Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
We are excited to tell you about another proposal for contract development! This time, it is from Axel Dörfler. He is proposing to work 120 hours at $14 per hour, for a total of $1,680. To remind you of the sheer awesomeness of this, Axel has been with the Project since nearly the beginning -- he joined a few months after it was started in 2001. Axel was also Haiku's first employee back in 2005! This is a chance to get him back in the saddle -- or, according to some jokes, back in the basement -- coding Haiku full time for a few weeks.
Axel plans to work on network related tasks. Some of the buzzwords include:
- ICMP
- WPA/WPA2
- WLAN GUI tools
- updating and improving FreeBSD drivers
- testing network cards that people donated
- optimizations
Now, here is where you can help and have a noticeable impact ...
This year, we have been taking a much more pro-active approach with using money to further Haiku and to support the Project. Migrating from a shared web host to a high quality dedicated server. Reimbursing conferences that did not receive funding in the past. Financing the development of WebPositive and the release coordination of R1 Alpha 2. All of this was made possible through generous financial contributions from users like you.
At this moment, our finances are tight. Especially after paying some upcoming expenses, which include Adrien's on-going contract, RMLL, SBC, FISL, and other smaller expenses. We would need to pay Axel directly from our financial reserves. Normally, we like to keep $5,000 as this provides a nice buffer for a rainy day so to speak. Sometime after September, the money from Google Summer of Code will arrive. But before then and without any donations for paying Axel, our balance would go below $3,500. That is a situation we want to avoid. But if need be, we will make it work. Even if it means crossing off other items in the future.
I know you enjoy using Haiku and want to see it shine. This is your chance to pay one of our top developers to write code for Haiku!
You donate. He codes. We all use Haiku.
Comments
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
How very cool!
Regards, HumdingerSince this wage rate is so unbelievably modest for such a titan-of-code, I hope Axel also applies to the Haikuware WiFi Bounty. Thanks Axel, for taking the job, and thanks to all donators for keep making these things possible!
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
It is not possible to donate via the donation page. The drop down menus are not working and the submit button does nothing.
I am using OSX with safari or camino and my Haiku notebook has network issues ;-)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Sorry about that. Somehow the javascript file went missing. Thanks for mentioning it!
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Works now. Thanks!
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
@humdinger
There's an on-going discussion with Axel re: the wireless encryption bounty here:
http://haikuware.com/bounty-discussion/1248-wifi-encryption-bounty-propo...
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
when the alpha2-cd is released i'll pay my share :D
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I have full confidence in Axel and I am sure my donation will be worth every single cent. Really, we only need 120 contributors paying for 1 hour of Axel's time and I am sure some people will donate extra!
I do have one concern - does the proposal factor in beer and pizza?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
120 hours. He can make it that long without beer and pizza. It's a good reward for finishing though and BGA might share. The high humidity of the basement should help prevent dehydration. ;-)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
It's not April, 1 ??
Axel **REALLY** will go back and coding more?????
\º/
Thanks !!!
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I'm glad to see alternatives to PayPal but all my credit cards are kaput at the moment. I do however have a little money in a Canadian HSBC account (don't know if I can transmit online) and I also have a few dollars in an etrade account that I have chequebook access to.
What I want to know is - Can I mail a donation to Haiku?
Also, I know that people generally frown on mailing cash but that'd be another way I would consider donating to Haiku to support Axel's proposal. Any chance of that?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
IIRC, wire transfers cost $12 to accept, so for the most part we don't encourage it ... but you can definitely mail a check or money order: Donations by Check or Money Order mentions the physical address to send it to. Mailing actual cash -- yeah, we'd like to avoid that. Money orders can usually be purchased at the post office and much safer.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Aha... Thanks for your reply. As it turns out, I still have one non-expired card so I signed up for google checkout and added $50 to the cause.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Here goes my donation !!! Go for it Axel!!
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Since Wifi Encryption would practically be covered by this, Haikuware has ~$1800 worth of bounty money. How about moving that funding and combining it all to bring Gallium and some 3D to Haiku, or is this unreasonable?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Let the bounty expire or be claimed, I say. Changing the rules mid-game would be disrespectful.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I agree, I would never change anything without notifying the donors first, and offering a refund if things were changed.
Was just a suggestion.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I'm saying that you shouldn't yank a bounty just because a developer manages to secure some extra funding for fulfilling it. That would be disrespectful to a developer who manages to make a hole in his schedule and scrape together a few bucks here and there to go work on Haiku. Multiple sources of funding should be seen as complementary and not as redundant.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
over $3,000 has been donated!
Does anyone have ideas to keep Axel busy a second month?
;-)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
A lot of people want to see 3D support on Haiku, printers working... I might suggest doing this somewhat democratically. Get a list of suggestions and do a poll (after first consulting Axel and seeing if the poll subjects are feasible of course).
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
3D is a nice thing to have... but it could be easily delayed
The most important thing is implement SDL with OpenGL support (it's all about 60 lines of code). Only with SDL, I think that 3D stuff could be satisfied by now
After that, working on drivers (ATI Radeon HD comes in my mind) and printers could be a nice thing
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
How about CIFS support?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
It would be interesting and very useful to be able to use HSDPA/HSUPA device....
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Another quick bounty for someone to fix mediakit (mainly audio) playback bugs would make sense. Would help with html5 video when web+ matures. youtube, anyone?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I agree with samui
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Fixing these annoyances with the desktop and Deskbar would be appreciated:
*Icons on the desktop aren't ordered in any way. Ordering them in an up-to-down left-to-right fashion, like in Windows and most Linux DE's is preferable.
*Deskbar is treated like just another window. Being able to move a window above Deskbar is not a good thing IMO. I think it should be visible at all times, unless you're using a fullscreen app.
And bringing Gallium3D to the OS of course, this would help Haiku a lot.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Yes, Gallium would be great. Other things I would like more work on are Haiku kits, thumbnail preview for image files, update GCC to 4.5, porting of key software like Open Office (although I don't use it myself), Blender (pretty much needs hardware 3d acceleration to be useable for anything other than rendering though), Inkscape, etc. A port of Wine would probably make a Windows->Haiku transition alot easier for lots of people. Heh, I guess we all have huge lists of things we'd like worked on for Haiku :)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
"Deskbar is treated like just another window. Being able to move a window above Deskbar is not a good thing IMO. I think it should be visible at all times, unless you're using a fullscreen app."
You can have it behave like you want by using "always on top" in deskbar/settings.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Sorry, I missed that, but then the window can go below the Deskbar instead, right? Above or below, both are terrible for me. :P
I think what I really want is better "window tilting" or what it's called. Basically, in most Linux DE's, there's a mechanism that makes it harder to get a window outside the corner of the screen, or below or above a panel. It's also easier to stack windows elegantly.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
What about making him work on OpenJDK?
Ok, I understand if all the desktop-only guys don't care about Java - Sun miserably failed at pushing it on the desktop - but the world runs on Java. And OpenOffice needs it :)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I wouldn't wory about Java. its a horrific language. I hate to say this but supporting the .net framwork would absolutely open hiaku up to enterprise as alot of office appcs and bussiness apps have moved to .net.
I hate .net. Just like java. Only slower.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I would say go for Gallium 3d. There is also the question how much difference would this make for the majority of users if there is no 3d drivers? I know Rudolf Cornelison developed some 3d drivers for older nvidia cards. Would this make it easier for him to develop newer card drivers? (or anyone else). Would these older drivers be improved with Gallium or would they have to be recompiled/adapted first?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Unfortunately, 3D developers don't grow in trees.
Let see what axeld thinks first.
If he agrees, then we could do a little todo list
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I'am not sure many valuable developers are willing to work at this rate...
Thanks axel ;)
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Well, if I understand correctly, the whole point of Gallium (or at least the major point) is that it provides system agnostic drivers. So if Haiku gets Gallium working, there's no need to write specific Haiku 3d drivers but instead use the 3d drivers that is written directly for Gallium. AFAIK the system dependant part of the Gallium/Mesa solution is the DRM module which needs to be specially adapted for Haiku (through which I assume is how Mesa<->Gallium communicates). I'm not exactly well versed in Gallium though, so I may be speaking out of my arse here ;) Perhaps someone with better insight can provide a good explanation.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I would like to see an option for doing an automatic monthly donation. Something like maybe 10 per month or so. I would not miss that and if enough people signed up it could generate quite a bit of money. This is just my opinion though. Maybe people who signed up could get first access to beta releases or something. Anyway, just an idea. I would love to see more developers being able to get paid to work on Haiku. Even if the pay isn't tremendous.
Thanks
David
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
At the moment, we support automatic monthly donations with PayPal. Unfortunately, AmazonPayments and GoogleCheckout involve a bit more to set up automatic recurring payments. .... Anyways, to set up a monthly donation, simply select "Monthly" from the right-most drop selection list. If that option is disabled, select PayPal to re-activate it.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
Ok, I completely missed that. I will do that.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
For some reason even though I am subscribed to this page I am not being notified by emails. None of whatever I subscribe to is notifying me from Haiku website. I used to get notifications but they stopped for some reason.
notifications
I haven't been getting notifications for just under a year now; it could be connected to the site redesign after R1A1.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
I tried to donate via google checkout using WebPositive, but it seems it doesn't work, when I select the amount and validate, it leads to https://checkout.google.com/m/error and says the page can't be found. I'll test it again from linux tomorrow.
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
What options did you use and from which browser?
Re: Opportunity to Pay Axel to Code Haiku!
it was a single donation. I've just made the same thing using firefox on Linux, and I could finish the transaction. Strange because webpositive usually supports most of the website I can visit. When browsing the checkout website, it looks like a mobile version of the site (less informations, smaller fonts)