*Your* Opinion is requested about Google Summer of Code 2009 and "Community Funding"
Yuval Levy
Please read and reply, even if you are not a developper.
There is a bottom line question: would you donate 10$ toward the
development of new Hugin features? details below.
GSOC 2009 IS UP
This morning Google's Open Source Project Office informed us that they
received Executive approval to run Google Summer of Code again.
Given the current economic context the program will be smaller than last
year, targeting about 150 organizations and 1000 students.
We can start recruiting students and mentors, however *it is imperative
that we make clear that there is no guarantee that our organization will
be accepted in GSoC2009. And that we cannot in any way guarantee a place
for the students in the program just because our organization is
accepted into GSoC 2009*
The stipend amounts ($4500 to the successful student and $500 to the
organization) will remain unchanged.
HUGIN/PANOTOOLS AT GSOC2009
Hugin/Panotools has participated successfully in the past two GSoC
editions. We got some really nice features developed, and some of them
ship now and are productively used in Hugin:
<http://code.google.com/soc/2008/pano/about.html>
<http://code.google.com/soc/2007/pano/about.html>
Do we, as Hugin/panotools want to participate again? who would be
available to do mentoring? I am available to be backup admin, though if
nobody takes up the role of primary admin I'll do that.
COMMUNITY FUNDING
One of the thing I intended to do back from the holidays was to make a
new Windows installer snapshot available with the new features from
GSoC2008 (fast preview, PTbatcher, Celeste) and the new projections that
have been added lately.
How would you feel about it if it would be available for a 10$ charge,
with most of that money going to fund development?
500 downloads would yield the same budget as a GSoC student. We could
use the money to either fund the students that we will recruit in the
coming weeks if we are not accepted to GSoC, or set up additional
bounties/projects of our own, for things such as deghosting in enfuse.
My binaries for the 0.7 snapshots had download rates of 250/day. It also
had a price tag of 0$, so at 10$ I don't expect that much. With 20
downloads per day we'll be able to get funding for one project per month
and keep development going this year.
What do you think? Would you chip in a 10$ donations?
Yuv
Joris Van Dael
definitely do that again.
Op 7-jan-09, om 18:59 heeft Yuval Levy het volgende geschreven:
Michael Galloway
i will glady make a contribution (would much prefer a contribution as opposed
to a download fee). ptgui pro is $150eu. autopano pro is $145US, ptmac bundle
is $125US.
-- michael
Milan Knížek
> My binaries for the 0.7 snapshots had download rates of 250/day. It
> also
> had a price tag of 0$, so at 10$ I don't expect that much. With 20
> downloads per day we'll be able to get funding for one project per
> month
> and keep development going this year.
>
> What do you think? Would you chip in a 10$ donations?
>
I would donate even more to see the last projects fully included in
hugin (if I recall, only the batch processing and opengl is in the main
trunk now - correct me pls if I am wrong) and would not mind if it is
tied to a download of the installer - I tend to prefer linux anyway.
br
Milan Knizek
knizek (dot) confy (at) volny (dot) cz
http://www.milan-knizek.net - about linux and photography
Bruno Postle
>
>One of the thing I intended to do back from the holidays was to make a
>new Windows installer snapshot available with the new features from
>GSoC2008 (fast preview, PTbatcher, Celeste) and the new projections that
>have been added lately.
>
>How would you feel about it if it would be available for a 10$ charge,
>with most of that money going to fund development?
I have no objection, supporting Windows is a lot of work. So long
as there is nothing to prevent anyone rolling their own.
Windows users are also accustomed to get stuff for free, so I'm not
sure how many 'sales' this would generate - Another possibility is
to get sponsorship either in the installer or 'splashscreen'.
--
Bruno
ArAgost
point.
I would donate VERY GLADLY (and I think I will soon) because this
software is worth a lor more than 0$ ;)
A parallel offer of 0$ for 0.7 and 10$ for 0.8 seems fine for me
David Haberthür
As a mac user I am very grateful to the efforts of Harry and would
gladly chip in with some money to help with the progression of hugin
in general.
I guess it would be better to ask more prominently for donations from
all the people who download, and not only "charge" for the
windows-version.
Habi
Rich
i don't want to hijack this thread, but this sounds like an interesting
idea.
how would developers and community in general react to small,
unobtrusive ads in splash/installer ?
i'd guess panoramic hardware manufacturers could be interested, maybe
also other photo equipment vendors.
personally, i would have no objections for small, unobtrusive ads in
these two locations (i would compare that to sun logo in oo.org
splashscreen).
--
Rich
voschix
very powerful software.
My opinion on the donation question is that I would much prefer a
prominently placed invitation to donate than a download fee. If you
decide for charging, I think that charging for a new version and
keeping the previous one free is not a good choice, as it would simply
slow down the upgrading in the user community.
Volker
ArAgost
interest in the software. And given the price of their hardware, I
think they can afford it... ;)
prokoudine
> Do we, as Hugin/panotools want to participate again? who would be
> available to do mentoring? I am available to be backup admin, though if
> nobody takes up the role of primary admin I'll do that.
again.
> One of the thing I intended to do back from the holidays was to make a
> new Windows installer snapshot available with the new features from
> GSoC2008 (fast preview, PTbatcher, Celeste) and the new projections that
> have been added lately.
>
> How would you feel about it if it would be available for a 10$ charge,
> with most of that money going to fund development?
IMO :)
This isn't a new practice really. X-Chat's Windows build is available
for money only for quite a while now. I can't say, however, if it's
worth it. You can try and see. You can always roll back to non-
commercial way.
Alexandre
prokoudine
> how would developers and community in general react to small,
> unobtrusive ads in splash/installer ?
citizen agrees to that :)
For free software becoming adware would equal to a scream for money.
Alexandre
Bruno Postle
>On 8 янв, 13:07, Rich <r...@hq.vsaa.lv> wrote:
>
>> how would developers and community in general react to small,
>> unobtrusive ads in splash/installer ?
>For free software becoming adware would equal to a scream for money.
Like firefox?
--
Bruno
Pablo d'Angelo
Yuval Levy wrote:
> Hi all, and HAPPY NEW YEAR.
>
> HUGIN/PANOTOOLS AT GSOC2009
I would do mentoring for one project again.
> COMMUNITY FUNDING
>
> One of the thing I intended to do back from the holidays was to make a
> new Windows installer snapshot available with the new features from
> GSoC2008 (fast preview, PTbatcher, Celeste) and the new projections that
> have been added lately.
>
> How would you feel about it if it would be available for a 10$ charge,
> with most of that money going to fund development?
I agree with Bruno, having a download fee would be fine with me.
Interested developers should of course still have the option of easily
starting hacking on hugin. The hugin sdk should be still freely available.
Having only a download charge would maybe a bit strange, as somebody who
would have paid for a download would want to download a new version
without paying, too. Maybe sending everybody who had paid a special
download link that stays active after each pay would be a practical
solution, that wouldn't require adding trial periods or disabling
features until payment is done.
However, I fear that the outcome might be that most people will stick
with the free 0.7 version just to avoid paying anything.
This brings me to another point: Currently, all donations go straight to
my paypal account. I didn't spend much time on hugin in the last months,
and it is likely that in the future I can't spend the same amount of
time on hugin as I did from 2003 to mid 2008.
For the future, it might be better to have some independent account
where we can collect the donation money and then use it for tasks such
as full time student developers (Hmm, it'll be interesting to see how
this should be organized...), meetings for core developers (LGM etc.)
Currently the donations do not really have a big economic impact and I
have mainly used that to recover money spend on visits to panotools
meetings and LGM, so I was happy to keep it this way. But if we start
thinking about thousands of dollars or euros, this needs to be changed,
I think.
Other projects have an voluntary association for these purposes, for
example kde: http://ev.kde.org/. But this brings additional work,
especially since hugin is very small compared to most other projects
that have an own association. I don't know how "slim" such an
organisation can be.
ciao
Pablo
Don Holeman
>> Maybe sending everybody who had paid a special download link that stays
active after each pay would be a practical solution, that wouldn't require
adding trial periods or disabling features until payment is done.
Hugin is certainly worth paying a donation, and this idea of a subscription
- say, for a year - is a good way to assure people that their investment
will have some shelf life.
The downside is that paying money creates expectations for the purchaser -
support, upgrades, bugfixes and the like - so your strategy needs to
accommodate an elevated level of user maintenance.
I wonder if there is maybe a way to get corporation support for Hugin, or
for the summer of code costs directly? For instance, Gigapan is in beta now,
and they have some sort of software automation for their stitching. This
can't be better than Hugin, and Google is involved with Gigapan so is there
some way to leverage a connection?
Don
Yuval Levy
prokoudine wrote:
> If the team is happy with my administrating last year, I can do it
> again.
2007 I was admin and you (Alexandre) were backup admin. 2008 we inverted
roles. My wish for 2009 is to bring in fresh people. If you want to back
the new admin up, I'll gladly take a further step back. I can always
mentor a student. We need to spread the know-how in the community so
that others can continue after us. I've a son now and I hope he will be
applying as a student in 2027 ;-)
That said, I am confident the team will be happy with you as an admin. I
support you.
Pablo d'Angelo wrote:
> I would do mentoring for one project again.
great! Any other potential mentors around? and students?
About the other topic of this thread, the community funding of the
Windows build, I'll get back with another mail later today, maybe.
Thanks everybody for your interesting feedbacks.
Yuv
prokoudine
> Other projects have an voluntary association for these purposes, for
> example kde:http://ev.kde.org/. But this brings additional work,
> especially since hugin is very small compared to most other projects
> that have an own association. I don't know how "slim" such an
> organisation can be.
iirc) and it isn't a large project either. And yes - it's quite a bit
of work. I can plug you to the Scribus team guy who did it.
Alexandre
Yuval Levy
First of all thanks to the Mac and Linux users for their display of
generosity. Did I miss something, or Windows users were conspicuously
absent? with the exception of
voschix wrote:
> My opinion on the donation question is that I would much prefer a
> prominently placed invitation to donate than a download fee.
no offense intended but experience teaches that this is the preference
of those who will happily ignore the "invitation".
> charging for a new version and keeping the previous one free is not a
> good choice, as it would simply slow down the upgrading in the user
> community.
So what? If users are happy with the old version, why waste resources on
providing/supporting the new one?
Bruno Postle wrote:
> I have no objection, supporting Windows is a lot of work.
Indeed supporting Windows is a lot of work. More ranting on this below.
> So long as there is nothing to prevent anyone rolling their own.
The source is always available in the repository for self-rolling.
> Windows users are also accustomed to get stuff for free
you mean they don't pay a license fee for Windows?
> I'm not sure how many 'sales' this would generate
We'll know it only if we try it. I don't have high hopes, and I intend
to dose Windows support proportionally to the echo from the donors.
> Another possibility is
> to get sponsorship either in the installer or 'splashscreen'.
been there, done that. Click on the thumbnail at
<http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/hugin-ships-with-nodal-ninja/>
This part of the deal was never explicit, but I am sure it helped to get
more Ninjas to dole out to every participant to GSoC 2008 (as opposed to
just the students and assigned mentors like the previous year). Up to
you and the other recipients of Nodal Ninjas to tell if this has been
motivation to contribute.
Could be done again. It is easier to get in-kind donations than cash
from hardware manufacturers, but then there is eBay...
Pablo d'Angelo wrote:
> I agree with Bruno, having a download fee would be fine with me.
> Interested developers should of course still have the option of easily
> starting hacking on hugin. The hugin sdk should be still freely available.
The Hugin SDK for Windows is actually the biggest pain.
In Linux, keeping a self-rolled hugin is so easy that anybody with basic
reading and typographic skills can support their own state of the art
install.
In Windows, once an SDK and the development tools are in place, it is
almost as easy, just much slower.
But try to update a dependency to a newer version and something will
break. The CMake build is more vulnerable and slower. The lack of proper
package management is a nightmare. Producing the installer requires
dealing with details that are fully automated on Linux, and before being
posted publicly the installer needs a decent amount of testing.
I've spent more time trying to keep the SDK up to date. It started with
the new dependencies for the fast preview. Then I became ambitious and
wanted to upgrade every dependency for which an upgrade is available,
simply because usually the newer version is better. wxWidgets is making
progress that positively affects the stability and responsiveness of Hugin.
The time spent in Windows is disproportionate compared to the time spent
in Linux for the same thing. From my (limited) perspective, Windows is a
dreadful platform for code development / building / testing.
I am documenting my work on the dependencies / the SDK. I hoped to get
something useful out over the Holidays. Now I aim to be ready to publish
the documentation for GSoC.
Maintaining Windows or anything for it is no longer fun for me.
Especially since I can run all Windows applications I need with Wine.
I've done this to learn and understand, and I am ready to move to
something else.
> Having only a download charge would maybe a bit strange, as somebody who
> would have paid for a download would want to download a new version
> without paying, too. Maybe sending everybody who had paid a special
> download link that stays active after each pay would be a practical
> solution, that wouldn't require adding trial periods or disabling
> features until payment is done.
No download charge. There will be a donation link. Those who donate will
receive personalized download links, and reminders if they wish so.
No trials periods or disabling of features and the likes - this is not
shareware, it's open source and I don't want to add overhead, I want to
add features and the time used to support Windows is wasted if you ask me.
> However, I fear that the outcome might be that most people will stick
> with the free 0.7 version just to avoid paying anything.
Then it is a clear message that there is no need to support Windows.
Remember the users' outcry when I questioned whether PowerPC Mac should
be maintained? PPC users stepped up to the task and helped themselves.
The current status of Windows support is that it effectively not
supported. I have not seen any binary / installer published after 0.7.0.
I've done all I could to transfer know how and prod interested users
to pick up the task.
If Windows users are happy with the current status, let it be. If they
want a more recent version, they can pay or they can help themselves.
Everything is in SVN and in the documentation.
> if we start thinking about thousands of dollars or euros, this needs
> to be changed, I think.
Sure. My intention is to make this as simple as possible. If I can
collect enough money for a bounty, I'll set the bounty up. If not,
you'll have a bit more money coming your way. Of course if we can get
some sort of association / foundation rolling, that would be nice too.
It would ensure the survival of the project beyond the current
generation of contributors.
The initially targeted bounty is for making the deghosting algorithm
usable in enfuse.
Don Holeman wrote:
> The downside is that paying money creates expectations for the
> purchaser - support, upgrades, bugfixes and the like - so your
> strategy needs to accommodate an elevated level of user maintenance.
Indeed very wise words, Don. Expectations need to be managed. People
won't pay directly for a download. They will donate. There is no such
thing as getting something in return for a donation other than "thank
you". As a "thank you" they will get exclusive access to my builds. How
often I build will depend on the donation amount. If a bug is
particularly annoying, the next bounty will be targeted at that bug.
Money may be dirty, but it helps making some things easier. The
intention is to do this as unobstructed as possible.
Yuv
Rich
...
> > charging for a new version and keeping the previous one free is not a
> > good choice, as it would simply slow down the upgrading in the user
> > community.
>
> So what? If users are happy with the old version, why waste resources on
> providing/supporting the new one?
because for an opensource project your users are your only wealth.
project needs users at least as much as users need the project.
users mean testing, marketing, new developers...
having more users on the bleeding edge is best a project can hope for -
other projects employ various strategies (even trick) to get more
testing for new versions. working against this will only do harm for the
project.
that's the broad look on the project. individual contributors can be
motivated by many different factors.
> Bruno Postle wrote:
> > I have no objection, supporting Windows is a lot of work.
>
> Indeed supporting Windows is a lot of work. More ranting on this below.
that's another question. if you feel that your work should be paid for,
it's your choice.
...
> > Windows users are also accustomed to get stuff for free
>
> you mean they don't pay a license fee for Windows?
i'll bite - yes, 95% of them ;>
...
> been there, done that. Click on the thumbnail at
> <http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/hugin-ships-with-nodal-ninja/>
>
> This part of the deal was never explicit, but I am sure it helped to get
> more Ninjas to dole out to every participant to GSoC 2008 (as opposed to
> just the students and assigned mentors like the previous year). Up to
> you and the other recipients of Nodal Ninjas to tell if this has been
> motivation to contribute.
that's very cool. too bad canon, nikon and others aren't following the
suit (yet) :)
...
> Maintaining Windows or anything for it is no longer fun for me.
> Especially since I can run all Windows applications I need with Wine.
> I've done this to learn and understand, and I am ready to move to
> something else.
i don't think anybody would blame you for stopping this maintenance
then. it's your time, your call. maybe somebody else just needs the push
to help in this area :)
...
> Then it is a clear message that there is no need to support Windows.
> Remember the users' outcry when I questioned whether PowerPC Mac should
> be maintained? PPC users stepped up to the task and helped themselves.
which would be awesome to happen in this case as well :)
...
> Yuv
--
Rich
prokoudine
> 2007 I was admin and you (Alexandre) were backup admin. 2008 we inverted
> roles. My wish for 2009 is to bring in fresh people. If you want to back
> the new admin up, I'll gladly take a further step back. I can always
> mentor a student. We need to spread the know-how in the community so
> that others can continue after us.
admin.
> I've a son now and I hope he will be applying as a student in 2027 ;-)
Alexandre
J. Schneider
> Hi all again, and thanks for the feedback about this subject.
>
> First of all thanks to the Mac and Linux users for their display of
> generosity. Did I miss something, or Windows users were conspicuously
> absent? with the exception of
One thing is that I would happily donate. And if I get a download link
as "thank you", that's OK for me. On the other hand: If I knew I would
never get a windows build anymore without donation, it would actually be
buying, not donating. Nevertheless, for me it's worth it.
A completely different thing is that this is an open source project
driven by volunteers and volunteers do the work that they choose, of
course. And if there is no volunteer do to the windows work, then it is
not done. It's as simple as that. I would find it a pity but I could not
complain.
Then there is commercial software development and why shouldn't somebody
do this work for money alongside with all other work he does for a
living? There is nothing wrong about that.
The arguments Rich brought have to be considered by you developers but
if you choose to loose some windows users as a trade-off for not having
to do this particularly complicated and unappealing work, that's your
decision. And a decision I can understand.
(My guess is that in the long run some windows user who is able to do
that will step in as it happened with PPC.)
regards
Joachim
Yuval Levy
> On 2009.01.12. 07:57, Yuval Levy wrote:
>> So what? If users are happy with the old version, why waste resources on
>> providing/supporting the new one?
>
> because for an opensource project your users are your only wealth.
Does not really answer my question. If the users are the project's only
wealth (something I do not completely agree with) and they are happy
with the old version, why waste resources on a new one?
> project needs users at least as much as users need the project.
> users mean testing, marketing, new developers...
Agree. Users contribute in many ways. Participation to this list with
ideas is already a valuable contribution. The only real personal wealth
is time. Contributed time is IMO the wealth of any open source project.
> having more users on the bleeding edge is best a project can hope for -
> other projects employ various strategies (even trick) to get more
> testing for new versions. working against this will only do harm for the
> project.
> that's the broad look on the project. individual contributors can be
> motivated by many different factors.
I respectfully disagree your view on the broad look on the project. IMO
pushing the users too much toward the bleeding edge can kill a project
(Netscape 5 comes to my mind).
The metric I watch is how many of the users actually contribute. There
is a trade-off between attracting more users and supporting the existing
user base. Every minute spent attracting Windows users to the bleeding
edge is a minute that could have been used to add a new feature for the
benefit of all existing users.
> if you feel that your work should be paid for, it's your choice.
I'm not asking that my work be paid for. I am asking that those
benefiting from my contribution contribute something to the project.
If I had work that I wanted to be paid for, I would ask market rate and
I would use it to pay my bills, not plug it back into a project bounty.
>> > Windows users are also accustomed to get stuff for free
>>
>> you mean they don't pay a license fee for Windows?
>
> i'll bite - yes, 95% of them ;>
And how can users who do not respect intellectual property be an asset
to an open source project? There is nothing to be pirated here...
>> been there, done that. Click on the thumbnail at
>> <http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/hugin-ships-with-nodal-ninja/>
>
> that's very cool. too bad canon, nikon and others aren't following the
> suit (yet) :)
I lack contacts into those big companies. Any help would be appreciated.
That said, they seem to be light-years away from embracing open source
or any form of collaborative model. Last time I checked Canon was still
shipping Photostitch with its cameras.
Yuv
Dale Beams
I've taken my photograph to the local extension office and offered to teach 4-H students how to stitch together photographs using Hugin. Rest assured 100% of the will be using windows.
I would have no qualms about paying for a windows build, currently i am cashed strapped. I would however be willing to build Hugin for windows if someone was willing to assist me in the beggining. Btw, I am also time challenged atm.
I think a windows build, not bleeding edge is good for Hugin, free and non-free. ArtRage has an excellent natural painting program that will run under wine, and they charge way below what they should be asking, which is about 25.00. Orginially it was 20.00.
I suppose a balance needs to be found, and I do agree, that buidling hugin for windows is less important than creating new features for Hugin.
One option is to build a live cd with Hugin pre-installed. I don't know how Hugin would fare "live" and imagine you would need a fair amount of memory to do it with, plus access to storage drives, but it woudl be linux and it wouldn't require a windows build.
Dale
Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. Check it out.
Bruno Postle
> One option is to build a live cd with Hugin pre-installed. I
> don't know how Hugin would fare "live" and imagine you would need
> a fair amount of memory to do it with, plus access to storage
> drives, but it woudl be linux and it wouldn't require a windows
> build.
I did livecds of hugin and just about everything else panorama
related for the last two panotools meetings, they worked ok
more-or-less.
--
Bruno
DaveN
Bruno Postle
>
>Demanding a download fee sounds very "Spikowski-ish" to me.
There is no intention of preventing someone else from offering an
alternative Windows installer for free (if someone could do this
consistently then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first
place).
--
Bruno
Milan Knížek
> One thing is that I would happily donate. And if I get a download link
> as "thank you", that's OK for me. On the other hand: If I knew I would
> never get a windows build anymore without donation, it would actually be
> buying, not donating. Nevertheless, for me it's worth it.
A good note.
Paying a donation in order to get an access to the download link is
actually a selling business in its substance, which might attract an
income tax charge.
On the other hand, small donations are usually tax exempt everywhere.