Arcade Bounty Project. Money for programmers

[mahuti]

If there's interest, I plan to start a fundraising project to raise money for "bounties" on arcade programming projects.

Recently I ponied up some dough to get some interest in a programming project that I wanted done for arcade purposes, and the programming work was completed in record time. I didn't put up much money, but it provided enough incentive to get a few people interested in a short period of time, and ultimately the work was done in a satisfactory manner, quickly.

What I'm hoping to do, by setting up a fundraiser is to provide an incentive for programmers to tackle complex / boring pet projects for the arcade community that they wouldn't otherwise undertake. There are plenty of programmers that do work for their own amusement or for their own interest, but there are plenty of smaller projects, or complicated and boring bits of programming that they generally don't have interest in. There are also a number of programmers on this board that have expressed an interest in receiving donations for their work. This might help create a central point for gathering those donations in an orderly & expidited manner.

To begin gauging interest in this project, I've started a fundable.org money raising group
https://www.fundable.org/groupactions/arcade.bounty.project1

About fundable.org; they take your credit card / paypal information and hold it until the entire project amount is raised. We have 25 days max to make the goal amount. If the amount is raised, then you'll be charged. This system makes it easy to collect the money.

To get the ball rolling I've donated $10 myself. Anyone that would like to donate, can donate in amounts of $10 or greater. Once the entire goal of $100 has been raised, then your credit card / paypal account will be charged, but not until then. Anyone that donates can request a project goal for this project. All donators can begin discussing the merits of the projects suggested, and all donators will get a vote in which project is chosen as the final bounty project (in case of excessive, emotional wrangling, voting ties, or other shenanigans, I will have the final say... but I'd rather keep it democratic.) In the future, we may (based on votes & interest) begin collecting money for projects that developers have stated they would have more interest in if they were actually paid. For the most part, the nature of the projects will have to be fairly generic... we can't just decided to pay a specific developer an arbitrary sum for their pet project to have them finish it. The projects that we fund will probably need to be related to mame enhancements, enhancements to open source projects, or willl have to be related to projects that a programmer has already specifically said would require cash incentives to complete. In the short term, we'll be keeping the bounties fairly low. In the future, if this projects is successful, we may attempt to raise the bounty for projects that are more ambitious, complicated.

Negative aspects of this system. Some might say, by creating a system where we're actually paying for work, we'd be setting up an environement that will discourage current programmers from providing work on projects for free. My personal opinions about that are;

a. people that do free work, are going to continue to do free work because they like doing so; b.  there's no guarantee that we will ever request a project that a specific programmer is interested in, or capable of doing, so the chance of them sitting around and waiting for cash is minimal. c. so what... there's thousands of us enthusiasts who do nothing but beg, beg, beg... maybe it's time to give SOMEthing back that all of us have at least a little bit of... not talent, money. d. the pace of development in this community is fairly slow anyway; in the short term by providing money, we may speed that pace of development up. Even if we screw up, I personally can't conceive that it will screw up the  overall pace of development on other projects. I do hope that we don't begin to see developers holding a project hostage when it's nearing completion, or somebody doing something underhanded to influence a vote.... which is why I only want to take votes from those that actually plan to donate.

That being said, I'm not married to this concept, I have no proof that it will work, I have no interest in hacking off the community, and I'm willing to listen to rational arguments against what I've proposed. If I find that this becomes a hot-button topic, then I may choose to drop it. My personal hope is that those of us willing ot make cash contributions from time to time, but would like to see concrete results from those contributions may find a good outlet to patronize the development community. Additionally a bounty project might be a good incentivizer for other hard-design projects, IE, as small-scale venture capital to provide someone, or group of someones, enough money to begin production of weird & obscure controllers, buttons, etc.

For the time being, I'm keeping my goals small. If there's interest, we can work from there.

[Kremmit]

There are several proposed features on the PowerMAME wiki I'd love to see get done.  I could certainly see coughing up a few bucks if I knew they were going towards a project I'm interested in.  I'm not sure how I feel about donating first and then finding out what the project will be after, though. 

Perhaps it would be better to choose a project and see if it gets the funding it needs.  Once a project either gets funded or gets cancelled, we could move on to trying to raise funds for the next project.  Ultimately, I could see this producing multiple funded projects at the same time for programmers to pick from. 

This is just a suggestion, whaddya think?

[Timoe]

I would also be interested in things like powermame continuing.

[u_rebelscum]

You have to be careful if you turn mame into a commercial project, even partially.  Even beyond the legal issues of manufacturers coming after you, anyone who accepts money, & mame:

MameDev might not accept any improvements that are on that list, whether fixed by a person funded or not.  This is up to mameDev, and preach as you (we) wish, they make up their own minds.  (In fact, trying to preach is like building the wall you pound your own head on.)
Any project that starts accepting lots of funded changes will probably have to drop the "mame" out of their name and cut all references to mame (as per mame's license).
The money will be seen as attracting, umm, people who view emulation differently than mameDev whether it does or does not (any more than normal). These people could be "newbies", "haxors", or lawyers (See first point)
Even if not accepted, many, many requests will pop up that mameDev will frown upon.  The requests will still be associated with the funding, even if not accepted.  (See first point)


The concept might not be bad exactly, but please clear it with mameDev if you use it for mame or any derivative of mame.  FrontEnds I don't see problems if the original writers think it's okay.

[Timoe]

front end applications

led control software

other peripheral control software

configuration utilities


thats what many of us are after.

[mahuti]

u_rebelscum makes an excellent point.

[horseboy]

This is really a situational thing. For example, you probably don't want to pay people for custom mame builds, like u_rebelscum said. We don't want to do something to discourage Mame devs from including something that everbody wants, and we really don't want to do anything that jeopardizes the legality of Mame as a whole.

On the other hand I think it is a great idea to get thing implemented into frontends and other related apps. For example, I thought that it would be sweet for Johnny 5 to be able to control the LedWiz. Since Powermame is all but dead, I figured that this would be the best way to have correctly lit buttons in Mame (and even other emulators). HowardC, though, doesn't have a LedWiz, so McCoy and I decided to start rallying the troops to get $50 together to get a LedWiz for Howard. Howard didn't request any money. In fact, he turned it down, but he can't implement this functionality into J5 without a LedWiz.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=54998.0
This doesn't have anything to do with Mame directly, so I can't see any legal/ethical problems with it. It is simply spending a little cheese to get some extra features that you want, and this is the kind of thing that I think could help make some projects come to fruition. I like it.

BTW if you are a LedWizzer this is going to be sweet, so you can help us out in this cause. 

[Circo]

I will pay whatever to make my led-wiz finally work right. 

[mahuti]

I'm a ledwizzer... that's for sure, I even built a crapplication to support it (see recent thread)

[Kangum]

is there any fundraising for the standard mame developement here. not to do specific work, but fundraising as a whole for the mame developers.

your idea sounds good and im not knocking it, but I would like to see more solid fundraising type of activity here for the mame deveopers first. At least before something new is in place for optional work to be done. Because when it comes down to it without the standard mame development there wouldnt be any optional work to rally for.

[mahuti]

AFAIK the MAME team doesn't take cash, just labor.

[ahofle]

So what happens to the money if no developer ever takes on the feature request, or it turns out to be impossible to implement, etc?  I think most people might be reluctant to donate money to something that might never happen.

[mahuti]

So pick a project. No one has discussed anything other than donating a led-wiz to HC.... which I'm fine with.

[Hellfromabove]

I would pay someone to emulate CPS-3, Naomi, and Atomis Wave. I know the deal with CPS-3 but hey, you throw money in someones way and they're all for it. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[Howard_Casto]

My 2 cents... there is nothing wrong with commission work, but you have to be careful.  In the case of the mame core, it isn't such a good idea.  If the developer is responsible and does it the right way then the code will be accepted into the official builds and all is well.  However someone who wouldn't normally be intersted in emulation, but IS interested in money might be willing to cludge together some bad or not quite good code into the source just so it technically works and they get their money.  I don't see this scenario likely, but you never know. 

In the case of the mame devs, their policy is similar to mine.  They refuse to take donations in exchange for someone telling them what to code directly.  What they will accept, however is indirect donations.  If you want an unemulated system to be added, the best way you can do it is to donate to the guru the pcb to the game or cash to buy it with.  In the case of cps3, unfortunately the only people talented enough to pull it off out-right aren't interested.

So personally, I won't accept money, but if you want to help me out in some other way then that is always appreciated.  You'll find most programmers in this hobby have a similar mentality.  Mame is free as is all the apps out there related to mame, we tend to feel a tad guilty if we take money for doing a small thing, when all we are doing is standing on the shoulders of giants. 

[Avery]

I think this idea has merit, but the exact mechanism.....  I'm not sure.

Is it possible to set up a system where people can request projects and then throw money into the bounty for that particular project?  So that, at any given time there might be dozens of projects on the list, each with a smaller bounty?  Also, why limit it to software?  There are numerous pieces of electronics that I could put together if I had a proven design, but I don't have a hope in hell of designing myself.  (Some of these aren't arcade related, but there you go.) 

Heck, I'd even kick a few bucks into a fund that, when someone showed us all a particularly cool hack or some such (don't ask me how this is decided - I'm just brainstorming here) we bought them a cool new toy of some sort by way of saying thanks.

I guess what I'm dancing around here, is I don't know if work for hire is the right model to go with, but I'm all over the model where someone does something for me that I couldn't do on my own and I treat them to pizza and beer. (or something like that) 

[mahuti]

Is it possible to set up a system where people can request projects and then throw money into the bounty for that particular project?  So that, at any given time there might be dozens of projects on the list, each with a smaller bounty?   

That was my ultimate goal

Also, why limit it to software?  There are numerous pieces of electronics that I could put together if I had a proven design, but I don't have a hope in hell of designing myself.  (Some of these aren't arcade related, but there you go.)

I also made mention of that above... I agree with you. In the end, this might be a better better suited to helping fund some kind of hardware projects.

[MYX]

I see the fine line concerning the MAME programming, but, take PowerMAME, Mike added functionality to MAME, he did not alter the ROMs in any way he just made it blink and talk. If someone were to carry the code to the next level, It would be great, but is it dangerous to pay for add ons being that it is not part of the main mame objective. In a sence, it is kind of like a front end as the roms nor MAME was ever written to act this way.

[Lilwolf]

I would say it IS fine for a frontend or maybe custom arcade ready games... But for mame in any build I would say no.

1st... why should someone get paid to write code when the mame devs don't.  Even if it IS requested by someone whos paying.

2nd... If the courts find out that someone being paid for writing mame (even without being the main dev group) you might bring the entire thing down because I could see the courts say that the projects where really tied in some way... or that one is directly allowing the other to cause problems.  This might also bring them in to court if there where any default actions against mame. 

3rd...  The people who request features might not be in the best interest of the 'scene'... ie arcade bootleggers for instance.  When would we stop?  who would decide?  Might start off innocent enough... but after a while, I could see people letting questional adds slide through.

but I DO see this type of project good for other items.  But not directly to programmers.  Like the group who offered a cash prize for the best arcade control friendly freeware app.  There where a TON of submissions.  Or maybe frontend reward program.  "I'll offer the first frontend to add a feature "x" 10 bucks... (and then others could add to that number).  then the first to add the feature would get 1/2, next 1/4, next 1/8... ect.... or something similar.  Just a quick idea, didn't really think that one through though.

[mahuti]

I like that. Sounds fun.

[Xiaou2]

 
 Actually, I believe Aaron Giles has stated that he would love to be able to devote nearly All his time to
mame development.   But, paying Aaron enough to match his current works salery may be more than
people are willing to donate.   Especially since even if it was done, theres still no gaurentee on what will and will not get done / added / features desired   ...etc.

 Actually, mames development by aaron lately has been awesome!  : )   Things like multiple montor
support which was always said would probably never be added..  is now a working thing in mame.


 

[RayB]

I did NOT read the entire first post; I did NOT read subsequent posts; (I just returned from a trip and have alot to catch up on); But I wanted to add my 2 cents: I think it's a good idea, with the right controls and right people involved.  Just take the Pong Clock I started for example. It dropped to the "forgotten pile" due to too much work. But for a few bucks my motivation would have remained a bit more.

This very model actually has been discussed and experimented with (succesfully I think) in the shareware games industry. The concept is to establish a target $ amount and once that target is reached, then the game development starts. It was noted that this model works best when it comes to sequels (obviously, since the author(s) need to have proven themselves both with the quality of their work, the games, etc).

[Silver]

I would imagine you could avoid some of the issues by explicitly using the money to pay someone to code something for you. If you happen to submit that code to mamedev after, they can choose to submit/reject as they want. No pressure, no issue.

Note that if we are mainly talking mame, drastic changes or crap hacks are going to ignored, not admitted, and therefore become useless as core mame progresses. Simple, useful clearly written additions will fare much better (eg the latest listXML change). This could be good goal/starting point.

Note that some changes, no matter how well written, will never make it into core mame. E.g. LED Whiz support. Several people have posted it, so why not start there. (I am not aware how good Powermame's current support is). You can either ask for a seperate app to drive it while mame runs, or a powermame-style modification.

Of course, people have posted before about adding a proper output system for mame for games that had real light/mechanical ouputs - a well written one of these could make it into mame as it would be real emulation. (No idea if the LSE by gl.tter was anything like this). Money could be motivation for such an addition perhaps - and I would imagine make support for 3rd party products (LED Whiz etc...) easier to deal with.

All speculation of course...

[slycrel]

The other thing is you could offer a "bounty" to the person after the fact.  i.e. the bounty for getting windows running on the new macBook pro's when they came out.  Everyone donated first, but the prize didn't go to the winner until the solution was out there for everyone to use.

So in the case of MAME, you could say "$50 to the person who completes feature X and releases it to the public" or something to that effect.  Yes, it's a subtle difference as it's a donation after the fact, but I think the difference is there.  It's more of a donation than a commission at that point because theoretically many people could be working on it at once and nobody is guaranteed to be paid.

Now that said, I think the posters above are correct, this should be limited to non-MAME work or maybe very specialized features that will only be in powerMAME.