Leverage the Community to Improve our Suite of Tools?

[kring]

I was wondering the admins and communities thoughts on using CustomsForge as a way to raise funds to support development of our customs tool suite. The reason I ask; there is an amazing tool that was started but died a few months back that could use some developer attention. Would CF be willing to be a vehicle for and support the raising of funds and identification of developer willing/able to take over the effort and future tool efforts?  

 

Sort of like a kickstarter type role for CDLC related projects. I personally would be willing to donate additional funding that would go directly to specific causes. Maybe it starts as a simple forum area setup where the community can post ideas, hash out appetite and options and come up with a concept. If it looks like it could get traction allow people to do non-committal funding pledges to see if there's a real willingness to contribute, if it gets enough attention it could then move to sourcing phase where people would have to send actual donations (all no guarantee of course) marked for that project and CF community of developers could offer to take on the work and get paid for it.

 

I know I make it sound simple and there's probably some legal crap that could bind things up but maybe this could help us progress the toolset.

 

BTW -  RS Tab Explorer is the tool I'm referring to. I think it's as important as EoF & the Rocksmith Toolkit to this whole customs project. It has massive potential in my opinion.  

 

Links for reference: 

http://customsforge.com/topic/5420-rocksmith-tab-explorer/?hl=explorer

https://github.com/andulv/RSTabExplorer/releases

 

[Wepeel]

Not a bad idea in theory, but I can see it getting pretty messy.  What if users donate towards a project, and that project never gets finished?  Or gets finished in a way that is unacceptable to the people who donated?  What if people donate towards a project but the final product doesn't have the features that they wanted?  

 

I'm a Mac user for instance, so does that mean if I donate I get a guaranteed Mac version of the project? Likely not since developing for Mac and PC are very different.  Do PC user's donations go towards a Mac version they will never use?

 

Furthermore, what if the amount of money donated exceeds the value of the project.  For instance, what if $1,000 is raised to do something that doesn't require $1000 worth of work?  Do people get refunds?  You could forward that money on to another project, but then what if it's something that those users didn't want to donate to?

 

 

Also, for your specific example of the tab explorer... Most of the tabs are taken from the internet anyway.  Very few customs are tabbed by the people who actually chart them.  And there are already dozens of tab apps available (Guitar Pro being the best in my opinion) that are available in both free and paid versions.

[kring]

I hear you, and that's the sort of stuff I wanted to hash out in this thread.  I would think certain things would have to be defined, a statement of work drawn up with the developer, similar to the way i'd imagine CF does for development work on the site... it would need some controls and such and since this is an educational community it's need to be more loose in it's a best effort to do a release, it doesn't imply ongoing maintenance, improvements or support. it's a set scope before it starts.. thinks like over funding would be rejected and returned once the limit is reached. 

 

My problem with tabs - they are all terrible and wrong and they NEVER align to the tabs we use in the game. Tab explorer lets us take the actual DLC/CDLC tabs and practice them offline and share with others for learning where everyone is on the same page.  Guitar Pro is a great tool, but IMO most the tabs out there are garbage and it doesn't help to learn a song in the game with a chord progression of C D Em, then go to ultimate-guitar.com and grab a tab that says the same progression is B7sus4, Dadd9, Am.  I'm attempting humor but the reality is in 99% of the cases the tabs are that far off. 

 

This community has far better tabs than anything I've ever been able to find off the internet.

[Wepeel]

I hear you, and that's the sort of stuff I wanted to hash out in this thread.  I would think certain things would have to be defined, a statement of work drawn up with the developer, similar to the way i'd imagine CF does for development work on the site... it would need some controls and such and since this is an educational community it's need to be more loose in it's a best effort to do a release, it doesn't imply ongoing maintenance, improvements or support. it's a set scope before it starts.. thinks like over funding would be rejected and returned once the limit is reached. 

 

My problem with tabs - they are all terrible and wrong and they NEVER align to the tabs we use in the game. Tab explorer lets us take the actual DLC/CDLC tabs and practice them offline and share with others for learning where everyone is on the same page.  Guitar Pro is a great tool, but IMO most the tabs out there are garbage and it doesn't help to learn a song in the game with a chord progression of C D Em, then go to ultimate-guitar.com and grab a tab that says the same progression is B7sus4, Dadd9, Am.  I'm attempting humor but the reality is in 99% of the cases the tabs are that far off. 

 

This community has far better tabs than anything I've ever been able to find off the internet.

 

I would disagree with you about the tabs.  I obviously can't give an exact number, but a very large number of customs posted here use tabs taken from Ultimate-Guitar.com and other online sources, and are used exactly as they are posted on those sites.  And to say that they never align with the tabs in the game is incorrect, so long as you use the same tab source.  Most people find whatever Guitar Pro tab is uploaded, and use that because it's easy to import them into EoF.

 

I know there are charters here who make changes to tabs and in that regard they are not the same, but in a lot of cases they are just taken from the internet and uploaded as-is.  I don't know the exact reason why the current Tab Explorer project died, but reading through a few of the comments it seemed like users lost interest because it was either redundant for them, or was too hard to compile, install, and use without running into problems.

 

I do think it's an interesting idea though, and you're right, to be able to see the tabs exactly as they are in the game would help with songs that are mash-ups of the lead/rhythm tracks, etc.

 

Anyway, I don't want to go back and forth about tabs since that isn't what the thread is about.  I just wanted to chime in with my opinion about your kickstarter idea.

 

 

So to continue with that, if I were to donate to a project I would require/desire continuing support for something I paid for.  If the fundraiser declares that no future support will be offered at the start of the fundraising, I'm not likely to donate.  What if, like I stated above, that I'm donating towards a Mac version that never gets finished?  If I were to get a full refund of my donation, that would be an acceptable outcome, but where do the devs of that project draw the line as far as refunds go?

 

Also, the number of Mac users here is very small, which means that Mac users would likely have to donate a much larger amount in order to receive any attention.

 

Using the currently available tools as an example, the Mac versions of EoF and the Toolkit are riddled with problems and a lack of features that are available in the PC version.  This is not a slight against the developer(s) in any way, and in fact they have admitted that there isn't much Dev support for Mac software and that the Mac versions don't get updated as often as the PC ones.

 

If I were to donate to a project and that was the end result, I might feel ripped off.  I would at least not likely be happy.

 

I think it would just be better to create the apps, and then ask for payment/donations afterwards.  A lot of shareware/freeware apps run under this model.

[firekorn]

As you say, it's like a kickstarter in a way, and to be fair, you have to be crystal clear about the money you ask for, what you intend to do with it how much time it might take and all sorts of other information important for the people who donate (Mac version availabel or not for exemple).

 

The problem is that knowing all those kind of information is hard and often not really accurate (who can know exactly how much money will cost a project like that?).

 

So the donations are mostly based on trust and the hardest part here is not money but people who wants to work on it in my opinion.

[Azrael]

I'd much appreciate seeing the Tab Explorer extended as well (either with a printing funktion, or exporting the tabs to open them in e.g. TuxGuitar and beeing able to print from there).

 

Anyways... about the "trust" thing.

We are already putting a whole lot of trust into this website. We donate, even though noone (not even the owner, I'd say) can know for sure that this service will be provided forever. We didn't sign any legal agreement.

Because of that, I think trust won't be the main issue!

 

I was thinking of using this to an advantage:

Customsforge could create a seperate donation goal (like the DLC giveaway - btw, what happended to that? I don't use twitter...) to raise money for an abstract purpose of "Supporting development of tools with relation to Rocksmith".

In case a noticeable amount of money is raised, potential developers could apply for receiving (part of) that money in return for some sort of goal they have to define.

They will receive the money if the goals are satisfied.

 

If the amount of money raised is too small or no developer is found or the goals are never reached, the money will not be refunded to the donators, but instead go straight into Customsforge's own donation goals.

 

This way, people will know their money is used for something they agree with (either the tool or CF itself), and CF can be trusted to manage the money, because we trust them anyway already!

 

What do you think?

[Wepeel]

 

If the amount of money raised is too small or no developer is found or the goals are never reached, the money will not be refunded to the donators, but instead go straight into Customsforge's own donation goals.

 

This way, people will know their money is used for something they agree with (either the tool or CF itself), and CF can be trusted to manage the money, because we trust them anyway already!

 

The important thing to keep in mind is what allegedly happened over at SA.  There are no true hard facts to support the claims (yet) but from what I've read and seen it seems that a ton of money was donated to go towards hosting/development fees and that the massive amounts of overage was stolen and the person disappeared.

 

For there to be trust, there needs to be full transparency.  Even with the current donations.  Receipts need to be posted to prove the amounts needed and paid for.  There should be a list where all users, donators or not, can see the total amount of money donated and the total amounts spent/remaining.

 

For dev projects, logs need to be kept (just like any professional would do) to show the amount of time spent on the project.  Hourly wages should be agreed upon by those who donate towards a project or by the community as a whole.  Money donated towards projects should be allocated to those projects, and nothing else.  If the money needs to be reallocated, all the donators for that project should be given a choice to either receive a refund or put that money towards something else.

 

There is no reason to take money that was donated for a specific purpose and when that project is cancelled take that money and use it for whatever the devs/mods want.  That's how people get into sticky situations. 

[kring]

If the amount of money raised is too small or no developer is found or the goals are never reached, the money will not be refunded to the donators, but instead go straight into Customsforge's own donation goals. This way, people will know their money is used for something they agree with (either the tool or CF itself), and CF can be trusted to manage the money, because we trust them anyway already!

 

What do you think?

 

This is the spirit of what I was getting at. Don't donate if you don't want to give it a shot.  my goal is keeping this as informal as possible so my earlier comments of a SOW are probably harder.  My hope would be that this would work more like an incentive program for people with Dev skills...

 

Work would be something like - Hey, if you could add the print capability to TabExplorer, there's $120 in donations you can have PayPal'd to you. Want to take the task on?

 

To earlier points, this is a community, there should be no formal expectations. we should try and keep this as "light" as possible. development is an unknown, you can't give someone $100 and expect the world. I personally would donate with the hope that we made some improvement in our tools and the people that do it get a little cash out of it.  If a developer puts 40 hours of work on a tool and it doesn't turn out as expected, I'd say give them the money if it comes with a new estimate to finishing.  people either pay or done, or someone else may want to take over the effort.

 

I'm no Developer, but I'd also love to help out on a project with non-dev stuff (e.g. documentation, testing, data analysis, repetitive tasks and such)

[Azrael]

@@Wepeel

What you say are all valid points!

To clarify, the motivation for my proposal is the idea that a potential developer could be attracted by the fact that the money he would get is already raised. Then the motivation for a detailed cost brake-down might be higher...

 

Also, I thought it might be problematic to refund all the money to lots of people. And I don't see no problem if the donators agree to this procedure upon donating. If not used, the money should go into the next donation goal CF is creating anyway (e.g. regular fees, I agree that it shouldn't be allowed to be just "anything")

 

I see one additional problem though: The developers of EOF, Toolkit etc. are already putting lots of time into their awesome tools, without receiving any monetary credit. And now we're giving money to someone else just because noone wanted to do that project... it seems a bit unfair.

[Wepeel]

@@Wepeel

What you say are all valid points!

To clarify, the motivation for my proposal is the idea that a potential developer could be attracted by the fact that the money he would get is already raised. Then the motivation for a detailed cost brake-down might be higher...

 

Also, I thought it might be problematic to refund all the money to lots of people. And I don't see no problem if the donators agree to this procedure upon donating. If not used, the money should go into the next donation goal CF is creating anyway (e.g. regular fees, I agree that it shouldn't be allowed to be just "anything")

 

I see one additional problem though: The developers of EOF, Toolkit etc. are already putting lots of time into their awesome tools, without receiving any monetary credit. And now we're giving money to someone else just because noone wanted to do that project... it seems a bit unfair.

 

Refunds would be time consuming, I agree.  And I would figure most people would likely be okay to forward the money along to something else, just as long as they are given a choice.  

 

My thought line was based more along my own personal feelings, because as a Mac user being in the minority, I wouldn't appreciate my donations being used towards something that would not be supported on Mac.  I would then be paying for something I could not use.  It would be unfair to expect me to purchase Windows, Crossover, or any other software to be able to run something I donated towards (unless of course, transparency and the intentions of the dev are made crystal clear before I choose to donate).

 

And yes, the EoF and Toolkit devs have received no money for their efforts, but often times, that is the burden of being the ones who pioneer a process.  As you may or may not know, there was once a time (and it still happens today to a smaller degree) where musicians had to "pay to play".  They paid the club/bar/etc owners in order to be able to play there, not the other way around.  

 

Anyway, if a fully-functional Mac version of the Toolkit and EoF were released, that had good/decent support, I would gladly pay a reasonable amount to use it.  

 

I think a shareware model where you could create a certain number of customs (say 5 for example) and/or convert a certain number (which is the only thing I can do right now on Mac) before having to pay would be a reasonable trial length.  After that, I would pay +/- $20 to have it unlocked.  I would pay more if it was fully functional on Mac.

 

Paying for the toolkit can bring legal troubles of course, based on the nature of the software (adding an music track to a tab file and then sharing it), but there are ways around that.  

 

For instance, customs could be created without the audio file attached, which would allow them to be shared and used with no worries about copyright infringement or piracy.  The charter would just list the album and song version used.  Users who download those customs could then repack them on their own computer under the assumption that they are using a music track that they legally own.  Any copyright infringement or piracy would then be on those users.  

 

It's not a fully fleshed-out idea, but you get the gist...

[kring]

I see one additional problem though: The developers of EOF, Toolkit etc. are already putting lots of time into their awesome tools, without receiving any monetary credit. And now we're giving money to someone else just because noone wanted to do that project... it seems a bit unfair.

 

If thought of in terms as pay, it may seem unfair. but as you mentioned, it's more about motivation and less about paying for the actual development.. This community is far from being able to fund all the work the developers do and I wouldn't exclude any existing tools from it either. for instance, if we want better screen format for EoF, that could be a project and funding and EoF developers can get that money.

 

Also conversely, If the Rocksmith Toolkit Developers want to implement a cool new feature. but it's going to take them 300 hours or they need to license some software to do it.. they could post the project here and solicit finding for it. 

 

The spirit of the idea is that we're just trying to facilitate the community supporting progress, help with motivating work the community feels is needed, and as a result, developers may get free pizza for a week out of it. 

[Wepeel]

 

I see one additional problem though: The developers of EOF, Toolkit etc. are already putting lots of time into their awesome tools, without receiving any monetary credit. And now we're giving money to someone else just because noone wanted to do that project... it seems a bit unfair.

 

If thought of in terms as pay, it may seem unfair. but as you mentioned, it's more about motivation and less about paying for the actual development.. This community is far from being able to fund all the work the developers do and I wouldn't exclude any existing tools from it either. for instance, if we want better screen format for EoF, that could be a project and funding and EoF developers can get that money.

 

Also conversely, If the Rocksmith Toolkit Developers want to implement a cool new feature. but it's going to take them 300 hours or they need to license some software to do it.. they could post the project here and solicit finding for it. 

 

The spirit of the idea is that we're just trying to facilitate the community supporting progress, help with motivating work the community feels is needed, and as a result, developers may get free pizza for a week out of it. 

 

 

I agree with your sentiment, just not the idea of it being informal.  Informality leaves too much room for abuse.  To use your example, it should not cost $120 to implement a print function into an app.  For those of us professional developers, it's more like a $30 fix (30 minutes of work, likely less if the base of the app is done well).

 

Also, if a developer accepts $100 to complete a project, that project should be completed to the standards expected.  That's the agreement made when the dev accepts the job.  Otherwise, what's stopping people from volunteering as devs, taking money to finish a project, spending 2 hours actually working on it before giving up, and then posting a message 3 weeks later that "funding ran out", or "it was too hard"?

 

What happens when a project is allocated $500 for completion, but the work only takes a few hours to complete?  Do I keep all the money as my expenses?  The difficulty of any project will be dependant on the skills of the dev(s) working on it.  What you find hard I might find easy to accomplish, someone else might find difficult.  And vice versa.  It all depends on where your skills are based.

 

That's why transparency and honesty are key. 

[raynebc]

the Mac versions of EoF and the Toolkit are riddled with problems and a lack of features that are available in the PC version.

If you can, please send me a list of things that are not working in the Mac release and I can pass it along to the other EOF developer. He hasn't been using EOF much lately, so we'd mostly just be able to find out from other users what's not working in non-Windows builds. He is looking into an issue where SHIFT+click isn't working on Mac though, so this is probably a good time to provide a list of bugs.

it should not cost $120 to implement a print function into an app. For those of us professional developers, it's more like a $30 fix (30 minutes of work, likely less if the base of the app is done well).

I don't really agree with you here. Being that quick and easy to add a print feature makes a lot of assumptions about the program and how it was built. Adding print to a program that never took any design consideration of such a feature can easily end up being a daunting task.As for RS Tab Explorer, I think it would be more efficient to find developers in our own community that had time to work on it instead of hiring it out. Getting a contractor to build it may be complicated, especially since it involves another company's proprietary format.

[Wepeel]

 

If you can, please send me a list of things that are not working in the Mac release and I can pass it along to the other EOF developer. He hasn't been using EOF much lately, so we'd mostly just be able to find out from other users what's not working in non-Windows builds. He is looking into an issue where SHIFT+click isn't working on Mac though, so this is probably a good time to provide a list of bugs.I don't really agree with you here. Being that quick and easy to add a print feature makes a lot of assumptions about the program and how it was built. Adding print to a program that never took any design consideration of such a feature can easily end up being a daunting task.As for RS Tab Explorer, I think it would be more efficient to find developers in our own community that had time to work on it instead of hiring it out. Getting a contractor to build it may be complicated, especially since it involves another company's proprietary format.

 

 

 

Thanks, I'll compile a list when I have some time.  I haven't been using it too much because I became frustrated with the learning curve and some confusion as to whether the errors are/were my fault of the app's.  I also stopped because the 3 out of the 4 songs I was working on were posted by @@Brooklyn_Sounds, and he's a great charter so there was no need to continue.

 

But I will make a list of what I think are errors and we can go from there.

 

Also, as far as print capability, that's why I added the qualifier of the app's base needs to be well done to be able to implement new features easily.  And printing is a bad example to use anyway, because for the most part it's a simple addition that is already available in the framework because printing is a standard function.  However, things like import/export, and anything that needs a specific process to be written would obviously be much harder.

 

I guess the point I was trying to make is that the dollar value attached to any particular task/project would depend on the complexity of the job itself.  In the real world, if somebody quoted $120 to add print functionality and I knew it could be done rather easily, I might undercut that bid and offer to do it for $80.  Somebody else might offer to do it for $40, and so on.

 

I just think it creates a sticky situation to offer a fixed amount for something, at least without qualifiers or strict expectations.  Say I did do that print job, and the pay was $120.  If it only takes me an hour to do it, I just got paid $120/hour for my work.  Which we would all agree is very unfair.  It would be up to me to make a moral decision about what to do.  I've been doing this for a long time and know the value of good client relations, so I would work out something with the community (take on another job, etc).  But not everybody would make the same choice.

 

What if there's another job that someone else does that is more complicated and they get the same amount ($120) but it takes them 15 hours to do it because they ran into a problem, or didn't have as much experience as I do?  Then they just got paid $8/hour for their time.  Does the community donate more to give them a fair wage?

 

I think it's best to keep it internal as well, but there needs to be formal guidelines and processes.  A quote system that the community (or some sort of "board") could choose.  It doesn't have to be as formal as applying for a real world job, but we all know we want real world results so there needs to be some sort of process.

 

Trust will only get you so far before it leaves you on your ass out in the cold.  It's not like we all know each other personally, or even live in the same cities/countries.

 

 

I know I'm being a bit redundant, but great ideas come from good conversations.

[raynebc]

.NET and Qt may have built-in easy access to printing, but EOF is built on an older and more primitive library (Allegro). This unfortunately means adding a print feature would be pretty complicated and certainly would be several hours of work, or a significant rewrite to port it to something like Qt. So it's probably not something I would end up working on unless I get any creative ideas or workarounds, which would probably be something like generating images that the user would have to manually stitch together and/or print.

[kring]

Wepeel - All respect, but you are missing the point, my comments about TabExplorer print is just an example. I am not saying the project has to continue as is. it's the capability that is the project I would sponsor. I don't want my example of TabExplorer to overshadow this thread.But FYI, it uses alphatab.net for all the rendering which is html and works with a browser which can handle print. So I do think it's easy since all the heavy lifting is done via an open source tool that can do more that RS. I believe the real work is completing the conversion of the RS charting format to one alphatab.net can render, and the TabExplorer Developer appears to have done 75% of that work as well.But the solutioning should be its own thread and that's what this is about - seeing if CF can help facilitate projects like this for the community. so I'd rather we alll (including myself) didn't talk project specifics unless it's for example purposes.

[Wepeel]

.NET and Qt may have built-in easy access to printing, but EOF is built on an older and more primitive library (Allegro). This unfortunately means adding a print feature would be pretty complicated and certainly would be several hours of work, or a significant rewrite to port it to something like Qt. So it's probably not something I would end up working on unless I get any creative ideas or workarounds, which would probably be something like generating images that the user would have to manually stitch together and/or print.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything about your app or its development.  I was just using it as an example because it was brought up.  I meant more about adding print functionality in general, not in your specific app.  My point was more along the lines of adding a built in function like printing, saving, etc would be less time consuming than adding a feature that would need to be coded from the ground up.  That's all.

[raynebc]

Sure, adding a print to the toolkit after it can already display ASCII or graphical tablature should hopefully be a rather simple task. It would certainly be a nice thing to have.

[Wepeel]

Oh, and it looks like I've confused myself.  The printing functionality I was referring to adding was into the Tab Explorer app, not EoF or the Toolkit.  The Tab Explorer app looks like it was built on .NET 3.5 so it would already have print functionality available.

[firekorn]

I think you should find something else than money as an incentive to work on a tool like that, EOF and the Toolkit become what it is today because the people behind wasn't motivated only by money, if you want the tool to be developed, find dev that want to develop it first, then you'll worry about money and such things if nobody wants to work on it it won't go far and will cost you way more money for a result that won't be better and i'm sure that we have some people that are capable of taking the dev of such things.

 

To be short money isn't the right incentive and it has been proven in so many occasion.

[papillon]

Kickstarter will work for commercial projects but not for an opensource project where more than one will participate in the development. With more than one developer how would you distribute the raised amount among them? Lines of code, hours spent?

A donation for a developer would be ok if you like the result. If you want a commercial tool ask a developer, give him a FS and talk about costs. Then if others like the tool ask for donations if you like. Everything else will not work and fortunately there are people supporting open source without taking money for it - without these (and some companies supporting them) you would not have free software.

[zanzibarnights]

would love a drag and drop application to convert customs for Mac OS X.

 

 

[Wepeel]

would love a drag and drop application to convert customs for Mac OS X.

 

Not really necessary, for me at least, since converting is as simple as opening the toolkit and clicking 2 buttons.

[kring]

Kickstarter will work for commercial projects but not for an opensource project where more than one will participate in the development. With more than one developer how would you distribute the raised amount among them? Lines of code, hours spent?

 

So that would be for them to decide. they would put together a brief proposal of work, develop it, if it's good enough the community agrees to release the funds and they are responsible for distributing as the arranged. the intent is to keep the sites involvement simple.

 

Have a forum for ideas that would be funded, collect funds, distribute funds. and it would be up to the community to come to agreement when to start collecting and when and how much to distribute. I don't believe it's that complex a concept and there's no need to over-complicate it.

 

Firekorn - Money is always a motivator after self-driven motivation, if you have others, please suggest.

[firekorn]

Money as never been proven to be a good motivator, i know it's one but you won't do more than what people ask for with money but when other motivation as simple as the recognition by peer and such can do so much more than money but it depends on the person. It's a basic in management. You don't just give money to people they will do the bare minimum, find something else as a motivator and you will obtain way better results as we can see for the Toolkit and EOF.

 

That's why i think it's better to concentrate on finding the man/women that wants to work on a project, then we'll worry about the retribution, money or whatever he/she wants in return.

 

Money is something that you worry after you find the people that already wants to work on the project or the project will die anyway not matter how much money you spent on it.

 

And collecting/distributing funds can take a lot of times and can be complicated by the laws of the country where the money.

[engleg]

I only briefly read this topic, so this might have been brought up already.

Another option would be to start listing simple new program ideas that you would like to see added (as new software) that in someway would benefit people in the RS community.

Hopefully a Dev might see a requested idea that he would want to work on.

His finished program could be released as a freeware program with voluntary PayPal donations accepted.

I have donated to well written, good quality freeware programs in the past..