Developer Fund

[quote]

I'd be very happy to donate some money so 'Withnail' can continue developing.
This idea makes it easier for people to donate.

 

[Avigrace]

Sounds good to me,

incentive is always a good thing.

 

[Pleng]

Just off on a bit of a tangent, if say 2,000 people donated £10 you raise £20,000. That is a significant sum. Have you covered it so that it doesn't all disappear in VAT/tax?

Presuming all the money is given back to developers then I there will be not tax implications as there is no profit.

 

[Pleng]

It is completely voluntary, but it establishes a good incentive for devs to come to the Pandora and make software - it also allows us to reward software which is essential but might not usually get donations.

It is something I think we need to bring the best to the Pandora.

A poor quality hacked port of something would still get some money, but with the lure of a lot more if they polish things up.

I think its a nice idea but I think you're leaving yourself open to all kinds of criticizms in the future. Its one of those ideas that is implimented with the best of intentions but could end up causing you all kinds of headaches. To work there really needs to be some kind of scoring system so nobody can come back and say 'but my app/this app should have been rewarded more money' or 'this app is sh*t and shouldnt have been awarded anything'

An example (simplified) scoring sytem could be something like this:

QUOTE

Type
------
Game - 5 points
Emulator - 2 points
App - 3 points

Orign
------
Brand new - 5 points
Port from other OS - 3 points
Port from Linux - 2 Points

Misc (bonus points - not mutually exclusive)
-----

Passes 3 hour crash test - 5 points
Full use of keyboard shortcuts - 3 points
Use of touchscreen - 3 points




Obviously even this is overly simplistic as it doesn't take in to account the size of the project (a complete port of an N64 emulator, for instance, is obviously more complex than an app which paints hello world all over the screen in hundereds of different colours)

 

[Guyfawkes]

I have a feeling that the majority will be going to emulator developers as they get the most limelight (based on gp32 and gp2x so wont be different for pandora). I am not having a dig at emu authors, but there's a lot of great games authors which also deserve a slice of the cake but often get over looked.

If the money is distributed fairly between devs then its seems a good idea. My suggestion would be to set up some kind of judging panel in addition to user feedback to ensure the money is distributed fairly.

 

[Karel Jansens]

I want to give my money exclusively to the developers who are doing stuff I'm craving most. As there are probably more than enough people working on the games and multimedia sections of the Pandora, I want to donate to people working on productivity applications, and I would not agree to someone else deciding on what's going to happen with my money (it's my money after all and I'm not in the least bit interested in the "privilege" of being a betatester).

So I'm not going to use the donate option, at least not as it's being presented. I hope lots of developers put up Paypal addresses, so I can reward the ones I think deserve my money.

Incidentally, I've donated quite a lot of money to Open Source developers over the years (just to give an incentive of my own B)).

 

[TaG]

Just off on a bit of a tangent, if say 2,000 people donated £10 you raise £20,000. That is a significant sum. Have you covered it so that it doesn't all disappear in VAT/tax?

Presuming all the money is given back to developers then I there will be not tax implications as there is no profit.

[boring_stuff]
Not so. If money goes to the developers it would be classed as income and taxable. If it is paid by Pandora devs company then they could be liable for paying income tax and National Insurance. Unless the app developer is a company then they would be liable.
If you add to the 'cost' of a VATable, eg postage, then although postage is VAT free the item isn't so VAT is charged on the whole amount.
Now with VAT at 17.5% and income tax at 22%+, 40%+ of proceeds could disappear in tax. Because of the centralised nature of the proposal the tax man is more likely to be interested than say 200 developers having a donate button.
[/boring_stuff]
Now, sorry for being boring but it could be important if the proposal goes ahead - I certainly don't want Craig and co to have grief they could do without.

 

[Kyo]

Does it even qualify as donation if we get something in return?

 

[javaJake]

I think that sounds a good idea. You might want to allow people the option of donating more, if they feel like it too, at time of purchase. Whilst £10 on top of the price of Pandora will have me scrimping a little, I suspect there may be a couple who would hapily donate the significantly more.

+1

Much rather you just raise the price and open it up.

Why don't you raise the price yourself and open it up (for yourself)?

The money would be given to software which got the best feedback, not the most popular or the most downloaded.
<snip>
Hows does that sound?

Good, though I think there should be something like an average low rating count "cutoff". So, for instance, say we have five applications available:

• MAME - 10 votes, average 4.5 stars
• mplayer - 7 votes, average 5 stars (because mplayer is teh best )
• Firefox 3 - 17 votes, average 3 stars
• Noiz - 2 votes, average 4 stars
• Contrast Optimizer - 7 votes, average 5 stars (made it up: because it gives Pandora's screen that extra shine)

Disclaimer: These are all off the top of my head. Not trying to pick on anyone or anything unless specified.

So, now you could take the average vote count: (10+7+17+2+7) / 5 = 8.6
Now divide that by, say, a third, and round up: 8.6/3 = 3 votes.
So, this could be the cutoff point. Any software that doesn't have at least three votes (in this case, Noiz) would not receive any funds no matter how high the one or two first votes were.

Does this sound fair? That way, we don't have 1 vote, 5 star software receiving funding because it was higher than another's 250 votes, 4.9 stars.

Just an idea. It can be clobbered if you guys feel that way.

 

[brandonorban]

I'll Donated if I have the money.

-Brandon

 

[Svartalf]

Not so. If money goes to the developers it would be classed as income and taxable. If it is paid by Pandora devs company then they could be liable for paying income tax and National Insurance. Unless the app developer is a company then they would be liable.
If you add to the 'cost' of a VATable, eg postage, then although postage is VAT free the item isn't so VAT is charged on the whole amount.
Now with VAT at 17.5% and income tax at 22%+, 40%+ of proceeds could disappear in tax. Because of the centralised nature of the proposal the tax man is more likely to be interested than say 200 developers having a donate button.

You're presuming that the people in question are all in the UK, which is quite incorrect of you.

Let us suppose, for argument's sake, I am one of the recipients of this "income". I am NOT a citizen of the UK or of the EU and therefore any money going to me would typically not be subject to the country's income taxation laws (It varies, but in general, I wouldn't be getting charged for taxes for roughly 6 or so months, last time I checked, if I was over there doing work...). The US does not consider income below a given amount (something like a quarter million) as being taxable- you have to report that you got it, but you owe nothing on it. Each instance would have to be measured- if in the UK, I'm sure you're right. I'm not so sure the EU requires the same, and anywhere else is a crapshoot, with the US being the way I described.

 

[javaJake]

If the money is distributed fairly between devs then its seems a good idea. My suggestion would be to set up some kind of judging panel in addition to user feedback to ensure the money is distributed fairly.

What if we had, say, the best 3 from each category?

Or maybe the best 15 from everything? What if we didn't have first, second, and third "prize" values, but just had a first place that the top developers got.

I think there's a general bias on this board against the "big" guys that overshadow the small ones. Why shouldn't the big guys, who develop applications for some of the most popular uses on the Pandora, get funds? I think that they deserve it, in that case. The developers around here for the popular stuff are usually chosen for their reputation. It only makes sense.

That's not to say that we should ignore the little guys; don't get me wrong. There's just no reason to toss away the most useful programs because we use them more often, and they get more press.

 

[Prophet]

Craig,

From reading all the comments here, I'm starting to wonder if a centralized donation is really the best way afterall. I'm all for donating to devs, I've done it in the past, I've raised money for devs in the past etc., so I think everyone knows where I stand on the matter.

But...

1) If this centralized donation is done, people will want to know who's getting what and why. And honestly they would have that right. So that would have to be worked out and clarified.

2) A centralized donation at purchase might make buyers feel apathetic toward donating to individual devs in the future. Something to consider.

3) Devs should try to talk together about this idea, because it may or may not be to their best benefit in the end. See point 2 for an example.

So basically, I think the majority of the people around here are for the idea (at least conceptually) of donating to good developers. But the devil is in the details, as always.

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

Conceptually, I think it's a great idea, and I would love to donate to developers who are working/putting out good software. However, I won't be donating until I'm positive we've got a system set up that's incentive-based and I know where my money is going.

That being said, don't you think it's a little screwy that we're talking about donating to a project that still doesn't have a release date or a GUI?

 

[TaG]

You're presuming that the people in question are all in the UK, which is quite incorrect of you.

Point taken and I agree with your points, but if Craig's company for example took the money, it could be grief they don't need. I only quoted UK as I have no knowledge of elsewhere and Craig's company is in UK (thats why in my original post I asked "Have you covered it so that it doesn't all disappear in VAT/tax?")

 

[Exophase]

For the people saying that they'd prefer donations instead..

The way I'm seeing this (and craigix please correct me if I'm wrong), this isn't meant to just provide a way to reward developers of software that you like. Instead it's supposed to strengthen the software library on the Pandora as a whole, acting as a motivator for good software in general. Which is why it's being offered with the purchases of the Pandoras themselves. Having everyone donate to the most popular software isn't really going to accomplish this. I see it as being like something that "stimulates the economy."

I could be totally wrong though.

 

[Prophet]

That being said, don't you think it's a little screwy that we're talking about donating to a project that still doesn't have a release date...

That is a fair point.

The timing of this discussion might be a bit off. People will undoubtedly feel more generous once the Pandora seems more real to them.

 

[wraggster]

Maybe the best idea is to have a panel of say 5 people from the pandora team to decide on a scale system but not give any details away as to what each port/ game/ app/driver for pandora is worth and how much for a perfect product ie maybe start off low for a quick port and when perfection or at least great strides are made then more money going to the cause.

A great idea none theless i do agree with guyfawkes that emu authors will get the greater feedback as that has happened on every homebrew console so far.

Maybe using the money you could fund 3monthly coding competitions for emus/games/ apps and similiar money for winners of each ?

maybe a better way to give out the funds in the long term ?

 

[Sphinxter]

Much rather you just raise the price and open it up.

Why don't you raise the price yourself and open it up (for yourself)?


But at the expense of others and my kharma? Would be heartbreaking to see such a fine open project close even a little, the words, "developer program", make me wince and set off alarms. The open development platform is what brought me to the gp2x. MSDN delays patches to non-subscribers, not a bit fond of that, elitist bullshit. You donate your time to make their platform more attractive and have to pay for the pleasure of it.

 

[Prophet]

wraggster,

I was thinking about using the funds for compo prizes too! That might be a nice idea. Maybe even incorporate some sort of voting system each compo for one of the prizes, while other prizes are given out to deserving devs who might not be as publically popular (i.e. non-emu devs). That way the donating public feels involved and informed, but every dev stands a chance of benefitting if their app is good enough.

What we really need is details on how things would be handled.