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
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
That said, Apple's action in this case does seem to stick to that spirit. Not to mention, it makes them look good, and hands off shiny NEW development systems to the people most likely to give even more time to the project.
The real nice part, at any rate, is that these guys aren't being compensated, but are actually rewarded for work which
Not quite the same (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Also, I don't think X-Prize or DARPA grand prize participants to give their designs away.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me tell you a story about a job I had. This job paid $8.50/hr and I spent my day on the phone blocking, unblocking, and collecting payments from the customers of a certain long distance company. The Company I worked for was in financial trouble, so they started cutting back actual pay increases in favor of contests.
The rules were simple. Produce more than every one else on the floor and get paid closer to what you were worth for that month. "Brilliance!" they must have thought. They could pay us less and increase production at the same time!
Immediately, the entire business fell into two camps:
1) People who decided it was futile to play this game. These people's morale was shattered, and as a result, their production decreased.
2) People who cheated to boost production, often leaving horrified customers in their wake, thus making it futile for anyone with a sense of ethics to play the game.
I do not like the "contest" style of compensation. I believe if Apple really wanted to do something, they should compensate every person who did good work for them. That would be fair. As it stands, for every chosen one, there will be many wringing their hands, angry that their hard work goes unappreciated and uncompensated.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
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.
You missed one camp. (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that would be employment.
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:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
Except the job involved bidding money for work, and if you bid the most money for a particular job, you got the work and were paid for it. You were paid good money for it which is why it looked so appealing, I think he was on $45 per hour for transcribing from news broadcasts. The only problem was with such a large pool of "employees" it wasn't unusual to find they were bidding $40 for a job that only involved an hour's transcribing. Do the math and you can see how it works.
That was a scam though, your job sounds like it ended up the same without management quite realising how bad it was.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
If you want your car repaired and find that one place charges $100/hour for labor and another charges $90, which one are you going to pick? If you say $90, do I get to yell SCAMMER!!! SCAMMER!!! at you?
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
great gift, brings me back (Score:2, Interesting)
It really is unlucky (Score:5, Funny)
Sucks to be you, top 13th contributor
Re:It really is unlucky (Score:2)
Borrowing shamelessly a quote in military training camps (and elsewhere to be sure)...
"Know what 13th place is? The first loser."
Re:It really is unlucky (Score:2)
That's what they'd like you to think (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm just a little too cynical here, but this sounds like a great way to get free labor using an open source project. You release it, give some early adopters a thank you gift, and then wait as more people contribute to the project. You leave people with the hopes that they too will get "paid" for their work. Considering the (relatively) small amount of money spent on the gift vs. hiring people to work on the project it comes off as quite a deal. You might even get free advertising [slashdot.org].
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.
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, if they could only... (Score:2)
HBH
Re:Agreed, if they could only... (Score:3, Funny)
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:2)
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
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:3, Interesting)
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:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:2, Informative)
That's just not true. Take a look at the developer lists for major OSS projects, such as gcc. There are a lot of people working on these projects for Red Hat, IBM, SUSE, Apple, various academic and government agencies, etc. Plenty of people (myself included) are paid well for OSS work.
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.
Re:That's what they'd like you to think (Score:2)
I work on Fink and we've gotten little, if any, official support or thank you's from Apple, but that doesn't stop us from making OSX usable by porting *NIX apps to it.
KHTML? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:KHTML? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's decision to
The problem was that KDE and Apple has very different targets on how to release patches and etc. Some of the changes Apple did to WebKit would never be accepted by kHTML team. That in fact forked development of WebKit and kHTML.
After Slashdot bashing (it was in times of release Acid2 test), when kHTML people said that Acid2/kHTML is a very distant (low-pro) target, Apple promised to come-up with solution to the problem. The solution was to clean-up internal repository and open it up the FLOSS community. kHTML people wanted to bring standardatization work done by Apple to kHTML on one side. And on another side Apple wanted to move to newer improved version of kHTML.
Fork the it was going benefited no-one. The way things everyone wants is to have kHTML clean and strandard compliant and WebKit with some hacks and quirks to deliver top notch performance and compatibility for Apple's Safari. Hacks/quirks has always a potential to evolve into a proper solution.
So I think your guess is right: most contributors would be the kHTML team. Thou I expect some other caring souls would wander the repositories too.
P.S. Story about Apple's WebKit v. kHTML. the problem: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/12
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 relati
Re:KHTML? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:KHTML? (Score:2)
Abiding by software licenses is "controversal" now? KHTML is LGPL so it's not like they had much choice.
Re:KHTML? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nine months ago, that changed when Apple started exposing the VCS for WebKit and actively helping kHTML developers to integrate the WebKit improvements to KDE, and integrate the newer kHTML code to WebKit. In the initial situation, Apple benefited. After opening the repository, everybody benefited, and now Apple is saying "Thank you," in a very tangible way.
NASA Worldwind (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:NASA Worldwind (Score:3, Funny)
Re:NASA Worldwind (Score:2)
Re:NASA Worldwind (Score:2)
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:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:3, Informative)
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition via http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gifts [reference.com]
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
ERROR 35 CART/HORSE ORDER MISMATCH.
(I think you might find that "gift" started out as a verb sometime in the 16th century)
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
You should pick up a dictionary (Score:2)
Gift is a f*cking NOUN
It is also a verb: go read this [reference.com]. Of course you won't do that, so here is an excerpt:
gift Audio pronunciation of "gift" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gft) n.
1. Something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation.
2. The act, right, or power of giving.
3. A talent, endowment, aptitude, or inclination.
tr.v. gifted, gifting, gifts
1. To present something as a gift to.
2. To endow with.
Verbs and Nouns (Score:2)
And if I read "Mod me down for this, but..." one more time, I'm going to scream. Or, if
Was Peter Jackson wrong? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:3, Informative)
And F*uck Is A Verb... (Score:2)
>Gift is a fucking NOUN.
Fuck is a verb, and here you are using it as an ADJECTIVE. And besides which, how could the noun "noun" fuck anything except maybe the odd adverb. We need to take a page from the French and get some well-armed language police in here to kick ass and hand out some jail time.
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:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
Yep. Most of our modern English comes from German through Greek. As such, we tend to follow a lot of german rules for language. The fact that the quickest way to create new words in English is to "noun-i-fy" verbs is an example of this. It happens all the time.
~Will
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
Wow. Just wow. Is that what they are teaching kids these days? Well, at least they don't claim it came from Arabic through Mandarin.
Consider this: The Angles and the Saxons were Germanic people from an area roughly around the current border of Germany and Denmark.
Also consider this: The Greeks considered everyone who wasn't Greek (except sometimes Romans and Punics) as barbarians.
The probability that something came into modern English from
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
Please, reread my post; I was talking about the language. When the Angles and the Saxons came to Britain, they brought their language (Germanic dialect) with them, resulting in Old English (which after the Norman invasion, which introduced a lot of French/Latin voc
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
Even if that was what he meant he would still be wrong. English evolved from the German language of the time, yet English was also influenced by Greek and Latin.
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2)
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:Verbing nouns: Gah. (Score:2, Funny)
You can prove anything with facts. I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it.
Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (OT) (Score:2)
Re:As Calvin said (Score:2)
Apple has done this before (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has supported GIMP-print [sourceforge.net] this way for a while now. Granted, they weren't giving them laptops. But, people working on GIMP-print got iMacs and were given special discounts on buying other macs for personal use.
It's a great model. Hopefully, they will continue to do it for years to come.
Re:Apple has done this before (Score:2)
It is certainly one way of looking at things. At the same time, at least these are things that the developers can actually make use of and sell for money if they want to. It certainly beats a T-Shirt saying 'I code for the pleasure of it'. Heck it was Microsoft it would be a copy of MS-Visual Studio or something. In the end, it is better than nothing. If you would prefe
Intel books... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Intel books... (Score:2)
Nice move Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice move Apple (Score:2)
Even in
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.
One good deed deserves another... Bravo. (Score:3, Funny)
Now can we get back to hating each other? GOSH.
Not bad, especially (Score:2)
Safari for Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
With OSX's growing popularity, an increasing number of visitors to my websites are using Safari. Unfortunately, there's no way to test on Safari without actually buying an OSX-capable piece of hardware! Now, in *my* case, I actually went out and bought a Mini.
I realize that maintaining a version of Safari for Windows would represent a significant committment of resources. Perhaps Apple could release some kind of testing tool for Windows that, while not being a full-fledged browser, at least incorporates Safari's WebKit rendering technology. It shouldn't be that hard. I suspect that the Windows version of iTunes uses a port of WebKit to render the iTMS although I can't verify that.
(There are some online services that will show you what your pages look like in Safari - but those aren't particularly helpful for testing dynamic, data-driven sites. Better than nothing but far from an ideal solution...)
Use the Source, Luke (Score:5, Funny)
You have:
* The complete source to Webkit.
* Gtk for Windows.
What else do you need for a Windows port?
Re:Use the Source, Luke (Score:2)
I see the "code it yourself" mentality you're getting at and I think it's valid in a lot of situations.
In this case, it's pretty valid to ask/hope for a solution from Apple. In general, the overlap
Re:Use the Source, Luke (Score:2)
Sounds like an opportunity for an Open Source Bounty then...
Re:Use the Source, Luke (Score:2)
Really, this isn't a case of me "scratching an itch". This is an attempt by myself and a lot of of other web developers to make sure that sites work with Apple's web browser.
It's in Apple's best interest to make sure that as many web sites as possible work with the flagship browser that is bundled with their operating system. Apple needs web developers as much as web developers need them (perhaps even moreso
BrowserCam (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, you'll have to deal with the latency of VNC over the Internet, but it is a solution for people who need more interactivity than old-school BrowserCam but don't want to purchase and maintain another system themselves.
Re:BrowserCam (Score:2)
It would still be nice if Apple could release something to help users test WebKit/Safari on Windows directly, as a lot of developers won't be able or willing to subscribe to a service like BrowserCam.
But until then B
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 li
Re:Safari for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
You suspect incorrectly. The Mac version of iTunes doesn't use WebKit either. The iTunes Music Store does use HTTP, but it does not use HTML. This [edgesuite.net] might interest you; that's linked from here [apple.com].
Job offer... (Anonymous to protect the innocent) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Job offer... (Anonymous to protect the innocent (Score:3, Funny)
Not the First Time for Apple (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Good for Apple (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good for Apple (Score:2)
Re:Something To eBay (Score:3, Informative)
I thought they said at the keynote that battery life was doubled for the macbooks ?
Re:Something To eBay (Score:2)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10853916/site/newswee
Re:Something To eBay (Score:2, Informative)
Can't resist this one...
1) The rate at which software is being released Universal is astonishing.
http://guide.apple.com/action.lasso?-database=MacO SGuide&-layout=cgi_search&-response=/ussearch/hitl ist_universal.html&-op=bw&binaries=Unive [apple.com]