Small paid job

[richiz]

As long as it's kept up to date I really don't care.


All this will do is split the community further as devs continue to upload to their own places...just every week the updater will have to trawl the net looking for them.


So in short I'm all for someone to update the site once a week but when Milkshake gets his site up and running for Craig to politely ask if he can have the code and then we'll have a decent, official repository that keeps itself up to date.


Anyone who isn't for Milkshakes site, as Torpor said, hasn't seen it.

 

[lordbobjones]

There are two sides to this and both have advantages. I have some background in this so I will drop my experience into the conversation.


I ran a similar situation with volunteers and while it worked a good portion of the time, there were times of transition where things were not done, and because of that it reflected poorly on me as a business owner and affected those I did business with very negatively. In looking back I would give my left nut to have made the choice to pay someone to take care of updates. In fact the choice to use volunteers, even people I had know for years, left me out in the cold.


Volunteers work great until someone get's interested in something else or an argument in the community arises and people get offended and leave you hanging. When you pay someone they have assigned responsibilities, a defined description of what is required and they do the job if they want to get paid. Yes they can quit, but they lose something more than just connections. So I think Craig is making a good decision here.

 

[milkshake]

I think we are forgetting a lot of big points though...

1. the money should be spend on making pandoras quicker, or spent on incentives for devs to make cool apps
   
2. the app-store if done correctly doesnt need a person to maintain it and update the files, as the developers would update their pnd's themselves (after all its also free hosting for there files).
   
3. if a volenteer does quit someone else would always be willing to take up the plate, again for free.
   

 

[richiz]

It's a good decision in the mean time.


However a better decision would be to pay someone for now and politely ask Milkshake for his code when he's finished it.


Milkshakes site updates itself and is pretty much what everyone wants and on top of that if milkshake is kind enough Craig has the source code to edit at his own will. That's a win win situation.

 

[DavidBowman]

It's a good decision in the mean time.


However a better decision would be to pay someone for now and politely ask Milkshake for his code when he's finished it.


Milkshakes site updates itself and is pretty much what everyone wants and on top of that if milkshake is kind enough Craig has the source code to edit at his own will. That's a win win situation.

post++;


I have to agree here. I don't think that the small amount of money offered for this is going to hold anything back from the production of the Pandora. We're only talking a few hundred to a thousand dollars or so, right? You can't hire a regular assembly worker for anywhere near that price for more than a couple days once you take into account the taxes and whatnot that have to be paid on each employee.


Once milkshake's site is finished and the source released (assuming you're still going to do that, milkshake), then we will have a better single-source solution AND a community willing to maintain that as well.

 

[CFWhitman]

It seems practical enough to me. It's not like the arrangement will be carved in stone. If this way of doing things becomes obsolete in a month or two, then it can easily be dropped or changed or whatever is practical. In the meantime the site is updated, and fifty dollars a week isn't going to break the bank or create a big drain on OpenPandora development.

 

[milkshake]

maybe not but why pay someone to do something that people have offered to do for free (its almost like spitting in their faces)?


it still doesnt make sense, give that money to a more worthy cause if you want to waste it at all.


give it to devs? add it to the competition fund $50 extra per week that will spice things up a bit.

 

[WizardStan]

give it to devs? add it to the competition fund $50 extra per week that will spice things up a bit.

$200 every month for a short contest, or even $400 every 2 months, maybe $300 first place and $100 second place. Doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it doesn't have to take a lot to get people motivated

 

[Trip]

There are two sides to this and both have advantages. I have some background in this so I will drop my experience into the conversation.


I ran a similar situation with volunteers and while it worked a good portion of the time, there were times of transition where things were not done, and because of that it reflected poorly on me as a business owner and affected those I did business with very negatively. In looking back I would give my left nut to have made the choice to pay someone to take care of updates. In fact the choice to use volunteers, even people I had know for years, left me out in the cold.


Volunteers work great until someone get's interested in something else or an argument in the community arises and people get offended and leave you hanging. When you pay someone they have assigned responsibilities, a defined description of what is required and they do the job if they want to get paid. Yes they can quit, but they lose something more than just connections. So I think Craig is making a good decision here.

This + as many as you want.


The same reasons of why Craig had to put up an official forum cover this too. In business you cannot rely on other people or web sites fully as it can leave you in the sh*t if anything goes wrong with them. How hard was it to get gp32x.de updated before Ed took over looking after it?


I might not agree with Craig on most things these days but I do agree with keeping the main app store run by the company and not by the community. Not that the community shouldn't be able to help out with it though

 

[milkshake]

im not saying there shouldnt be an "offical" store im not not saying any site should replace it either.


but there can be other better/worse stores and if people choose one over the other then so be it... anyway that wasnt what this toppic was about, its about paying someone to update the store (because craig doesnt have time) when people have offered to do this for free, and if the "offical" store was done bettrer in the first place you wouldnt need anyone to check for new pnds and update it because the devs would do that for themselves.


so its wasting money and as I said previously if he is going to waste money waste it with a better cause like giving the money to app compotitions.


well Im starting to go arounf in cicles now anyway, I have said what I needed to say.

 

[mahousaru]

I'm just guessing but isn't the money part just cementing the transfer of ownership of the work (tied into a contract ofc)

 

[milkshake]

just 1 last point.


if you notice the wiki page is kept upto date with the latest apps and no-one pays those people so, as you can see it can be done for free.

 

[richiz]

Yes it's ironic the one community managed app place is actually the place which has been consistently up to date and is the only place to make sure you get EVERYTHING.


The money could be put to far better use.

 

[John Bedlam]

There are two sides to this and both have advantages. I have some background in this so I will drop my experience into the conversation.


I ran a similar situation with volunteers and while it worked a good portion of the time, there were times of transition where things were not done, and because of that it reflected poorly on me as a business owner and affected those I did business with very negatively. In looking back I would give my left nut to have made the choice to pay someone to take care of updates. In fact the choice to use volunteers, even people I had know for years, left me out in the cold.


Volunteers work great until someone get's interested in something else or an argument in the community arises and people get offended and leave you hanging. When you pay someone they have assigned responsibilities, a defined description of what is required and they do the job if they want to get paid. Yes they can quit, but they lose something more than just connections. So I think Craig is making a good decision here.

This + 1. Volunteers can do an amazing job, but in the end, they don't tend to think of it as a job.


I also think people thinking this position will become redundant if Craig switches to Milkshake's codebase are forgetting that someone will have to keep it somewhat clean, once people can just go and add stuff. The official app store is, after all, official, and as such, what's in it and how it's managed does reflect back on OPT.

 

[craigix]

Wow, I've got a lot of PMs.


Give me some time to read though them and I'll pick someone to start this project this week!


I personally think it's essential, and I agree with Lordbob, he has clearly been though the whole volunteer thing himself. He has hit the nail on the head with my experience.


Let's see how it works. $50, to me, is worth it for a well organised constantly up to date site we can point new users and press to.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

It would be great if the appstore could read out PND data directly, like milkshakes archive, as that would make things way faster and easier.

Though about it.


Need to be securised :


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV


http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount.davfs


Of course there's other solutions, but webdav is a simple https mount, so almost nothing should be configured on server side.


----EDIT :


I totally misunderstood what you said looooool


I though you said "it would be great if a internet-connected OP could mount .pnd over internet"


Anyway, your idea is great too ;^DDDDDD.

 

[moz]

I'll do it for the low, low price of a premium upgrade

 

[Esn]

maybe not but why pay someone to do something that people have offered to do for free (its almost like spitting in their faces)?

As I said in another thread... for someone who's made an open-source handheld and who regularly criticizes Sony and Apple for their ways, Craig seems awfully untrustworthy of community-originated efforts to organize things. It's like he's only tolerated them so far because he's been too busy to do anything. He seems to prefer to supersede them with his own ideas rather than help them along...


The first job of whoever gets this "$50-a-week" job would be the biggest: bringing in and organizing the massive amount of stuff that was never added to the appstore, or is outdated on the appstore. That's something that will take many hours.


After that, all they'd need to do is subscribe to the RSS feeds of the following 3 wiki lists, to keep track of the changes:


http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Software_projects&action=history&feed=rss


http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Games&action=history&feed=rss


http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Emulator_list&action=history&feed=rss


So yeah guys, after that initial hurdle, it's an easy $50. Fire away your applications. :rolleyes:


P.S. Might there not be some problem with developer control over their own software? Milkshake's site is supposed to address this, right? (I've seen it, by the way, it really is quite good)

 

[zohnnyg]

is there a link to milkshakes app website? i just wanna check it out.

 

[WizardStan]

He's doing database work right now, and not sure he wants it disseminated to the masses yet.