BOUNTY THREAD - $$$ for code

[orenwolf]

Ok.

I am an opensource advocate. I believe in the development model, in the community, and in the spirit that opensource provides.

I have also been actively involved in the Mozilla project for more thant two years (triage work, not actual code, but for a project as big as mozilla, equally important).

Mozilla differs from ShowEQ in that most of the coders are paid to code for Mozilla. Obviously not everyone who has contributed code works for Netscape, but many do.

From time to time, a problem comes up which is a high priority for the Mozilla *community*, but not for Netscape, and they will not fund work on the feature. This leaves someone from the community (or a dev, on his own time) to do the work instead. Normally, this works fine.

But what happens when the job is big, and complicated, and the motivation simply isn't there in the community to do the work?

The answer, simply, to find a motivation.

Here, we have a difficult problem. Fix the networking code for ShowEQ. It sounds somewhat complicated, but I don't think terribly so. I believe instead that it is far more tedius than complex (as in, I don't believe the fundamental underpinnings have changed, but getting it to work correctly is an "unfun" venture).

So, when the job is tedius, and the motivation isn't there, what do we do, as users?

We Pay.

Your not buying a product, you're buying someone's time to work ON a product. And at the same time providing motivation to do so.

And I, for one, am prepared to help remotivate the development team.

To that end, I offer $50 USD, via Paypal, to the person/team who successfully works out the packet structure and documents the process (by this, I merely mean the structs, and a general message explaining what steps are required at a high level to take an EQ packet and massage it to be SEQ-able).

I invite anyone with the same mindset as me to do the same. Just a few of the lurkers donating $10/20 will result in a reasonable winfall to get this program working again.

I'm willing to hold the funds "in escrow" until the fix is in hand, but alternately, if I am not sufficently trusted by the community, I'd like to nominate Ratt to hold the funds in the SEQ Paypal account, if he so wishes (and is willing).

Lastly, what's my motivation?

Simple. i've played EQ since beta. I've had a lot of fun with the game, but the neverending spawn hunt and getting lost holds no appeal for me. without showeq I spend far more time finding things to kill than actually killing, and this seriously hampers my enjoyment of EQ. With that in mind, and considering I was willing to shell out for a substandard map interface in Ykesha, the least I can do is pay someone for their time in producing an invaluable tool.

[Alfred]

Good luck with this idea.

I posted something similar with the intention of openning eyes to the fact that these people are Not being paid and that I would gladly do so. Even tho it was light hearted, if someone would have taken it serious I think I would have helped out.

Nobody would take it other than as a joke .

If you do get feedback that is constructive, I'd be willing to contribute.

GL

[orenwolf]

..Even my personal donation is more than $0, which is what the devs would get otherwise, so even without support from the rest of the community I hope I'll make a difference.

But seriously.. all of you ask yourselves - what is a dev's time worth to you? What is a working showeq worth to you?

If it's $0, fine. If it's as little as $5, offer it up to get it working again. We may even get non-dev lurkers to try their hand at the code if the pot is high enough, who normally would not.

And, By the way, in case anyone wants to see an example of this process working in OSS, have a look here:

Donations for Mozilla Development.

[Amadeus]

*IF* one of the trusted devs on this forum (ie, Ratt, Fee, Mvern, etc..) posted that they had a working version of ShowEQ and *IF* they were offering to continue working on the project if they were paid, then I'm all for it.

I think it might be neat to charge a smaller amount for each CVS update. For example, $10 per CVS update sounds fair to me /shrug. Means if your version continues to work past a few patches, you could elect not to upgrade new features, etc... however, if you want a working version of SEQ, cough up the $10.

Time is money. I'm more than willing to pay for a good product at a reasonable rate. I'm nervous about paying an 'up front' license for free updates for life (ie, $100 for SEQ for life, for example) because you never know when someone will tire of the game or else SEQ will make it VERY hard to crack. But, I think paying per CVS would make more money for the devs and avoid consumers paying for something that might fizzle at any point.

[orenwolf]

you're missing the point. This isn't about "buying" seq.

This is about paying someone for thier time spent working on a SEQ fix. It's about motivation. I seriously doubt that whomever accepted this task and produced a working seq would subsequently turn and say "next patch, you pay me again". Reputation matters.

If you're not comfortable with the idea of paying someone to perform work on a "free" product, I understand. The concept is somewhat alien in western culture.

But I mist reiterate again, this isn't about paying for Showeq. This is about compensating someone for taking the time to do the work we cannot, or will not, ourselves.

Think of it as a "tip jar", payable to the person who does the work.

[mvern]

/shrug, you can probably expect a cvs commit along with the next eqgame.exe patch. Has nothing to do with payment, just no point in spending the time to fix current live code when test has different code. I work on seq because I use it myself, and I play on test, so you can do the math. :P

[Amadeus]

/rofl ...who would have thought that this thread, of all threads, would get a response from Mvern?


Mvern, you're the man I knew that you had the ability if you were still interested since you've broken some hard shit before.
It's nice to know for certain that you don't play on live servers at all...that should help in the future with getting people to be patient ...they just have to wait until live matches test

Thanks for your work. I hope SEQ can be stable for a while...I have some ideas for enhancing the program as is, but I don't have the network background to "Fix" it when it breaks

[Jillian]

Originally posted by mvern
/shrug, you can probably expect a cvs commit along with the next eqgame.exe patch.

/CHEER!!! I would gladly pay to a current developer pool if we had a system setup.

[e@tme]

/shrug, you can probably expect a cvs commit along with the next eqgame.exe patch.

Well, the patch that had been slated for thursday has now been moved to April 1:

check here and here for info.

[CybMax]

I like the idea.. But dont know how it is possible to work through

Ie. Will a dev come forth and say : I will do the work! and when he finishes, he gets the cast..

Or.. Will the first dev to "I put up the fix!!" be rewarded the cash?

What if people are willing to donate as you $50 here, and $20 there.. it makes quite a good deal of cash.. but does this mean that eg. 2 months from now, some doode fixes it, he will get the cash? Or, do the "contributors" of this set "Fix it THIS month.. and ill happily pay my $20 of the cake.."

Or..? All cash goes to a common account with a admin that chooses the rules.. and such..

Too many questions.. But the idea is good.. Toss the Devs a carrot, and they might just wanna pick up again

[xirtam]

True developers will work regardless of whether or not there's a monetary incentive. At jobs I've done in the past regarding computer work, I could hardly understand why I was being paid. The work was fun.

That said, monetary incentive is always nice, I'm not knocking it.

CybMax, your points are well received. But in an open development environment like this, it would be easy to just toss the money to Ratt and have him delegate it as he sees fit. You can tell by the cvs changes who's done what.

[Alfred]

Toss money to Ratt?! He probably would spend it on cheap Hookers.

[xirtam]

Toss money to Ratt?! He probably would spend it on cheap Hookers.

There's a thought. Suppose there's more than one way to pay for development services.

[Hendrix_Morton]

I think this is a great idea...

Im one of those lurkers who has been around forever (HQ site and all) and couldnt program my self out of a paper bag (ORACLE DBA here), but would be more than happy to offer some cash to show the devs how much they are appreciated...

Not paying for SEQ, giving some well deserved credit (credits?) to those that can and do the work that makes me happy...

[orenwolf]

Well, I'm all for having Ratt set up a "Tip Jar" that people can contribute to and Ratt can delegate the funds from on his own schedule. I have no interest in spearheading the effort, I'm just the first to "put my money where my mouth is".

Personally, I'll pay whomever Ratt acknowledges in the CVS commit as having done the work, be it one or many.

Mvern, if you submit the patch that gets us working, the $50 is yours.

Now, we just need Ratt's support on this.