After The GNOME Bounties, It's Mozilla's Turn 290
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."
My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Informative)
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)
I liked the extension and what it did, but damn it slowed everything down..
Not so slow (Score:2)
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
Excellent! (Score:2)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
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
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Now, impliment it someone
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
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)
already done (Score:3, Funny)
I think I remember reading recently that Belkin routers do this for you. :)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Informative)
http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/
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)
Yes, I did go through all the options for it and made the sensible selections in regard to javascript.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
It also has the added benefits of ad-blocking.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Hotmail Working Solution (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
The policy to support non -javascript browsers is long gone. These days corporates just assume you have a javascript enabled browser. The best you can hope for is the <noscript> Sorry this website won't work without javascript </noscript>. And that too if you are lucky.
Re:My Mozilla bounty (Score:2)
Another reason (perhaps more important) is that you'll have Hotmail (or some other free account) even if you change ISPs. If you move around a lot (eg. students going to school and back home for holidays, etc) or if you have financial problems (eg. might have to switch ISPs based on circumstance), you will have one account. For instance, I might have to change my ISP because
Alright! (Score:5, Interesting)
Damon,
Re:Alright! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Alright! (Score:2)
Damon,
And it scales even better... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:And it scales even better... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Good point (Score:2)
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
Re:And it scales even better... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And it scales even better... (Score:2)
Cevelopers vs Contributers (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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
Re:Alright! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people are nothing more than economic slaves under capitalism. The best one can do is to free themselves. Mark Shuttleworth has freed himself
Once you have freed yourself, you can do whateve
Re:Alright! (Score:3, Informative)
I suggest taking a look at the actual CVS checkin logs next time before making statements like that.
Re:Firebird redefined. (Score:2)
Independent Contractors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Independent Contractors? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am still waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:I am still waiting (Score:2)
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)
Re:Interesting Idea.. (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, sarcasm btw
Re:Interesting Idea.. (Score:2)
Re:Interesting Idea.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been pondering the impact of OSS on employees for a while. I don't think there is anything concrete to go either way. You may be right; or you may be
not just Mozilla (Score:2, Informative)
A Bounty In The Spirit Of The Open Source Movement (Score:2, Funny)
Raise your hand... (Score:2)
...if you read that as "Gnome BOOTY hunt", and wondered what bozo posted this on
Re:Raise your hand... (Score:2)
-Zipwow
Bounties for open/free software work... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Bounties for open/free software work... (Score:2)
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)
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)
update on the Mersenne search (Score:2)
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)
Intelligent filtering (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Intelligent filtering (Score:2)
And I don't see why it'd be too hard to modify the current bayesian filter that identifies messages matching "spam" and have some parallel ones identifying any old kind of mail.
Re:Intelligent filtering (Score:2)
Then try SpamBayes for Outlook [python.net]
Money for software...gee how novel (Score:2)
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)
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...
Re:Put an end to the free beer rides (Score:2)
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)
Bounties? (Score:5, Funny)
SVG maintenance (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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
Re:How About Microbounties? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21343
(direct links to bugzilla from slashdot don't work, so copy and paste the URL.)
Re:How About Microbounties? (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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
Likes (Score:2)
Hey, Mark! That's karma whoring!
Anyhow, GREAT JOB!
my Bounty (Score:2)
Re:my Bounty (Score:2)
Shayne
SchoolTool (Score:2, Informative)
Don't forget international developers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:$100,000.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$100,000.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've heard that IE sends fucked up packets so it can connect to IIS websites, maybe that's the problem, but on modern machines, mozilla is fast enough for me. On my PII/233, IE kicks the shit out of mozilla, though.
Re:$100,000.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct about the "fucked up packets". What IE does when it communicates with IIS is it manipulates the TCP sequence numbers to artificially hold open HTTP connections, a clear violation of the layered network model. Also, it sends a RST rather than the FIN-ACK sequence to kill connections. We discovered this while writing a packet-sniffer that would dynamically reconstruct HTTP exchanges.
IE and IIS do this in order to eke out speed improvements.
Re:$100,000.... (Score:2)
Re:$100,000.... (Score:2)
Since I saw it with my own eyes, and wrote the code to fix it myself, I don't buy your "disproved" statement, sorry.
Re:$100,000.... (Score:2, Informative)
It hasn't happened since IE4.
People regularly claim that it is still happening, as you just did. That has been disproved. I did it with my own eyes.
Similar story (Score:2)
Overall Moz/FireBird are great products.
Re:Python (Score:2)
For that matter, it should handle anything that gcc compiles, too (though if it could handle Python or Ruby that last would be a cinch).
OTOH, this sure gets rid of any security...so this had better be custom enabled, and disabled by default. And probably run in a sandbox. (With access to a specified local directory. And automatically filter lin
Complete Language list to be supported (Score:2)
Did I forget something?.. Oh, yes - and TeX/LaTeX too!
Seriously, each time one of them is not supported in some software I need it next day after I learn that it's not there. It must be solved once and forever - all those languages must be supported. So each time the programmer can use the right tool
Re:Python (Score:2, Insightful)
Well it's this guy's bounty, not yours, is it? And he most clearly explains the benefit he sees:
"It should handle not only Python, but also (etc.)"
And the word "should" should only be used to prescribe what oneself, not others, "should" be
Re:Mozilla Question (Score:5, Informative)
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enable
You can access your user.js file by typing about:config in your search box, assuming you're running Firebird [may work for the moz, not sure].
Re:Mozilla Question (Score:2)
It should be noted that the reason that error pages are not turned on by default is that they are currently still buggy. For a while (I think this is now resolved), using error pages would result in losing the most recent item in your history list. See Bug 28586 for more information (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2858 6 -- copy & paste that, you can't link to Bugzilla from Slashdot).
Also, if you're still using the Moz App Suite (
Re:Mozilla Question (Score:2)
This is very noticable when you're typing a password into a page that has not finished loading, and then it finishes loading and the keyboard focus goes to the username box, and the last few characters in
Re:Mozilla Question (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla Question (Score:2)
Re:Here is a suggestion... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Virtual Text-highlighter (Score:2)
But Epiphany is (Score:2)