How much money does the Haiku need to hire additional talent and work fulltime and how much time would be needed to bring the first beta to market and get a functional OS.
I know alot of bussiness people.
Talk to me. We are all tired of MS sticking it in our ass.
As the front page article demonstrates, there really isn’t a critical shortage of money. The real shortage, i believe, is developers.
Money is easy to get; developers, not so much…
Mind you, if you can secure money, i’m sure the project wouldn’t turn it down 
money can really attract new developers.
Imagine how much publicy Haiku would have if for example on a few sites (likes osnews.org) we would publish the following head-line “Haiku offers 10.000 dollar” , and in the article could stand for example "to the developer which brings full 3d hw acceleration to haiku"
or things like that.
This could bring a lot more developers.
I think new developers would come in the hope, that they spend time with haiku, and that they later can also win some money with coding for haiku.
So more money could really boost the haiku-development.
The problem is that the amount of money needed to attract developers is far greater than the money available. I doubt that Haiku, Inc. has ever had $10K in its coffers at any one time. The times that it has hired developers it has paid far less than most developers would work for in the US or Germany. It might be easier to do what we as a community have been doing for years: attract developers by word of mouth based on a very interesting platform with an easy-to-use API similar to Qt, but if you can attract serious money for the project, developers won’t be hard to come by. Either way, we all win IMO.
Yes, a bounty system (such as the OS2World.com one: http://www.os2world.com/bounties) would be great for everyone, donors and developers.
Earlier today I posted [haiku-inc] Idea: Public Sponsors, basically a way to 1. publicly recognize individual donors who want it and opt-in for it. 2. give extra recognition for large-sum donors. … I’m really hoping that this idea will gather some traction and acceptance.
As for hiring contractors – Haiku, Inc. prefers to limit the offerings to known developers within the community. For now, it’s better for everyone this way. The lower payout wouldn’t be attractive to people doing it only for the money and there’s a stronger level of confidence in accepting a contract from a known contributor vs. SomeRandomPerson.
As for the bounty systems – there’s pro’s and con’s to them. There’s also two basic types. The ‘pay-up-front and wait and hope’ for someone to do the bounty(eg, Haikuware) and ‘all-or-nothing pledges’ (eg, Kickstarter.com). Kickstarter uses AmazonPayments and allows people to pledge an amount. If the fundraising goal for that project is reached (or exceeded), then everyone’s pledges become actual transactions of money. If the goal is not reached in X amount of time, then no transfer of money occurs. This latter ‘all-or-nothing’ system really interests me (after several nudges from Xeon3D), as it would allow us to think really big and more importantly would allow donors to donate really big with the confidence that the money will go directly to that specific project.
Some weeks ago, I created an account : http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/haiku-inc … we haven’t tested it yet, as the site is still in Beta and the ability to start projects is limited.
So… yes, more money will always help, even if it isn’t used on the day it’s donated.
[quote=mmadia]Earlier today I posted [haiku-inc] Idea: Public Sponsors, basically a way to 1. publicly recognize individual donors who want it and opt-in for it. 2. give extra recognition for large-sum donors. … I’m really hoping that this idea will gather some traction and acceptance.
As for hiring contractors – Haiku, Inc. prefers to limit the offerings to known developers within the community. For now, it’s better for everyone this way. The lower payout wouldn’t be attractive to people doing it only for the money and there’s a stronger level of confidence in accepting a contract from a known contributor vs. SomeRandomPerson.
As for the bounty systems – there’s pro’s and con’s to them. There’s also two basic types. The ‘pay-up-front and wait and hope’ for someone to do the bounty(eg, Haikuware) and ‘all-or-nothing pledges’ (eg, Kickstarter.com). Kickstarter uses AmazonPayments and allows people to pledge an amount. If the fundraising goal for that project is reached (or exceeded), then everyone’s pledges become actual transactions of money. If the goal is not reached in X amount of time, then no transfer of money occurs. This latter ‘all-or-nothing’ system really interests me (after several nudges from Xeon3D), as it would allow us to think really big and more importantly would allow donors to donate really big with the confidence that the money will go directly to that specific project.
Some weeks ago, I created an account : http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/haiku-inc … we haven’t tested it yet, as the site is still in Beta and the ability to start projects is limited.
So… yes, more money will always help, even if it isn’t used on the day it’s donated.[/quote]
I know some rich people looking to invest in new and interesting ventures, not to mention the tax write off’s and potential cost reductions to thier operations. How much $$$ would it take to make Haiku comparable to windows XP in terms of basic features and some good APPs to make it passable ?
100K 500K $1m ?
I’d like to hear from developers what they think it would cost. I can go out on a limb and get the ear of those who could finance such a thing.
I can’t promise anything but I can pitch the sale and see what happens.
[quote=StargateFan]How much $$$ would it take to make Haiku comparable to windows XP in terms of basic features and some good APPs to make it passable ?
100K 500K $1m ?[/quote]
I’m not a developer (you’ll find more on the mailing lists, BTW), but I’d say $500k (10 coders * 10 months * $5,000) would have a nicely polished Haiku R1 out the door in a year’s time. This would still leave the “good apps” aspect. In general, this can’t be the focus of the Haiku project, though many devs currently working solely on the OS will probably do applications “on the side” once R1 gives them a little breather. After all, what’s the point in creating an OS if you don’t make use of it?
If there are people spending this kind of money on application development, they should know what kind of apps they need and what they’d consider “good”. There’s a wide range in cost of development depending on the app. I do think many Haiku devs would jump on the opportunity to code apps for Haiku for a regular salary.
So, if you get the money, I’m sure we’ll find ways to spend it. 
Regards,
Humdinger
Hi everyone,
I would like to briefly introduce myself. My name is André Siegel and I work for a non-profit organization called Power2People (registered and located in Texas, USA). We have been supporting open source communities for a few years now, primarily projects for the open source operating system AROS.
We help to get open source projects off the ground by handling all the boring administrative work that is involved in collecting and paying out funds, reviewing developer applications, and so on.
According to our project rules, anybody is free to propose bounty projects as long as the result will be open source software (or hardware). We would most certainly like to see Haiku projects appear on our website in the near future as well. So, if you are interested, do not hesitate to pay a visit to http://www.power2people.org