humble opinion: In Open source it is more important to have something to start with so others can follow someone's lead, than have something to finish with, so no one else has anything to add.
Besides, they do mention "Beta", beta == feature completeness with only minor problems. Should be okay.
Re:Opensource would rather see it coded fast (Score:3, Funny)
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
fprintf(stderr, "IMPLEMENT ME: start running mozilla on the amiga\n");
return 0;
}
Obscene? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Obscene? (Score:2)
I'd say that comes pretty close.
Great Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Now you know (Score:2)
$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month (Score:5, Interesting)
If the port should take four man-weeks to do, that works out to about $23 dollars per hour. Somehow I think they're going to need to collect more bounty before developers would "fall all over themselves" for the task.
That said, if I had extra cash, I'd offer bounties for small programming tasks. My home life doesn't afford enough hacking time to do all of the ideas I write down, and I would love to parcel them out for a hobby-sized bounty to students or other junior coders who also want to use it as a learning opportunity.
23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this thing is that second place gets mo money. So if you coded for 150 hours and someone else finishes, then you got paid 0$/hr. To me, this is unacceptable because I always end up getting shafted like that.
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2, Informative)
- Visited http://www.tc-p.com/careers/index.cfm
- Checked all the companies at http://www.pghgeeks.org/pghtech.html
- Checked with the folks you did your internship with, they may not be hiring, but may know somebody who is. If you didn't do computer work during the summer, getting a job will be a little harder.
And that's if you want to stay local. Good Luck!
Yah, but I'll check again (Score:2)
I have ideas for stuff that'd been successful in the past:
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clancrazy / resume/ ideas.html
I do work on lots of external projects. I'm working on a MMORPG right now some info can be found at:
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clancrazy/in dex2. html
Re:Yah, but I'll check again (Score:2)
Thats why I said I'd love a $10/hr job (Score:2)
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2)
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2)
I'm not sure how much you've actually looked but it's not that hard to find a job with our qualifications. I also graduated from CMU last year and every single one of my CS friends were able to find a job (some weren't able to find it immediately but all within a 3-6 month timeframe). You just have to be a little more proactive in the job hunt. Hang in there.
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2)
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2)
Then go be a night manager at Taco Bell. Contrary to what many folks might tell you, there are CS jobs out there that pay more than $dick.99/hour. If you've got a degree in CS from Carnegie Mellon, you're either not looking hard enough for work or you're living in the wrong part of the country. Look harder or move.
Also, regarding the metric the parent post threw out, there's absolutely no way anyone could port Moz
Re:23$ an hour is HUGE (Score:2)
Re:LOL Amiga suxxor (Score:2)
I understand that your cost benefit/risk analysis leads you to the unknown- that you could get nothing.
BUt if you are saying that you'd take a $10 an hour job, you are obviously more than a little hungry for some new opportunity.
Opportunity costs upfront; you have to risk it. No you can't count on winning, so make sure you have some contingency plan.
However As my buddy sielwolf po [slashdot.org]
Oh you just like your gangsters (Score:2)
Imagine that, theres men out there that don't worship money like its their god. I know you feel sorry for me that I don't have alot of money, but I feel sorry for you. Someone with alot of money doesn't automatically make that person helpful to society. Look at all those rich people who
Re:Oh you just like your gangsters (Score:2)
OHMIGOD! Did I just blow your mind!?
Listen- YOUR initial argument was "Hey, this money sucks if you don't win!"
Myself and some others point out that there is a lot to gain financially even if you don't win, by leveraging this experience in system integration and getting a job based upon it.
NOW you are changing your tune and saying "well, MOney doesn't matter!"
But this is,
Ok, let me blow your mind now (Score:2)
http://www.geocities.com/james_sager_pa / xyzimation
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clanc razy/mmog/
My skills I will learn from this MMORPG will then let me code AI within 20-50 years:
http://www.geocities.com/james_sager2/
My personal problem is that I can't get in with ANY organization even though my qualifications would seem to be alright. Throwing in "ported mozilla to amiga" would trivialize my qualifications
Its like shooting fish in a barrel! (Score:2)
From this parent post I'm working on a MMORPG now, and I plan on doing it for 2-5 years before release
Gee, you sure are working HARD on that main goal, aren't ya?! [/sarcasrm]
Whatever kid.
Throwing in "ported mozilla to amiga" would trivialize my qualifications
Okay, good point. So for you, the only pay off would be the 3 grand, and thats not a sure thing.
I know who you are, you're just a s
Re:Oh you just like your gangsters (Score:2)
Re:LOL Amiga suxxor (Score:2)
You pose a good point, however this is all about spin.
You are presenting this to your potential employer as "Hey, I took a large Software Engineering project and ported it to a platform on which I had little previous experience. So if you hire me and you have porting work to do, even if it is on a platform that is brand new, I have overall experience in the act of replatforming."
Maybe the guy who has experience in the platform they
Re:LOL Amiga suxxor (Score:2)
Despite coming in handy on my current project, I'm not sure if I would advertise my assembly expertise, either!
Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month (Score:3, Insightful)
$23 dollars per hour is a lot to someone who is currently unemployed, or doesn't have the time to work because they are studying. Given that there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing without any optimism about financial reward, this probably will get quite a good response.
another source (Score:2)
Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month (Score:2, Informative)
Its from the same people that run planet source code [planet-source-code.com]
I cant see any requirement for GPL though.
Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month (Score:2)
I actually ran a small homebrew site like this for a while. It was www.mindshareware.com. Not a firm requirement for GPL, but for any of the open licenses (as I published source code). Got three one-day projects finished.
My Mail to Bill. (Score:4, Interesting)
----
Hello,
I don't know if you are the person responsible for the
http://www.discreetfx.com/AmiZilla.html
I would like to contact you because I think there are better ways to help the Amiga getting a good Webbrowser. There was a german Article about this on www.amiga-news.de which I have read and replied to.
http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/comments/thread
Message 18 and 21. Sorry It's written in german Language so you may need to translate it using babelfish. I think you will understand it and the
contents of it.
But here a little summary.
I used to be a member of the Amiga community from 1984 - 1996 and left for Linux. I am following the Mozilla development process for various years now, contributed to it with bugreports and some minor patches, then went over to support the GALEON people.
My personal opinion is that porting Mozilla is a wrong way to go because of complexity and the required maintainership.
The mozilla approach was always criticised by many people of the open source community because of it's bloat. e.g. it's an entire development
plattform (basically a whole os and widgetset) that was also the reason why browser such as galeon, skipstone, epiphany or k-melon showed up,
they all used the embedded mozilla component and used their native window which fits pleasingly into the environment what many people simply wanted was a fast webbrowser which either fits into their desktop environment either GNOME or KDE.
Over the time the SAFARI people showed up and they have decided to take the KHTML component from KDE (supports DOM, CSS1 and CSS2, HTML4, JS,
SSL and so on), they ripped the library out of KDE, wrote a wrapper around it and called it webcore:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/webco re
the kde people then got told about this after safari got released and the safari and kde people are now working on one unified component e.g.
2 teams are working on one library, they are now up to separate the backend from the engine so you can simply take the library and have it used on whatever plattform you like. The link above shows you an old version of the webcore, it's not the same as they are using now.
During the time Safarit was announced the Mozilla people got heavily pissed off and decided to change their entire roadmap because they
finally realized that XUL (their widgetset) and their way of doing things wasn't attractive to the public thus their new roadmap is to create a separate suite the email client and then the webclient (in the means of phoenix (firebird)). they are also working now to separate the
frontend from the backend and thus they work on the GRE component called Gecko Runtime Environment which offers alternative browser to use a
light library instead the requirement to install the whole mozilla stuff.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/GRE.ht ml
------------------
The point is, that I think it would be better to work together with one of these two teams either the KHTML team or the GRE team and have these
libraries ported to the Amiga rather than porting the entire mozilla project. The problems with Mozilla port could be various. On the one hand is that you need to deal with the Maintainers of mozilla. A lot of individual people that you need to explain why you want to have Amiga support in it and then the various complex problems that may show up. I know from various developers who tried to port Mozilla to GTK2+ plattform that this caused an neverending flame wether they go Pango (for fontrendering, language and AA) o
Re:My Mail to Bill. And my second reply to him. (Score:2, Interesting)
A last note. I was talking about GRE (Mozilla Gecko) and KHTML (Safari Koqnueror) libraries all the time.
These are full rendering components available as libraries. See it as an object. You write a native Amiga Window, add a toolbar, add a bookmarks system and there where you want to see the rendering stuff, you simply put the HTML rendering object inside. It's like putting a big pushbutton in the middle of the window (adding a gadget to your window).
Re:My Mail to Bill. (Score:2)
So it is better to just forget about there being a GRE at all to begin with. Just port Mozilla and the GRE will fall out of it, but the reverse is not true.
Re:My Mail to Bill. (Score:2)
So if you did want to build only the GRE bits, you would have to make a list of what things those are compile around all the other stuff (leaving a mess of ifdefs in y
Re:My Mail to Bill. (Score:2)
I have no experience of webcore, but I would guess that it would suffer many of the same issues. It might look lighter, but then you still have to port zlib, png, jpeg, expat, QT an
Simple. (Score:2, Funny)
2. Boot Windows....er... linux.
3. Install Moz.
Profit.
Heck I'd pay 3639$ to see Moz ported to my Gameboy Color [the Z80 one] that in itself would be a feat!
Tom
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
You could literally type something on the command prompt and wait a minute for the characters to agonizingly appear one at a time on the screen. Other than its excrutiating speed it was useful for transferring files and whatnot but it fast it was not.
thought it might be a interesting project... (Score:5, Interesting)
Q: What will be the requirements and the minimum spec for the Amiga version.
A: Well that will depend a lot on the programming team that tackles the port and their skillset but the spec I would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever/Amithlon/AROS/MorphOS. 68030+ CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA.
get it ! get it ! they are talking about the original amiga series, not the new one with the 600mhz PPC !
mozilla isnt even running lag free on my dual P3 with 512mb ram omg omg this is so over the top
Re:thought it might be a interesting project... (Score:4, Informative)
wow what did you do wrong?
My old P-II SMP box runs Moz damn fast... pretty much lag free.
But then I have a SCSI U160 12 disk Raid array on that box.. but no processor setup on this planet even a 8 processor P-4 90ghz box with "Future-seeum(TM) technology" can affect load speed off of a rotating magnetic storage device... my Hard drives are simply 10 times faster than anything you have.
I'd look at your low end IDE drives and bus. you either need to set something using hdparam in linux or your hardware has some real problems.
dont blame software load time on your processors, blame it on the real bottlenecks in your system.
You're probably wrong (Score:2)
Re:thought it might be a interesting project... (Score:4, Interesting)
Booty?! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Booty?! (Score:2)
n. pl. booÂties
1. Plunder taken from an enemy in time of war.
2. Goods or property seized by force or piracy.
3. A valuable prize, award, or gain.
scary stuff (Score:2, Funny)
I'm almost temped to donate 10K to see just what sort of wild bender someone who finds a green lizard sexy would actually go on.
Take the money and run! (Score:5, Funny)
$40 to build a shocking Xbox controller.
$100 to buy a Dremel Powertool to explode Steve Miller Cds to infinity
$300 emergeny room visit to have a RN look at your electrical burns on your hands and to pull CD shards out of your ass.
$3236 To start litigation against
Re:Take the money and run! (Score:3, Funny)
Arguments... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Arguments... (Score:2)
Does AOL's attempts at blocking Trillian affect Gaim?
No.
Is Gaim affected by the vulnerability found in Windows AIM or Yahoo Instant Messenger clients?
No.
Can I IM you guys?
Sure! Look at the Contact Information page!
Can I give you money/hardware/other expensive things that can be hocked for cash what with you all being students/full-time-workers and helping to produce this wonderful software instead of studying/sleeping?
No.
Teens need cash. Machines cost cash. (Score:2)
Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash. (Score:5, Funny)
The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be going "What the FUCK is an Amiga?"
Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash. (Score:5, Funny)
Older Geek: "Amiga". In Spanish, it means 'female friend', and...
Younger Geek: What the FUCK is a female friend?
it's just like monopoly (Score:2, Funny)
> Port Mozilla,Collect $3696
second place:
go directly to
do not pass go
do not collect $3696
The easier route (Score:2)
You still have the NSPR and Makefile system, and some assembly used by XPCOM to contend with, but the length task of writing widgets and gfx classes from scratch would go away.
Re:The easier route (Score:2)
Furthermore, while I appreciate the humor in "cooperative memory protection", it doesn't really mean much now does it? ;-)
As for how you should do it, that depends on how Mozilla talks to the underlying OS. Does it have a decent abstraction layer? If so, a port may be feasible. Mind, I wouldn't want to tangle with BOOPSI ("Basic Object Oriented Programming System for Intuition") again, with
Re:The easier route (Score:2)
Advice for the students who got busted by the RIAA (Score:2)
In 2 years... (Score:2)
Enjoy.
Sponsors (Score:2)
Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
-Jetset
-I can't hear the forest now for all the falling trees
Re:Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac (Score:2, Interesting)
If only a few of those people would stop porting linux to hairdryers, making tcp/ip stacks made out of christmas tree lights and casemodding PCs into happy meal toys, the open source movement could really get a strong foothold in the Mac market
If there was a port
Re:Mod this up! or port it today! (Score:2)
Actually, I think that's your real problem and why it probably won't get ported any time soon (if ever). Developers for the most part hate MacOS 9 and lower, simply because it was a crappy OS from the development point of view. (No dynamic memory allocation sticks out as the largest reason for the hatred, but no threads and other things that make a modern OS modern also help.) Most developers are a hell of a lot happier with MacOS
That title made me think of Slashdot Monopoly... (Score:2)
Re:That title made me think of Slashdot Monopoly.. (Score:2)
I'd play.
Righto (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly don't know what I used on the amiga in ages past, I just remember I made the mistake of accepting some 2.x roms and could no longer do that software load of 3.x [exact version number I can not remember presently]
From what I remember, even if you had AGA or 3rd party 24 bit graphics, in my case it was a retna (sp) card, your web browsing experence was pretty limited due to the fact that the stock amiga graphics were at best 16/32/64 colors. I don't honestly remember the details, it's not like you couldn't get 4096 colors, just apparently not for things like gif or jpeg files.
Which brings another point all together, pre 68030 based machines are not really the best at web browsing unless you have a math-co. Gifs are not so bad, jpegs however are pretty slugish. This is not to say that modern amiga users don't have accelerators... this is to say such a product would only be useful to those people.
Perhaps someone wiser then I could remember the particulars, I really couldn't be bothered being nickle and dimed on my amiga, so I just went with lynx and got frustrated and went to the PC.
So issues I see with this project
1. Would browsing in 8bit color or above graphics require a specific rom set?
2. How ever are you going to find a math-co for jpeg decoding.
This is actually comming from a person who was and still is to an extent a big amiga fan. Part of the reason I had to abandon it was the simple fact that even web browsers that were made for the amiga required money from me to display properly.
Re:Righto (Score:4, Insightful)
most users have PPC accelerators, REAL graphic cards (even if they are old, like the Voodoo3),
>64Mbs of RAM or even better, a new PowerPC
motherboard like the Pegasos (running MorphOS,
if you want AmigaOS compatability), with modern
hardware like the Radeon series, etc.
Re:Righto (Score:2)
I pose these issues because there are alot of people like my self who still have an amiga. Such a project like getting a modern web browser to work on it would be spiffy.
In my case, I own an amiga 2000... I have like 2.x roms and a
Re:Righto (Score:2, Informative)
No, just a graphics card supported by either the Picasso96 or CynerGraphX APIs. Such cards can display 24bit screens quite easily. I myself run my Amiga4000T in 800x600x24bit. 1024x768 starts to get too small things for my poor eyes to cope with... I also have an Amiga3000 with a Voodoo3 card and also an ATI Radeon that I am helping develop drivers for, currently at beta level and about to go out for public beta testing. The s
Re:Righto (Score:2)
I really don't remember what the issue was, as I knew other people who owned the retina graphics card who were above t
Re:Righto (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the graphics cards require at least OS 3.0. I'd guess that most (both? ;-) ) remaining Amiga users are at least using that version.
As for JPEG decoding, that's a trivial exercise: just use the excellent datatypes system and load any image format as if it were native. There are plenty JPEG datatypes (PPC, 68060, no math copro
Re:Righto (Score:2)
In order to run Amiga os 3, don't you need the corisponding roms? My memory could be incorrect on this issue. I remember I traded my 1.3 roms for some 2.x roms, but I lost the ability to run amiga os 3.0, which was nessicary to run Aweb as well as Voyager. This is assuming i'm remembering correctly. There was a hack to do a software load of the 3.x roms that didn't work at all under the 2.x roms I had.
If someone would be so kind as to refresh my memory.
I'm sure that.. (Score:4, Funny)
I used to use the GCC tools on the amiga (ADE - or whatever it turned into). But then that slowly went stagnant - and it was 10x faster to cross-compile stuff on the FreeBSD/Pentium166 than to wait for the A3000/'030.
When Amiga/PPC hardware started appearing, I was keen to do some portage of unix-ish type stuff - except the PPC dev toolchain was so woeful it made me want to cry.
sigh.
Re:I'm sure that.. (Score:2)
I remember that. I bought a PPC board with the specific intention to do some cool ports, but it just couldn't be done. The PPC stuff just never worked, and it was plain impossible to find out what was broken: the hardware itself, the communication software, the PPC kernel, the PPC compiler, ... And it wasn't just my own software: there has not
What's the point? (Score:2, Troll)
It's fun and all, but couldn't that money have been better spent on rewarding developers to make something more likely to be useful? I'm sure the crowd here can come up wit
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the Amiga community, despite everything they've gone through still has a passion for their platform. If (not likely admittedly) Microsoft went bust tommorrow, do you think there would be die hard users doing this sort of thing for the Windows platform 10 years later?
This passion speaks volumes about the qualities inherent in the Amiga archiecture and OS.
These are called "paying customers" (Score:2)
Thankfully, The Company (not Kompany) came along and changed all that. Now the developer tells the customer what they want and either gets paid a lot, or nothing at all. It is much easier for the developer now.
More power to these guys. If more projects worked for donations, we might get a finished GUI app
Why not port khtml instead? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why not port khtml instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to compare porting Mozilla to something, you'd have to compare it to porting all of the KDE widget set _plus_ khtml.
Modern Amiga compatible solutions (Score:5, Informative)
1) AmigaOS4
This is the official new AmigaOS developed for classic Amigas upgraded with PPC accelerators and new AmigaOne computers which are being sold with G3 and G4 processors.
Some of the latest but still unfinished screenshots of AmigaOS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?st
AmigaOne motherboards can already be bought in combination with Linux at the following dealers (AmigaOS4 will be delivered for free as soon as it is finished): http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/dealers.php [eyetech.co.uk]
With MOL MacOS X can also already be used with this system (as well as with the Peg below):
http://www.anythingamiga.com/XEPics/x2.jpg.html [anythingamiga.com]
2) MorphOS
Its ABOX environment is a re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. The re-implemted Exec kernel is hosted on top of a Quark microkernel. The OS is fast and responsive and currently runs with G3 Pegasos motherboards. Interested people will have to wait for the Pegasos II, which is planned for release in September. An interesting review can be found at OSNews:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3589 [osnews.com]
3) AROS
An open source project intended as a multi-platform re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. Most of the development takes place on x86 computers. Much of the source code was used for MorphOS. http://www.aros.org/ [aros.org]
4) UAE, Amithlon and other 68 AmigaOS emulators
AmigaOS XL: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=604 [osnews.com]
Amiga Forever: http://cloanto.com/amiga/forever/ [cloanto.com]
Obscene amount? (Score:2)
Hey, that's great. The goal is to raise an obscene/huge amount of money, but they currently have a little over $3500? I think they would need at least $10k for it to be considered big, and more than that to be obsce
6502 assembly (Score:2, Funny)
How much would I get if... (Score:4, Funny)
Port Mozilla, Collect $3696 (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't it be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction! (Score:2)
-
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
- A.P.
Creepy Lizard (Score:3, Funny)
AMiGA STILL HAS THE POWER (Score:2, Funny)
Most of our members have powerful Amiga setups ( http://www.swaug.org.uk/members.html ) enough power to run Mozilla. Myself I'm typing this on my Broadband enabled Amiga with 256Mb RAM and 330GB Hard disk. We "poor old" Amiga owners have USB 2.0, 3D Graphics cards, 5.1 Digital Sound cards, DVD-ROMs and CD-ReWriters. So as you can see the Amiga market isn't all
Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive (Score:5, Funny)
You overclocked yours? 1337!
Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive (Score:5, Interesting)
Your comment is the equivalent of "It's good to see the Windows community as fanatical as ever, would mozilla even run on a 16Mhz 386" or "Would QuarkXPress even run on an 8Mhz Mac Plus"
Mind you, the AmigaOne, having been out nearly a year now, still doesn't have an OS written for it.
I hear after Mozilla is ported, someone will be working on getting networking going for it.
Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive (Score:5, Funny)
"vaporware"
Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive (Score:2)
The horrors of running MS Windows...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:$4000? (Score:2)
I don't think you can appreciate what a mammoth task it really is. Porting Gecko will be a major effort in itself.
If it really is so easy then why hasn't someone ported it already? The Amiga still has plenty of developers left, enough to code OS4 [amiga.com].
Re:$4000? (Score:5, Interesting)
No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.
And much money do the guys porting Mozilla to other platforms receive?
This is open source. Of course, the amount of money isn't going to attract someone who is looking to do programming for commercial gain, but I don't see that anyone is claiming it is. $4000 is a lot more than the $0 that is up for offer by default on open source projects.
The idea is that if someone is perhaps tempted to port it (be it for fun, or whatever else drives people to write software for free), then the cash is a little extra incentive.
Re:$4000? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$4000? (Score:2)
Re:What a waste of time! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amiga? (Score:2)