mmadia's blog

Research into crowdfunding

Blog post by mmadia on Sat, 2013-05-25 13:49
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The allure of crowdsourcing is appealing. Notions of being able to reach out to countless new people, who may become interested in HAIKU and what it represents have and continue to captivate my attention. Over the past month, we at Haiku, Inc. have researched, discussed, and discussed some more, two crowdsourcing alternatives -- Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Bitcoin now accepted!

Blog post by mmadia on Sun, 2013-05-12 13:46

Bitcoin logo
In a third installment of donation infrastructure updates, Bitcoin is now accepted! As you may know, bitcoin is a digital currency, which can be "mined" or traded online for cash and various goods and services. Donation buttons are listed on Haiku, Inc.'s donation page. For those who prefer, our bitcoin address is 1CvgfZCz9Scw3711zU1SN59Q8rvas3FgU1.

Flattery will get you everything.

Blog post by mmadia on Sat, 2013-05-11 23:59

Flattr logo
Another development in Haiku's donation infrastructure has been implemented! This time it's Flattr - Social microdonations. Flattr is a way for you to set a monthly donation budget, which then automatically gets divided into equal pieces and donated to people you choose to "Flattr". You can read more about How Flattr Works.

In time, we expect Flattr buttons to be added elsewhere, including haiku-files.org and even within individual postings on the website. For now, it's added underneath the piggy bank donation meter, which shows the yearly income from donations. We understand that no single donation processor will meet every person's wants or needs, so we are continuing to adopt multiple options.

Raising funds for Haiku through Goodsearch

Blog post by mmadia on Sat, 2013-05-11 17:10
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GoodSearch logo
Last month on the [haiku-inc] mailing list, Arman "Kulluminatii" Chahal suggested adding Haiku to Goodsearch. "What is Goodsearch?", you may ask. It's a Yahoo! powered search engine that will donate money (about a penny) to your favorite non-profit or school. They provide other ways to help earn money -- shopping online, participating in online surveys, completing special offers and more! This past week, the registration process completed and Haiku is now a participating non profit!

To choose Haiku as your cause,

  1. Go to goodsearch's homepage
  2. Click the "Choose a cause" button
  3. Enter "Haiku" in the search box.
  4. Select "Haiku (Saddle Brook, NJ)"

Alternatively, you can simply bookmark http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=949749

Currently, WebPositive is hard-coded to use Google when performing a search query from the URL bar. Until a user-defined setting is implemented, the easiest way is simply to set goodsearch as the start page, navigate to it and perform your search.

To set WebPositive's homepage,

  1. Go to Window and select Settings
  2. Paste http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=949749 as the Start page and click Apply.

Overall, this is another way each of us can collectively chip in and help raise secure additional funding for HAIKU. Thank you for the suggestion, Kulluminatii!

Update 2: Contracts for Package Management

Blog post by mmadia on Sun, 2013-03-10 15:24

An unexpected change has necessitated a delay to the start of the package management contracts. Ingo recently posted the update to the [haiku-inc] mailing list. To sum it up, the parts he is responsible for need to be updated to match changes by the customer. At this time, the delay could be anywhere from a few days of work or could be several weeks. The current plan is for Ingo and Oliver to start at the same time. While that asks for patience among us, having both working in tandem is expected to have a synergistic effect. As more information becomes available, I'll try to keep everyone up to date.

Update: Contracts for Package Management

Blog post by mmadia on Sun, 2012-11-11 14:31

As you may recall during August, Ingo Weinhold and Oliver Tappe were each accepted for two-month development contracts relating to package management[1]. Originally, their start dates were slated for sometime around November or December. Due to their current contractual obligations with other employers, they will not be able to begin as early as planned. The revised start date is now around February or March.

Google Summer of Code 2012: Wrap up report

Blog post by mmadia on Fri, 2012-08-31 00:41
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Google Summer of Code 2012 Logo png

Friday, August 24th marked the end of Google Summer of Code 2012. This was the sixth year that the Haiku project participated and was one of 180 fellow mentoring organizations. This year, five of 1,212 students were mentored by Haiku. To give a frame of reference to the competitiveness in Google Summer of Code, over 400 mentoring organizations and over 4,000 students applied to participate. For both mentoring organizations (and students), it is an honor and pleasure to be selected in Google Summer of Code.

For those not in the know, Google Summer of Code is "a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects". In other words, simply by being one of the mentoring organizations, many youthful computer-savvy students may learn about HAIKU for the first time. For a carefully selected few, they have the opportunity to receive priority from our mentors in teaching them how to develop software for Haiku. This is a unique opportunity, as there is no other outreach effort of this magnitude available to the Haiku project.