Consider Boycotting the driver contest

[gizzymo]

Please Consider Boycotting the Video Driver Contest (http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/X1600_Drivers_contest) , this is going to slllloooww down a solution, instead of sharing, people will hoard information.
For the good of this community, and the quality of a solution, please share, help each other out and find a solution together. I realise you remove the oppertunity to win some cash by boycotting this, So can I propose the following option:
When a solution is found by mutual co-operation, then each member willing to take part in this boycott gives 5 dollars to a worthwhile charity. This way we will get to a place of fully working systems quicker and will have helped those who really need it in the process.
If you support this, then please make your presence known here.

[kuchdawg]

I'm here with ya

[gizzymo]

Glad I am not the only one who feels this way. This video driver may turn out to be a very complex problem, not one where we should be pulling separately.

[gizzymo]

progress I hope, vote to remove the contest:

http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=300

[RujusMacBook]

Please Consider Boycotting the Video Driver Contest (http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/X1600_Drivers_contest) , this is going to slllloooww down a solution, instead of sharing, people will hoard information.

I disagree due to the fact that Blanka has stated that he would not have participated in the contest without a monetary reward. Since, to this day, I have yet to see a complete alternative( granted rEFIt is a large step in the right direction) to XOM, we can conclude that in no way are capitalism (in this case monetary reward) and a sense of community mutually exclusive.

If anything, the contest serves as a catalyst (no pun intended).

Just my $0.02

[raduma]

Ever think that people might be more afraid to start tinkering with a brand new fun machine, and risk rendering it useless if there was no incentive for them to take the risk?

[gizzymo]

How much risk was their really if the solution is a software one?
I Know that if ppl start to edit their macs firmware that presents a LARGE RISK!
However the xom patch does not do that and that is also unlikly to be a factor in any video fix as editing the firmware on the video card would most likely break support on the OS X side.

[tdewey]

Why on earth would you want to abandon a method that works? Was there an XP on Mac solution before the prior contest? No.

Will the contest with a reward spur development of drivers? Yes.

Will the absence of a reward result in a much longer development time? Yes.

I think this is loco folks. Capitalism works for a reason people.

[gizzymo]

tdewey

we may have had a solution now if there had been no contest. The increased sharing of info that would have resulted from the lack of a contest may well have led to a solution at the same time or earlier!!
Also, bear in mind that what we have now is one solution, there may well be others, others that may have been found by now without the origional contest!

[Fossie]

No contest! This will only slow down progress.

[jann]

Might be better to limit content to that topic so all the voters see what you have to say.

Jann

[gygysamurai]

This will slow progress down. Look at how fast we've come up with solutions for other drivers. And why so fast? Because we did this together, as a community.

Blanka and narf (narf? nerf?) are freaking genius for figuring out the Win XP solution. Kudos to them.

But, with that exception aside, you'll find faster and better results when you combine minds. Solo projects are great, if you want a solution limited to the extent of that individual's knowledge. If we work on a video fix together then no doubt a solution will be found much faster, it will be much better (Where one of us fails, another will succeed!), and we can all take pride knowing that we contributed to this magnificent project.

By turning this into a contest, your denying us the right to work on this together. As soon as money is involved, video drivers become a taboo topic "OMGz THEY CAN'T KNOW MY SECRET!!!!!11!1one"

Seriously, and simply put:
MAKING THIS ABOUT MONEY IS SELFISH!
Let's remain a community in this. Let's help each other find a solution.

[jann]

ps: We can read. No need to overuse the Font Size options....

[gygysamurai]

I'm sure we're all guilty of a little emphatic font resizing :p

[jann]

I'm sure we're all guilty of a little emphatic font resizing :p


Well, a little is not a LITTLE

:D

[Kelmon]

Why would you want to organise a boycott and what impact do you expect this to have beyond fragmenting things? If you want to organise a public, community-lead effort to resolve the problem then, as far as I am aware, there is nothing to stop you. All I would suggest is that you release all your community code under a GPL and that any solution, should one come from a contest first, be checked to ensure that it does not infringe on your license; if it does then you should also be entitled to a share of the contest.

If people want to run a contest then let them and do things your own way.

[settolo]

My opinion is here: http://forum.onmac.net/showpost.php?p=2197&postcount=71
anyway, writing/finding a driver will not be easy, I think.

[satans_banjo]

I say go for the contest. If you think about it a cash reward encourages contestants to release the software as freeware rather than charging for it in order to make it worth their while

[tdewey]

genius for figuring out the Win XP solution. Kudos to them.

But, with that exception aside, you'll find faster and better results when you combine minds. Solo projects are great, if you want a solution limited to the extent of that individual's knowledge. If we work on a video fix together then no doubt a solution will be found much faster, it will be much better (Where one of us fails, another will succeed!), and we can all take pride knowing that we contributed to this magnificent project.

This has been known to not be the case for software engineering since the 1960s. Go read The Mythical Man Month and come back to us.

More People = Slower Development Times.

The best software development is done by very small, well integrated teams.

[gizzymo]

that applies when the problem the team are facing includes a clear path, not one with so many blind alleys that require many people to experiment and feed back to the group. And if its a slower dev cycle, who cares! It will be better tested and have had more of the right people helping overcome problems in these blind alleys. Some of these unknown problems will require a wide variety of skills that are unlikly to be present in a small group. I would agree with you if we had an ATI technician in this forum, but we dont, no-one knows enough to do it all on their own and produce a top notch solution. By combining experience we can more easily overcome the seemingly dead ends and frustrations that surround the kind of project this is.

[jann]

Think of the press ATI could get if they made it possible to do this.

All MacBook Pro owners in the future would LOVE THEM. If Apple wanted to switch away from ATI as the graphics solution for the MacBook Pro's it would "break XP compatibility" ...

This could be a PRESS GOLD MINE for ATI if they would step up to the plate.

Anyone know anyone at ATI?

Jann

[jnjgriff]

This seems to be an issue of freedom to choose and those who wish to restrict and deny that freedom to others. The notion that people will withhold information or drivers hoping for more money is fully bogus. This is a wide open, full throttle, nitrous rocket fueled example of a free market competition at work, open to all interested parties of any level of skill or sophistication - free of hedgemony by big corporations or the shackles of mis-managment by governments (does anyone understand the French?). It's a glorious and beautiful thing to watch this freedom at work. I don't have the level of developer skills to work on the solution directly but I can participate by contributing. If I did have the skills, I'd be increasingly motivated by an increasing reward. The more the reward increased, the more motivation. Don't like it? Fine - who said there had to be only one XOM solution, one video driver solution? Work with like minded individuals to come up with your own xom solution, your own driver solution, maybe yours will be better, maybe not - what is there to be afraid of? Failure? What is there to lose? Nothing! You have the individual freedom to participate or not, accept the reward or not (I doubt anyone who doesn't support the reward concept or want to cap the reward - would turn it down if they won the contest). Any individual that thinks he is so special and unique in the world that only he has "the solution" and "holds out" for "more money" puts at risk winning the contest to any one of hundreds, no wait - THOUSANDS? of other interested parties or collaboratives furiously working simultaneously to come up with the solution - Any one of them might think that whatever level the contest reward is currently at would be just peachy with them.
Putting an artificial cap on the reward would only limit and slow the incentive. How much effort by how many people would be put out if the reward were say, $25K? How about $50K? $100K? dare I say $1M? Imagine how many brilliant individuals would be working, singly or collaboratively at that level? How fast would a video driver solution appear now? It would likely be solved long before the reward reached that level. Compare how many highly motivated individuals we would see at a $100K reward vs. a $1 reward? I'm not telling you to like it, you have the freedom not to like it. The fact is there are individuals who have the freedom to like it and be motivated by the reward. For some, the accomplishment is reward enough. cool. But why artificially restrict the effort to only those people? Exceptionally brilliant developers may be motivated by reasons other than "common good" - like feeding, housing and clothing their family. This next step might be accomplished by a currently "between jobs" developer who has the time and the brain to do this thing. Who could be against that?
The original contest/reward for xom was nothing short of freakin' brilliant. It was a pure example of unrestricted open market forces at work - without interference by corporate fiefdoms or big government regulations. How many meetings would be held by how many departments with their own turf to protect? It's been said that vendors say its not a tech issue that stops an EFI version of Vista - It's political. How fast would a government sponsored project take to do the same and at what cost? The very idea of putting "restrictions" on the reward is akin to an effort to "dumbing down" the participants in the contest, making it fairer for the less brilliant and speedy (I can almost hear someone say we need to slow it down to make it fair).
Proof of concept is how fast the xom solution was developed when many knowledgable people doubted that an OS built on booting BIOS could ever be fooled into booting under EFI. And unlike the desire of those boycotters who oppose the contest/reward it in no way restricts the freedom of individuals to develop a potentially better XOM or driver solution. Those individuals who want to boycott are free to use these forums to develop and showcase their own xom developments and drivers outside of any contest/reward without the oppression or discrimination they would visit on the individuals motivated by a reward.
Freakin' Brilliant concept and implementation, Colin. I bet I'm not the only one that wished I'd thought of it. And I'll also bet we'll see more examples of this in more places. It just works - like my mac. Set up the reward Colin I'm in.

[jnjgriff]

Jann- It be great to get ATI help, openly or through the help of an ATI developer. However, I'm sceptical of getting any overt open assistance from ATI - who knows how tangled the politcal ecosystem is between ATI, Apple and M$ and what the unknown repercussions could be for ATI? We can see M$ so far seems intent on avoiding EFI on consumer versions of Vista for their own business politics. Dell, HP et al would likely get pretty bent over a M$ selling an EFI version of Vista - "Got a mac? yeah you can painlessly dual boot Windows or OSX. Dell? oh. sorry. just Windows". I'm betting Apple already has an awesome dual-boot solution already in hand (a possible Leopard feature?) and has already talked to Bill about dual-booting Vista - and got it right back in their face - no way. I'm also betting Apple figured what's going on here was going to happen if M$ didn't like the idea - and Apple is content to just sit back and let market forces work - and build pressure on M$ - maybe they cave and issue an EFI version of Windows. Not something Dell or HP would want to see. But then what real leverage do they have over M$?

[bgd]

Maybe an idea could be to time-limit the contest and if no solution has been found after the contest closure, then everyone looking for a money reward is obliged to publicly release their efforts on this forum on the day of the contest closure and if approved by relevant board members these topics would be stickied as official project topics on this forum...

Whichever of these official projects prove successful first would give its initial author either a fixed decreased reward or a reward proportional to the total work required for the complete solution. Any work by others and by the project author himself after project disclosure on this forum would not be accounted for when deciding the reward sum...

If more than one person implements the same initial idea that leads to the solution then they would either split the reward equally among themselves or the person that clearly made the most progress upon releasing his project would be the one that qualifies for the decreased reward...

That would give people incentive to work on a solution, but also make sure that any progress they make gets released in a reasonable time frame, so that others can contribute on whatever progress has been made. Or am I complicating things too much? :rolleyes:

[jnjgriff]

yes it is too complicated. Years of tinkering with managing programs, trying to be too smart by half, seems to always come back to K.I.S.S. - keep it simple stupid. It's the best prescription here.

[ocelot27]

Necessity is the mother of invention; greed is the father - unknown.

[DaveGee]

I'm sceptical of getting any overt open assistance from ATI - who knows how tangled the politcal ecosystem is between ATI, Apple and M$ and what the unknown repercussions could be for ATI?

+++++ ;)

No truer words have ever been spoken... :D

Dave

[jnjgriff]

Ocelot27,
Two sides of the same coin.

[MulletMan13]

Well, while we may not agree with the prize thing, there isn't really much we can do about it.

If the prize was a fixed amount, I would agree with that.

[freshman]

tdewey

we may have had a solution now if there had been no contest. The increased sharing of info that would have resulted from the lack of a contest may well have led to a solution at the same time or earlier!!
Also, bear in mind that what we have now is one solution, there may well be others, others that may have been found by now without the origional contest!

Note that, as of yet, we still don't have a total solution, i.e. the source code has not yet been released. Additionally, there is a post in the Source Code forum that they are "deciding" on a license, which leaves open the possibility that it will NOT be released open source, and future versions of the software will be closed and / or not free.

[mac wilson]

uh, no sorry they can't do that. I own a bit of that as I donated and that was part of the deal. ( as did anyone who donated)

they can take as long as they want but it has got to be open in the end( so to speek)

[eklynx]

This has been known to not be the case for software engineering since the 1960s. Go read The Mythical Man Month and come back to us.

More People = Slower Development Times.

The best software development is done by very small, well integrated teams.

You might want to re-read the essays as well. It was saying that adding people to a late project makes it later. By your rationale one person can come up with Windows 2000 in less time than it took Microsoft.

Honestly, i believe that without the contest, XP on mac would have not been done yet, but i also believe that the solution would have been much cleaner when it finally did come out.

I say let the contest go if people are willing to contribute $ to it. When we have proof of concept code. This will spawn multiple branches of thought. When we have a winner, we can share and come up with a streamlined solution.

[Ari]

This will slow progress down. Look at how fast we've come up with solutions for other drivers. And why so fast? Because we did this together, as a community.

And because it was easier to get those drivers working.

After a lack of progress with the ATI Drivers, I decided to post a $1000 reward.

[sshjason]

I see no harm in offering a reward for someone to get the job done. Besides that, feel free to 'boycott' it. Are you a programmer, or are you relying on someone else's hard work to do what you would like done for free? If you are a programmer, start a Source Forge project! This is not the only venue to get things like drivers working. Take some freaking initiative and do it yourself if you can!