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Originally Posted by ali
*sigh*
This step is a step forward, but again, instead of taking the easy way, the iRex guys try to attach as many strings as possible. "Trial project"? "Guidance of an iRex developer"? What karel describes there is called outsourcing everywhere else
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Sorry if this sounds so negative. I'm writing my PhD thesis under supervision of a professor who gives me lots and lots of freedom. My wife's advisor is a control freak. Guess whose thesis is better. Guess which professor got more benefit from his student.
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I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you...
They're offiering to give guidance, nothing more. They aren't forcing developers to work on specific projects, but offereing a way to help the community develop the projects that they've been requesting. iRex has their own priorities (I can't even pretend to know what they are), and they apparently don't have anything to do with stylus calibration and/or cpu throttling. But, since the community has been asking for this, they are willing to help out when needed. Guiadance, not rules or slave labor, is what they are offering. Besides, given an unbricking option, the first thing I am going to do is play with the lower level OS stuff. Specifically suspend to cf and stylus calibration. Having their help would be a great benifit.
They're also proving a resource for developer information, and a way to track what the community is looking for in the way of new projects. I know I've had to scratch my head as to what people want ported until I saw a post asking for it. They're giving a way to organize and prioritize that.
Nokia runs Maemo.org, and provides much of the same information and guidance there. So apparently that is how open source device projects work.
Back to your writing analogy. When I was in college, and my lit teacher told me to write a paper on anything, I was stumped. It was only when they gave me a subject (that I was interested in) to write about, that I was able to come up with a great paper. Guidance and boundaries can help a lot when it comes to creating something.