How Many Zaurus Owners

[omro]

Hi All,

I was wondering. How many zaurus users actively view these forums?

I was also wondering how many of those would donate money towards Zaurus software development?

Maybe we should organise a fundraiser, get everyone on the forums to donate 5 pounds to a central pot and from there it could be spent amongst the main software development projects.

Or if I had to pay a 5 pound membership fee a year in order to get at ALL the zaurus downloads, i.e. the apps or the OS updates, I'd be willing to pay that because I'd know my money was going to a good place.

I'd rather donate centrally to a place that spread my money amongst the worthy causes of the Zaurus world than show favouritism to one project. All projects advance the platform in my view.

[bam]

im in

[lardman]

Or if I had to pay a 5 pound membership fee a year in order to get at ALL the zaurus downloads, i.e. the apps or the OS updates, I'd be willing to pay that because I'd know my money was going to a good place.

It's no longer free then. I'd prefer to go the donation route.

You can already donate to OpenZaurus and pdaXrom, not sure about the others, but why not just donate directly?


Si

P.S. It's not just about money, donation of time (writing docs, tracking and patching bugs, testing extending) are in fact probably far more valuable (as no-one, other than sashz perhaps, can afford to live on donations alone - time's the thing most developers are short of).

[omro]

I wish I could code, I wouldn't even know where to start, a lot of the linux related talk on here goes above my head. I always feel like I'm missing a step when I read some of these conversations.

I just thought that if there was a fund raiser or a subscription, then there would be a guaranteed source of income for these projects. Nothing wrong with that surely, I wasn't suggesting absurd amounts of money that most software developers charge.

[CoreDump]

I wish I could code, I wouldn't even know where to start, a lot of the linux related talk on here goes above my head. I always feel like I'm missing a step when I read some of these conversations.

I just thought that if there was a fund raiser or a subscription, then there would be a guaranteed source of income for these projects. Nothing wrong with that surely, I wasn't suggesting absurd amounts of money that most software developers charge.
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IMO a subscription should be completly voluntary (sp?)
Having "to pay" for updates would suck big time, but that's just my opinion.

[omro]

IMO a subscription should be completly voluntary (sp?)
Having "to pay" for updates would suck big time, but that's just my opinion.
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However, IMO paying for quality updates would be worth a minor expense. If you think about it, it's all to do with numbers. If there are hundreds or thousands of Zaurus users or even the other platforms that use embedded linux, if they all gave a small amount of money each year to a central point, and I mean a small amount, that would build up to be a nice source of development oriented revenue that the developers could use to make the updates significantly better.

P.S. I am not in any way detracting from the quality of the current updates. But I would be willing to bet that if the developers had more money to spend on developing, they'd have increased output.

[xjqian]

I'm in. I think it's a good course. If we can get it going, my personal cap is $100/yr.

Have a central deposit is a good way to encourage development and avoid reinventing the wheel. I'm in the academic, so this sounds to me a lot like NIH grant application/reviewing/funding mechanism. I think we need at least 2-3 members serving the editorial and admin. position for this project. The task will be

1) help determine the projects to be funded (member voting + brief peer review)
2) monitor the progress of funded project, bimonthly editorial to let the donors and z community know the progress of funded projects.
3) award announcement (project of the year or something...)
4) annual summary: income + outcome, donors names, project summary, etc..
4) ...

need to know:

1) the scale of the money (how much are we actually talking about ?)
2) length of the funding period (semi-anually/anually?)
3) review committee members
4) award mechanism to encourage innovative and new project, while maintain the evolution of the mature projects
5) ...

so before going into details:
1) developers: do you care such amount of money? or more of an honor?
2) Z community: are you willing to see such a project? as OP said: are you in? and How much?

I don't think now is the time to be optimistic, but I have to mention this. This is what vendors/manufactures really believe: numbers, "$".  If such project is running well for couple of years, we can show the financial report to, say Sharp. Until they see the numbers, they won't be convinced how much energy and enthusiasm is within the Z community. Then we might be able to expand the project, not only limited to software development.

[craigtyson]

There is one problem with a central fund.  It can all to quickly become an EU style political entity with more time spent on working out who gets what for which thing and how to allocate funds.....  What might be a better idea is a support forum for select projects and a small fee to join / post support queries on those forums.  This would need to tie in to who actualy answers the queries but would be one way of putting somthing back in to the people who spend man years giving us users a decent environment to use on Z.

[the_oak]

I also would not mind contributing $5 or $10 per month to help development if there was a way to regulate how it works without using all contributions for regulating costs. One other thing to consider is how to know if I am contributing toward a sl-5500 piece of software or something that would run on my 6000.

[xjqian]

totally agreed. every penny should go to the developers. all executive work need people to volunteer their time. This is a good opportunity for people who want to contritube to the community but don't have coding skill.  In my opinion, a central deposit is a complement to direct donation. We don't want developers to feel this central deposit diverts the direct funding. With that said, I'm wondering how many direct donation developers got. If the developers are satisfied with what they got right now. This thread is a moot point. So we really need developers to speak out. Don't be shy, if you need money, raise your hand.

depending on how much projects need to be funded and how much money we can raise. the exact funding mechanism can be simplified or become more advanced.

the details about different rom and model can be worked out. I remember when my college ask for alumini donation. They give you the choice to direct your donation to school of law, engineering, art & sci, business or general purpose. We can conceive a similar mechanism.

so far about $200/yr is alleged here. I can try to draft a funding announcement to outline the funding mechanism for critisim.

[omro]

I wasn't thinking as high as 200 dollars a year, I was thinking less so that more people would contribute, if you make the amount too high, people will be put off.

I was thinking a central pot, a certain number of projects able to draw money from it and each getting an equal amount.

[xjqian]

there's no requirement here. It's all voluntary. Every penny counts. The amount you donate will not be a reflect of how supportive you are. Any amount is welcome. I was just saying, adding up mine $100 and "$5 or $10 per month" by the_oaks. We've got $200/yr already. We want to have an estimate of how much we could raise per year. And then can conceive how many projects to be funded.

[xjqian]

Attached is the best I can come up with tonight. If there's enough interest, we can talk about the details.

This is just my personal opinion. Since ROm development is the general interest of everybody, we can invite Cacko, OZ, pdaXrom and Guylhem as reviewer committee of the fund. Each of them can get 10%-20% of the general purpose fund for their reviewing efforts and that's good for their rom development too.

[seed]

that would defintly a ood idea to have a general fund for zaurus devellopement and i love the voting process but i think it will be better i the the committe chose first a set of project (base on some criteria that have to be discuss frst) then propose them to the ZUG communoty for voting and then the fund is share proportionaly to the vote.
is it time to think to a unified rom  for all z model is think we wasting a lot of ressource by having more than one ROM(may be two) even if i understand that ROM are not made for the same process

[adf]

er.... the thing about that is that the roms are made by enthusiasts....  I kinda doubt you will find happy developers working on stuff they don't like for minimal pay. Maybe I'm wrong, but for an extreme case what if you decide that everything should be done with gcc 2.95? I think the oz folks will opt out. The qtopia folks..well lpotter... don't seem too enthusiaastic about killing backward compatibility-- no joy there if you want gcc3.x or kernel 2.6. The pdaX guys (though I'v read much less speculation from them) seem pretty happy with pdaX..etc..

I think--nice a a single purpose might be--that we users lack a coherent view, the developers hjave specialties and likes and dislikes and things as they are are pretty much how they will be for at least a while.

just my u$.02