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Metrius Minmatar Sebiestor tribe	Posted - 2009.03.28 11:48:00 - [31] I think creating bounties for each module will make it easier for you to have more developers and in the process will give you a pool of future candidates to take over for you. I want to be a developer but got stuck doing support and maintenance. I have been looking for a fun way to take the rust off my programming skills, but I don't have time to make a serious commitment. I have been hanging out in EVE for awhile just not very active in the community. So you can considered me new.
Krathos Morpheus Gallente Legion Infernal Wildly Inappropriate.	Posted - 2009.03.28 14:08:00 - [32] Originally by: Ambo Actually, EMMA is totaly open source and has been available to anyone through sourceforge since it's release. I didn't know. Any thoughts on when do you want to launch this? EVE Knowledge
Maestro Del'Tirith Space Exploration	Posted - 2009.03.28 14:49:00 - [33] I am grabbing the source this weekend and will be taking a look at it. I think it is good to see some incentive wrapped around this, and project-based would be fine by me. My one thought: let developers 'claim' a project, and prove to you (for now) and eventually the future leader of the efforts that they are working on it. While one developer has a particular project, another should not be able to pick it up. Having two developers picking up the same project would be - annoying to say the least. As a thought, why not have a share based vote or something similar to decide the initial project set and their relative 'prioritization' and therefore the isk to be associated with it? Let those supporting the effort decide where the incentive will lie for completion of changes. That said, I really look forward to digging into this.
Selene D'Celeste Caldari The D'Celeste Trading Company	Posted - 2009.03.28 14:56:00 - [34] Nice concept Ambo. Having skimmed the thread, my personal recommendations would be) 1) Do IPO it, since your goal of keeping a financial interest (i.e. nagging the developers) in the project will help keep it going. Pay, if done properly, is a good motivator. Also you want EMMA to be perpetual, and income is flexible, so an IPO is the appropriate model. 2) A bounty system along with a minimal flat pay is probably best. Basically, there are a few categories to work on here: a) new features, b) bug fixes, c) documentation and customer support. My guess is you need a ticket system where people can track both development and support issues, and assign them complexities of low/med/high, where you can then pay something like 100/200/300 or 100/300/500 depending on the category per issue resolved or some such. You can make this even more fun by having a customer submit option for the ticket system, and developers can then add in the support issues into the set with the development issues. 3) Development team rank. I don't know how to pull this part off, but if you had 2-3 senior developers, i.e., people who can manage the ticket system and payments, then you can have a nearly unlimited number of junior devs below. So it's really about getting that structure in place, and eventually the EMMA project would be like its own company, which I think is what you are after =) With this setup EMMA has its own funding base, you pay seniors a minimum/month and more depending on what they do. It supports an unlimited number of juniors, and then also integrates a formal way to keep up customer support and handle customer issues by allowing them to submit tickets into the system. Just some ideas. Good luck sir =)
Mr Horizontal Gallente KIA Corp KIA Alliance	Posted - 2009.03.29 11:27:00 - [35] I like this idea a lot. Let me know where/when to send ISK. Director \| www.eve-bank.net
cosmoray Cosmoray Construction	Posted - 2009.03.29 11:52:00 - [36] Do it as an IPO. I like variable dividends, and if the company grows we get more too. I am going to set the start of the market: 1,000 shares at 1.5M per share = 1.5B ISK
No Profit	Posted - 2009.03.29 14:10:00 - [37] Wait, the auction's not starting just yet. This may still not even happen. I need to iron out a few things first.
DaemonExodus Sleeper Industries	Posted - 2009.03.29 22:33:00 - [38] I will invest in this. I have already a vested interest in EMMA having already contributed to Ambo for development of certain features I wanted to see in EMMA immediately.
Caladain Barton	Posted - 2009.03.30 02:26:00 - [39] I'm a Software Engineer thats been looking for a project in eve for a while. I'd be up for picking up Emma and doing work on the project. -Caladain
Kayla Darkstar	Posted - 2009.03.30 04:05:00 - [40] Well there are a few sticking points to this pay structure. I'm a .Net developer with several years of experience. I can do my own SQL/Photoshop work and web design as well. My billable hour to a long term customer would be somewhere between 70-90 an hour. In ISK valuation, you're looking at 17.99 plex X 310 m or roughly..1.2B-1.5B per hour. Granted, in reality you can't just dream up extra Ben Franklins by staying at work another hour, most of us are salaried or we'd be way too expensive. 1 Billion a month doesn't work out for more than 5 or so hours of work at max. Any more and I'd rather slap down the 60 bucks for the Plex and go pvp. I happen to write online web apps and desktop based tax collection software, I would definitely have the skill set to help you out but I'd need the right financial incentive. FYI, we've been interviewing college programmers at a rate of maybe 10 per week and I wouldn't trust them to code a screen saver correctly. I swear these college courses don't teach them anything.
Astorothe Aperture Science Industries	Posted - 2009.03.30 06:11:00 - [41] I like this IPO and would definitely invest. RPGN Gaming News \| News, events and reviews on the best MMOs, RPGs and addictive games \| RPGN.net
Ji Sama	Posted - 2009.03.30 07:57:00 - [42] still interested and still willing to invest... This is a signature not related to EVE
Emporia Tzard	Posted - 2009.03.30 08:39:00 - [43] Originally by: Kayla Darkstar Well there are a few sticking points to this pay structure. I'm a .Net developer with several years of experience. I can do my own SQL/Photoshop work and web design as well. My billable hour to a long term customer would be somewhere between 70-90 an hour. In ISK valuation, you're looking at 17.99 plex X 310 m or roughly..1.2B-1.5B per hour. Granted, in reality you can't just dream up extra Ben Franklins by staying at work another hour, most of us are salaried or we'd be way too expensive. 1 Billion a month doesn't work out for more than 5 or so hours of work at max. Any more and I'd rather slap down the 60 bucks for the Plex and go pvp. I happen to write online web apps and desktop based tax collection software, I would definitely have the skill set to help you out but I'd need the right financial incentive. FYI, we've been interviewing college programmers at a rate of maybe 10 per week and I wouldn't trust them to code a screen saver correctly. I swear these college courses don't teach them anything. But this isn't a REAL job. This is the kind of stuff that a lot of people would actually do for free just to be part of it. The ISK reward is there to encourage regular input to the cause, not to give full payment for their work.
Ambo EMMA Test Corp	Posted - 2009.03.30 11:08:00 - [44] I obviously can't compete with real-world salaries and it's not my intention to do so. 1 bil per month is enough to let you buy GTCs and lose several T2 fitted ships each month without worrying about it. I suppose it comes down to the fact that if all you're interested in is the ISK then you're not the type of person I'm looking for. It's an extra incentive but little more than that. I'm hoping to have a re-worked proposal up later this week. Just don't want to rush things. -------------------------------------- Trader? Investor? Just want to track your finances? Check out EMMA
Maestro Del'Tirith Space Exploration	Posted - 2009.03.30 14:19:00 - [45] Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/03/2009 14:18:50 To the items above, this reminds me very much of various other discussions I've had where I have helped out as a developer for an EVE related effort. At the end of the day, if you were to ask me 'how much would it cost to hire you to program xxx?' my answer would almost always be 'you can't afford me.' This is not about affording the time and energy of a developer though...this is attaching incentive to an opportunity that improves the community as a whole and gives everybody additional tools in their marketing belt. It also opens up the door to these endeavors to help out, which is a Good Thing(tm). By attaching some incentive to it, the developer has a bit of an extra reward at the end which spurs on the development efforts. All in all a great idea - and one which ensures that people who aren't interested in improving the tool itself need not apply - though I think a sales campaign in the Sell Order forums for the tool would probably raise the capital just as easily.
Caladain Barton	Posted - 2009.03.30 23:25:00 - [46] Originally by: Ambo It's an extra incentive but little more than that. Thats primarily how i view the isk offer. If we're looking at it like Kayla Darkstar so pointed out, with an eye towards USD/hour, then it makes more economical sense to simply buy GTC's. I, on the other hand, view Emma and any other eve related programming project as more of a hobby/open source-type project that just happens to net me a bit of isk on the side. True hackers program for the fun of it, not for the monetary gain. 'Course..the rewards do sweeten the deal at the end of the day ;-)
Kayla Darkstar	Posted - 2009.03.31 05:26:00 - [47] I was simply pointing out that the really good programmers(who I assume you are looking for) spend all day programming and usually have a limited amount of down time to satisfy our gaming habits. On a pure dollar to fun ratio, it's easier to buy Plex than to commit large amounts of time to your project. Granted, I have no idea what kind of time commitment you're looking for. If it's 5-10 hours a month maybe, if it's 5 hours a week I'd probably say not worth it. Out of curiosity, how is your sales structure laid out. Are you counting on new sales monthly to fund the project or reoccurring revenue from a renewal based service? I happen to work at a company that sells a renewal based desktop client that helps track and remit sales taxes. I'd have to worry as a long term investor about market saturation if you're just doing one time sales. Eve's player base doesn't recycle nearly as fast as most other MMO's.
CrestoftheStars Caldari Recreation Of The World	Posted - 2009.03.31 06:47:00 - [48] Originally by: Kayla Darkstar I was simply pointing out that the really good programmers(who I assume you are looking for) spend all day programming and usually have a limited amount of down time to satisfy our gaming habits. On a pure dollar to fun ratio, it's easier to buy Plex than to commit large amounts of time to your project. Granted, I have no idea what kind of time commitment you're looking for. If it's 5-10 hours a month maybe, if it's 5 hours a week I'd probably say not worth it. Out of curiosity, how is your sales structure laid out. Are you counting on new sales monthly to fund the project or reoccurring revenue from a renewal based service? I happen to work at a company that sells a renewal based desktop client that helps track and remit sales taxes. I'd have to worry as a long term investor about market saturation if you're just doing one time sales. Eve's player base doesn't recycle nearly as fast as most other MMO's. for a pro programmer making such a applet IS the FUN in their life ;) ___________________________________________ Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without that law is both. For a wounded
Caladain Barton	Posted - 2009.03.31 07:12:00 - [49] Originally by: CrestoftheStars for a pro programmer making such a applet IS the FUN in their life ;) Exactly :-) I don't program for work because it brings in a paycheck, i do it because it's fun. I'd be programming even if there was no money in the field at all :-)
Ambo EMMA Test Corp	Posted - 2009.03.31 07:53:00 - [50] EMMA is a one-time purchase. I had considered a monthly payment or somthing but I don't believe it's viable, plus it would have required more effort on my part. Saturation is a concern but I'm not overly worried. Revenue will continue to come from bespoke developments anyway and I don't see any sign of sales falling of yet. I'm honestly not too bothered about the ability of the programmers who want to join. Obviously it would be nice to have more experienced people but when I started EMMA I had only done a small amount of C# to teach myself how to use it. I had virtualy no knowledge of SQL queries, etc. I've learnt a HUGE amount worknig on it but I'm still no .NET guru. -------------------------------------- Trader? Investor? Just want to track your finances? Check out EMMA
Ambo EMMA Test Corp	Posted - 2009.03.31 12:39:00 - [51] Edited by: Ambo on 31/03/2009 12:39:29 Thank you all for your feedback. Here my thoughts on the proposed changes and ideas. Payment system After much thought, I have decided to go with the a hybrid system of paying developers. Each will recieve a 'salary' of 500 mil isk per month. This can then be topped up with bounties for fixing bugs or completing new features. (This then has potential to grow into the structure described by Selene D'Celeste.) I'll stick with two developers initially and hope to grow slowly from there. 1. New features The priority of new developments would be decided by shareholder vote (probably from a subset of the available projects). The highest priority projects would have bonuses attached to them that would be awarded to developers upon release. The bonus could be anywhere from 100-500 mil isk, based upon the difficulty of the changes and time required (decided by me). In addition, EMMA users can personally assign a bounty to a specific feature. This fee will be collected when the developer agrees to pickup the project (The only time I've agreed to not getting payed 100% up front, I didn't get payed). the fee would be payed to the corp, 50% would then go to the developer upon release of the project. 2. Bugs To ensure bugs are not simply left, a bounty system will be in place to award either 20 mil, 50 mil or 100 mil for each bug fixed. The amount will depend on the difficulty and time required (decided by me). Ihatalo Cartel 'buyout' Ulecese, thank you for the offer of taking over the project but I shall decline. I'm interested in seeing where this IPO will lead. Final thoughts I will go ahead with creating the shares, etc and aim to start the auction within a few days time. -------------------------------------- Trader? Investor? Just want to track your finances? Check out EMMA
Maestro Del'Tirith Space Exploration	Posted - 2009.03.31 14:43:00 - [52] Given that there is still a base salary included, can you describe how you intend to screen candidates and determine appropriate individuals to be on the 'developer roster'? Would it make sense to require them to make a change prior to inclusion on the roster?
Mme Pinkerton Caldari	Posted - 2009.03.31 16:48:00 - [53] Originally by: Ambo Payment system (...) 1. New features (...) 2. Bugs (...) IMHO this procedure will lead to a bloody mess: every developer will be concerned about fixing bugs or introducing new features while code quality as a whole suffers. Who will filter which new features get developed (do I get that kitchen sink built into EMMA if I would pay 10bil ?), who will decide if a patch meets quality standards, who will have an eye on the general code structure? At the moment EMMA is structured quite well - nevertheless there are already cases of (unnecessary) code duplication and bad readability. Tell us how you will maintain quality by setting incentives for more features. Originally by: Ambo Ihatalo Cartel 'buyout' Ulecese, thank you for the offer of taking over the project but I shall decline. I'm interested in seeing where this IPO will lead. Well, he offered to buy something which is already free... Originally by: Ambo Final thoughts I will go ahead with creating the shares, etc and aim to start the auction within a few days time. At this point I feel the urge to seriously question your business model. You rely on people to pay for an application which they can get for free. The only benefits (preferred treatment of feature requests) is not only negligible for most users, but also offset by the shift towards "sponsored" features. That's a pretty big bet on the MD community as a whole. Your business model relies on once-in-a-lifetime payments - so you are either betting on the future growth of MD or on a high fluctuation amongst traders. I am quite certain that even a thread of "How to compile EMMA yourself" (not to speak of a free - as in beer - fork of EMMA) would lead to a temporary decrease of revenue which could cause the project serious financial issues. Yes, after some time people will notice that without paying for EMMA they wouldn't get any new features, as development would slow down/cease - but by this time your IPO might well have gone bust. My feeling is that EMMAs revenue stream relies heavily on the fact that most people are not aware that the program is open-source. Especially newbie traders think the current price point is pretty steep which makes this application vulnerable to "pirating". Companies like RedHat, Sun, IBM etc. are earning on open-source software by offering customers some additional value which the customers wouldn't get without paying and which is very hard to emulate for free (namely support) - I fail to see how EMMA offers significant additional value to paying over non-paying customers. I like EMMA very much and I do highly respect Ambo - but this business plan is fail IMHO.
Kayla Darkstar	Posted - 2009.03.31 17:02:00 - [54] Originally by: Mme Pinkerton Originally by: Ambo At this point I feel the urge to seriously question your business model. You rely on people to pay for an application which they can get for free. The only benefits (preferred treatment of feature requests) is not only negligible for most users, but also offset by the shift towards "sponsored" features. That's a pretty big bet on the MD community as a whole. Your business model relies on once-in-a-lifetime payments - so you are either betting on the future growth of MD or on a high fluctuation amongst traders. I am quite certain that even a thread of "How to compile EMMA yourself" (not to speak of a free - as in beer - fork of EMMA) would lead to a temporary decrease of revenue which could cause the project serious financial issues. Yes, after some time people will notice that without paying for EMMA they wouldn't get any new features, as development would slow down/cease - but by this time your IPO might well have gone bust. My feeling is that EMMAs revenue stream relies heavily on the fact that most people are not aware that the program is open-source. Especially newbie traders think the current price point is pretty steep which makes this application vulnerable to "pirating". Companies like RedHat, Sun, IBM etc. are earning on open-source software by offering customers some additional value which the customers wouldn't get without paying and which is very hard to emulate for free (namely support) - I fail to see how EMMA offers significant additional value to paying over non-paying customers. I like EMMA very much and I do highly respect Ambo - but this business plan is fail IMHO. I have to agree. The software that I produce for my employer is only viable because of changing tax structures and a need for quarterly updates to keep your systems compliant. We don't generate nearly the revenue needed from new sales to keep the company alive. All of our income comes from yearly renewals. Honestly, you'd be better off taking the 10 billion dollar endowment from the stock sale and maybe another 10 billion of your own funds and putting them in an interest bearing account from d-bank. You'd earn enough long term interest to fund your developers and then do dividend payouts to your investors from the project's income.
Caladain Barton	Posted - 2009.03.31 22:16:00 - [55] i'll throw in my hat for being in on this project. The payment system seems to need a bit of work, and i think market saturation can be a bit of a problem (there are only so many clients, and offering a one-time life-time payment might be the long term death of this project {maybe one-time payment for each major version? Thusly, all bug-fixes and minor feature additions/enhancements are free, but you have a continued customer base.}) I do agree that this project should be open source on principle alone. Preventing piracy is a futile battle..any sort of protection mechanism is purely to keep honest people honest. I can send you my pedigree if you like for working on the project.
Maestro Del'Tirith Space Exploration	Posted - 2009.04.01 01:55:00 - [56] Regarding the quality concern, I was under the assumption that Ambo or some designated lead developer would review all changes before they are final and accepted - this is no different from hiring a consultant developer for any endeavor (except that - dear god - they actually need to finish something! Lord knows I've seen enough of that lacking in my time...) Quality control and community testing, as well as acceptance by the client who requested the change seem like things that will develop either in the beginning or over time, depending on how things crop up.
Kushion Anti Sweden Defense Force Virtue of Selfishness	Posted - 2009.04.01 02:37:00 - [57] Originally by: Kayla Darkstar I was simply pointing out that the really good programmers(who I assume you are looking for) spend all day programming and usually have a limited amount of down time to satisfy our gaming habits. On a pure dollar to fun ratio, it's easier to buy Plex than to commit large amounts of time to your project. Granted, I have no idea what kind of time commitment you're looking for. If it's 5-10 hours a month maybe, if it's 5 hours a week I'd probably say not worth it. Out of curiosity, how is your sales structure laid out. Are you counting on new sales monthly to fund the project or reoccurring revenue from a renewal based service? I happen to work at a company that sells a renewal based desktop client that helps track and remit sales taxes. I'd have to worry as a long term investor about market saturation if you're just doing one time sales. Eve's player base doesn't recycle nearly as fast as most other MMO's. I don't think comparing RL income to eve translatable income is the right way to go it. If you're making more than $5 an hour, you could save a lot of time by buying GTCs and selling for isk. OFC, most people that make $5/hr have different priorities for their RL monies. :P Probably better to compare it to how you make isk in eve. If you run missions for 30m/hr, a 1b/month salary begins to sound pretty good. You could drop a lot of your missioning hours and spend it on this instead. If you enjoy programming more than missions, then this begins to sound like a good deal. Then again, if your primary occupation is trading and you make 100m/hr, it doesn't look so good. Moving on to Ambo's proposal, I'd say it sounds interesting. The specifics of how you handle it will probably make or break it, so don't do anything hasty without giving it a lot of thought. I probably wouldn't want to invest in something like this, but I suspect you have enough fans I doubt you will have any problems raising money.
Ambo EMMA Test Corp	Posted - 2009.04.01 08:01:00 - [58] I shall ponder these points. I do not believe that EMMA being easy to pirate has a massive effect on income. However, I can certainly see this being tackled in the near future. EMMA being open source makes it impossible to prevent piracy but it could certainly be made more difficult without a huge amount of effort. Keep in mind that 100 mil isk is really not a big deal. Could you be bothered to download someone elses project, modify it to not look for a license key and then compile it for the sake of 100 mil isk? I know I wouldn't bother, plus you'd have to do it every time a new release came out if you wanted the new features. I also believe that the market for somthing like this is far bigger than anyone realises. I've had well over 2,000 downloads of the original installer. Although the majority have not bought the software, that shows that there is a large amount of interest if nothing else. Tbh I also believed the market was smaller than it is, and I was suprised when orders continued to come in at the same rate months after release. As new features are added, more people become interested, I always see a surge in sales just after a big feature update. This is why features are the focus of the reward system. I will personally be vetting changes before they are added to the beta updater. There would then be community testing and sposor acceptance (if applicable). How can I incentivise writting good code? Even the proposed system is far from the simple approach that I would prefer. I'm clearly never going to be able to please everyone with this so I'll just have to go with whatever I think is best for the project. -------------------------------------- Trader? Investor? Just want to track your finances? Check out EMMA
Ambo EMMA Test Corp	Posted - 2009.04.01 08:04:00 - [59] I shall ponder these points. I do not believe that EMMA being easy to pirate has a massive effect on income. However, I can certainly see this being tackled in the near future. EMMA being open source makes it impossible to prevent piracy but it could certainly be made more difficult without a huge amount of effort. Keep in mind that 100 mil isk is really not a big deal. Could you be bothered to download someone elses project, modify it to not look for a license key and then compile it for the sake of 100 mil isk? I know I wouldn't bother, plus you'd have to do it every time a new release came out if you wanted the new features. I also believe that the market for somthing like this is far bigger than anyone realises. I've had well over 2,000 downloads of the original installer. Although the majority have not bought the software, that shows that there is a large amount of interest if nothing else. Tbh I also believed the market was smaller than it is, and I was suprised when orders continued to come in at the same rate months after release. As new features are added, more people become interested, I always see a surge in sales just after a big feature update. This is why features are the focus of the reward system. I will personally be vetting changes before they are added to the beta updater. There would then be community testing and sposor acceptance (if applicable). How can I incentivise writting good code? Even the proposed system is far from the simple approach that I would prefer. I'm clearly never going to be able to please everyone with this so I'll just have to go with whatever I think is best for the project. I can send you my pedigree if you like for working on the project. -------------------------------------- Trader? Investor? Just want to track your finances? Check out EMMA
Mr Horizontal Gallente KIA Corp KIA Alliance	Posted - 2009.04.01 11:19:00 - [60] When people see quality and a labour of love, they generally pay. That said piracy is actually pretty difficult since EMMA deals with API keys. Just verify at least one of the API keys being used in EMMA has actually got a payment associated with it Director \| www.eve-bank.net

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