Author Topic: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals  (Read 58078 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #30 on: June 02, 2014, 04:03:06 am »
Hi

I think this discussion is good to open up the alternative to the community and workout some details.

Roderick, I think that the real issue is that Mensys/XEU haven't produced Wifi drivers with MultiMac. And the main driver request of the community was to have Wifi driver (according to a poll). Remember that people of this community was just sick of waiting for broken promises, or hearing "confidential" information of the things to came that never showed up.  This is why Pavel's offer may be tempting.

The real discussion should be, Does Mensys, XEU, Roderick, David, Steven, Lewis's new company or anybody have plans to create Wifi drivers for eCS-OS2?

Please Roderick, stop sending me emails in private about this subject, the idea is to have open discussion, you have this forum to put your explanations. I'm not the one that you have to convince for supporting this or not. 

The only fact is that I have two serious proposals for the OS2World common Fund for 2014.

1) Kickstart Eclipse SWT port
2) Network/Wifi BSD driver port. 

This are the two things that I have, if anybody had other proposal (not ideas, a proposal with developers on board) please let me know.

Regards
« Last Edit: June 02, 2014, 04:07:44 am by Martin Iturbide »
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Dave Yeo

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #31 on: June 02, 2014, 05:00:47 am »

The only fact is that I have two serious proposals for the OS2World common Fund for 2014.

1) Kickstart Eclipse SWT port
2) Network/Wifi BSD driver port. 

This are the two things that I have, if anybody had other proposal (not ideas, a proposal with developers on board) please let me know.
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund. 31ESR is already in testing and we're just starting testing 24ESR and 31ESR is going to be harder as all the OS/2 code is gone.
Having 3D accelerated video drivers is also important for the future, if only for webgl in Firefox. This is going to get more important as NPAPI plugin support is going to be removed at some point so no more flash or other plugins, instead the browser will be doing everything including 3D stuff. Even playing videos works much better if accelerated and who knows what future web applications will show up.
I really don't know how useful an eclipse/swt port would be.

dbanet

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #32 on: June 02, 2014, 06:15:00 am »
the main driver request of the community was to have Wifi driver (according to a poll).  This is why Pavel's offer may be tempting.

Network/Wifi BSD driver port. 

Hi Martin,

Although you're talking mostly about wireless network support (and I understand why), I would like to clearly outline to the community, you and everyone, that accepting Pasha's proposal would also kickstart the whole BSD drivers porting thing, because the main wrapper subsystem would be written and debugged. Then not only NIC drivers, but other hardware class drivers like video, audio, usb 3, etc, may be ported.

A small digression. You talk about open discussions, and you say that you want the information about proposals to be open to the community, so I think it is okay for me to publish and talk about this.

As I have already said, the main wrapper subsystem should be ready first. It is obvious that it should be debugged on some real task, i. e. make some BSD driver interoperate with OS/2 subsystems, which means that an "interface" from the BSD driver to them should be created. And the only Pasha's condition is that the first such an "interface" must be the NIC drivers one. For whatever reason. So in the first stage you pay some initial amount of money and you get a working wrapper subsystem with some amount of working NIC drivers.

And then we have options.

The amount of money collected by the Fund is enough to complete another task (which costs less than the first one, because the "main wrapper" is ready already):
  • Wi-Fi, OR
  • Videodrivers (ATI and NVidia).

So the community, I think, has the right to decide porting which types of drivers the Fund's money should be spent on.

(I have some preferences on this question, but I won't vote (cuz I have no moral right I'm sure, cuz I have never donated a cent to the Fund.))

I'm writing this just to outline that there's another option: the video drivers could be ported instead of wireless NIC (wired NIC drivers must be ported before any of these anyway).

P. S. I just have a feeling that you, Martin, or someone else from OS2World has silently, w/o any public discussion, decided to give the priority to the wlan drivers, while having another option, that could be more interesting to the Community.

pasha

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #33 on: June 02, 2014, 06:34:24 am »

The only fact is that I have two serious proposals for the OS2World common Fund for 2014.

1) Kickstart Eclipse SWT port
2) Network/Wifi BSD driver port. 

This are the two things that I have, if anybody had other proposal (not ideas, a proposal with developers on board) please let me know.
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund. 31ESR is already in testing and we're just starting testing 24ESR and 31ESR is going to be harder as all the OS/2 code is gone.
Having 3D accelerated video drivers is also important for the future, if only for webgl in Firefox. This is going to get more important as NPAPI plugin support is going to be removed at some point so no more flash or other plugins, instead the browser will be doing everything including 3D stuff. Even playing videos works much better if accelerated and who knows what future web applications will show up.
I really don't know how useful an eclipse/swt port would be.

  Video drivers can support all, that linux/bsd can support in this driver. There are some problem. OS/2 PM can not support all of features. But this problem can solved.

pasha

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #34 on: June 02, 2014, 10:43:23 am »
Hi

I think this discussion is good to open up the alternative to the community and workout some details.

Roderick, I think that the real issue is that Mensys/XEU haven't produced Wifi drivers with MultiMac. And the main driver request of the community was to have Wifi driver (according to a poll). Remember that people of this community was just sick of waiting for broken promises, or hearing "confidential" information of the things to came that never showed up.  This is why Pavel's offer may be tempting.

The real discussion should be, Does Mensys, XEU, Roderick, David, Steven, Lewis's new company or anybody have plans to create Wifi drivers for eCS-OS2?

Please Roderick, stop sending me emails in private about this subject, the idea is to have open discussion, you have this forum to put your explanations. I'm not the one that you have to convince for supporting this or not. 

The only fact is that I have two serious proposals for the OS2World common Fund for 2014.

1) Kickstart Eclipse SWT port
2) Network/Wifi BSD driver port. 

This are the two things that I have, if anybody had other proposal (not ideas, a proposal with developers on board) please let me know.

Regards

Martin, you described all except one. Why do I want to do right now is driver.   I'm still free from work and if it is this will work - I presume for it all the rest of postponing If not then I go and then have the result will be executed when the project is unknown.   if I'm going to work somewhere outside, I did not interested in your money. We have at least $ 1500 for programer at Month. But here need go to the house and programming to Windows or Linux. For discuss you have time to 4 june. Then I go to any programmers firms. I very like eat and beer :)

OS4User

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #35 on: June 02, 2014, 09:27:51 pm »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive

guzzi

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #36 on: June 02, 2014, 10:45:44 pm »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive

I second that idea too.

Andy Willis

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #37 on: June 02, 2014, 10:47:32 pm »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive
Another option is to Port QT5 and use one of the webkit browsers... less work probably in the long term and more options available too.  FIrefox seems to be doing its best to marginalize itself.

pasha

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #38 on: June 03, 2014, 12:08:41 am »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive

Any browser can not work if driver for netcard is missing :)

Oxyd

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #39 on: June 03, 2014, 01:26:22 am »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive
Another option is to Port QT5 and use one of the webkit browsers... less work probably in the long term and more options available too.  FIrefox seems to be doing its best to marginalize itself.
To run (QT5, java etc) software on the modern hardware, we need driver infrastructure -- net/wifi, video with HW OpenGL support and hardware acceleration, USB3 and maybe Bluetooth!
« Last Edit: June 03, 2014, 04:13:06 am by Vadim Priluzkiy »

Dave Yeo

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #40 on: June 03, 2014, 04:42:27 am »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive
Another option is to Port QT5 and use one of the webkit browsers... less work probably in the long term and more options available too.  FIrefox seems to be doing its best to marginalize itself.

How good is the QT5 version of webkit compared to the Apple version or others?

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #41 on: June 03, 2014, 04:49:46 am »
I don't favor funding any of the proposals at this time.

A new WiFi driver would be nice, but anyone can have WiFi by plugging in an Intel 5100 and using Doug B's excellent extensions to GenMac.
I'd actually use eclipse, but I can get by without it. We already have lots of excellent programmers editors on OS/2.

I like funding the bww Firefox as outlined by Dave Yeo. I wish we could pay bww to hire another programmer.
Pasha's driver framework is tempting, but only if we can hire him for a couple of years while we get the bugs worked out. Alas, the common fund is too small for that.
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Dave Yeo

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #42 on: June 03, 2014, 05:12:22 am »
At some point Bitwise is going to run out of funding for the Firefox port, dmik has put a lot of time in understanding the code, which is a huge mess so I'd suggest it as another use for the fund.

I would support this idea too  -   without proper browser,  os/2 has no chance to survive

Any browser can not work if driver for netcard is missing :)
I'm replying without need for a netcard though everyone else in the house is dependent on my netcard and get pissed off when it stops working due to IRQ weirdness. It would be nice to have a driver that worked and kept working for more then a couple of days.

dbanet

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #43 on: June 03, 2014, 05:28:05 am »
We already have lots of excellent programmers editors on OS/2.

I doubt that. Can you please name some?

Pasha's driver framework is tempting, but only if we can hire him for a couple of years while we get the bugs worked out.

It may be so (I will ask) he will support his drivers later for free in his spare time; please keep in mind that he was developing OS/4 alongside with other talented programmers for years for free in his spare time.

The main work to produce the first release is what takes that much time so the decision to try to get the Fund's money to be able to work on this full day for a couple of month was made.

I'm really confused that such a great offer doesn't get supported unanimously by the community, and there are many people against it.

Please also remember that Dmik's time costs more, and before we make any decisions, it would be better to calculate what will we get in each case:
  • Eclipse/SWT porting proposal: not enough money to complete the port, but will make the port easier later
  • Send the money to bww bitwise works GmbH: ? ? ? probably a completed 31 ESR port; I think we should contact Silvan first
  • Pasha's proposal: working drivers for wired NICs + Wi-Fi or hardware accelerated video drivers

Andi B.

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Re: OS2World Common Fund 2014 - Open for Proposals
« Reply #44 on: June 03, 2014, 08:45:32 am »
One question - was Pavel the developer of ACPI before David took over? Or do anyone know who it was?