Kickstarter Campaign to fund a programmer?

[purps]

*** Just playing devil's advocate here, obviously Thom working full-time on LMCE can only be awesome ***

...but speaking on behalf of the cheapskates; how would contributing towards LMCE compare to paying out for a dianemo license?

Cheers,
Matt.

[Esperanto]

...but speaking on behalf of the cheapskates; how would contributing towards LMCE compare to paying out for a dianemo license?

I think the main thing is that dianemo already have a 12.04 release out with latest mythtv etc. Also people expect support when they pay and continuity. When it is clear what people will get I think they are willing to pay. Personally I don't want to pay for a dianemo license and would prefer to pay to the open source variant.....

[purps]

Personally, until now, I wouldn't pay for either, but if everybody was jumping on the "let's get Thom full-time on LMCE" bandwagon I think I would get involved if it were clear what the difference will be between things as they are now and how things will be then (after a year).

I am just curious as to how much it will ultimately cost and what will change exactly, vs paying for a dianemo license, something which until now I would never have considered.

Obviously I COULD just do nothing and continue to freeload while you lot all pay $100 each, but after so long using LMCE, I personally couldn't do that with a clear conscience given what I get out of this project. But there would be many others who would have no problem whatsoever doing this.

(I don't watch television, so the mythtv thing isn't a big issue for me.... THIS IS NOT A WHINGE OR A COMPLAINT, but the only thing I do have an issue with is not being able to use youtube, iPlayer etc on my mini-ITX boxes, I assume because of the 10.04/vdpau thing, and also the slow desktop speed).

I am trying to be completely honest here in the hope that it contributes to this thread.

Cheers,
Matt.

[david_a_dawson]

My time is tragically limited for anything other than boostrapping a business and looking after family, so I drift in and out at random.
I do, however, have some cash that I can throw in this direction if there is somewhere to throw it and there is some tangible benefit to me doing that.

I'd be happy to commit to $100 with no further information, as I think this is a project that deserves more dev time.  I'd be interested in putting a fair amount more in too if I could have an idea of what the benefits to the roadmap could be if this goes ahead (barring the changes that are always going to happen)

[tschak909]

I am putting up a roadmap here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/TSCHAK%27s_Roadmap

As is wiki etiquette, use the talk page, and be sure to suffix your additions to it with a mediawiki signature, please. Thanks.

p.s. a MediaWiki Signature is: --~~~~    that is, two dashes, four tildes.

-Thom

[_if_]

By that collapse thing, is that meant you can groupe videos in the videosection? Like when I have a lot of simpsons episodes there will only show up "Simpsons" in videos and if I click on that it will show all the episodes?
If so, to me this feature would at least be worth an extra 100€. 

[tschak909]

Yes. This is actually a _very_ difficult feature to implement properly, due to how the grid is prepared.

-Thom

[_if_]

maybe it would help to set up a detailled list of possible features and a rough time how long it would take to implement them. then you can divide the 50000 and you know how much money is needed for each feature.
this way everybody knows what he is spending his money on and knows what exactly he is getting for it. This may help to get people more interested.

[Esperanto]

- How much work would it be to get totally rid of Pluto and have lmce GPLed or is that still lightyears away?

Anyone?

[tschak909]

That is at least another 5 years of work, for no benefit other than having it under an open license. That is 5 years of no forward progress. If not more.

-Thom

[bushtech]

 ::)Thanks for clearing that up Tschak. I have often wondered.

[hari]

Anyone?

I'm working on this with agocontrol. Sure, it still lacks a lot of linuxmce's functionality. But it is better in some areas already. We'll see in 5 years how things look like.

[Raul102801]

Are you familiar with GNS3 crowdfunding they just did this past week? they raised over $300K from contributions from users and I really liked the way they structured things. Basically they had a list of goals and said how much they needed to raise to accomplish each of those goals. They aimed for $35K and ended up raising almost ten times more.
I participated with $75 and as a novice Linuxmce user, I would definitely donate $100-$200 to help improve the product. I have donated in the past for developers to purchase some test equipment and would gladly donate again.

Maybe a similar approach to what GNS3 has done to raise funds might work for Linuxmce as well. Just a thought.

[tschak909]

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/webee-the-real-smart-home <-- now i feel _really_ depressed

-Thom

[Marie.O]

You shouldn't. So much in that video and description is NOT easily achieved. It is a typical HA system promotion video. Basically the same video had been used a gazillion years ago for any other HA system. The only exception is the frontend. But the backend doesn't work like that. My coffee maker doesn't automatically starts making coffee when it receives power. My washing machine doesn't automatically start a washing job when it receives power. What does that mean for HA?

I have to have specific HA-aware home appliances. And, afaik, there are very few appliances that are (btw: most are connected to a KNX system...). What does that mean for weebee and stuff? You will be able to control lights, drapes and send legacy AV devices some control codes.

The place were LinuxMCE is currently (and always has been) lacking is the UI. While it does serve its purpose, things like setting up scenarios is everything but intuitive. You can't use the user UI to setup scenarios. It is one of the major drawbacks of LinuxMCE.

The automatically setup scenarios that we have is a big plus. It would be an even bigger plus, if they could easily be amended, without fear of being reset on the next UpdateEntArea run.

So: Forget the Kleenex, and enjoy what we have. We have a system that is capable of a lot of things, and can be made even better. Let's concentrate on fullfilling Pluto's promise: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/What_Pluto_Promised and enhance it gradually with a better UI.