By now it is more than clear that any work on ICS for the Notion Ink Adam is coming from a couple of developers who were part of the TabletRoms community.
A commercial for-profit company is relying solely on a group of community developers for the development of its software platform. Also, given that there is no alternative to this community supported development, one could see this as essentially dedicated development for the device of a commercial company, in other words - professional services.
So how is this effort being compensated?
See this post: In essence, NI (edit: correction - see bottom of this post) provided a donation less than the value of a laptop to a brilliant developer who is currently unemployed (at the time of the post) so he can develop software that essentially is the only source for the company's ICS future!
If this has changed since then, then ignore the rest of this post, and I applaud NI for compensating him fairly and doing the right thing. If I'm made aware of it, I will edit the rest of this post. If not, read on.
Great developers aren't cheap. I'm aware of hourly rates exceeding $150/hr for top programmers. I am personally aware of contract rates of close to a $1000 a day. (Even on oDesk good developers charge 30+ $/hr.) I'm sure NI cannot pay that kind of rate, I don't expect it to given its size. But there are avenues for fair compensation
- contract employment - x months @ y$ a month
- hourly payment
- equity share in the company
- committed future payment $ based on company performance
- one time sizeable bonus on completion of ICS
you know, anything! Not a little donation by the side. Unfortunately the developers set themselves up for a no escape situation. If they back out now, they become the villains. They have an unsaid obligation to continue regardless of whether NI does anything about it or not (apart from praises on the blog), and therefore I see it as the company's responsibility to make fixes.
This company is now talking of next generation products, all kinds of technology, surely such a company has the necessary financial backing to compensate its critical developers?
To those who come crying to this blog saying the developers work is a labor of love, for the good of the community, it's open source and nonsense like that, consider this: This development is EXPLICITLY for a commercial device of a for-profit company*. I would agree if NI made a commitment to its user base that its products would be subsidized to a level of non-profit sale and would sustain itself by other means than sale of the tablet. I would also agree if there were multiple alternatives and the company was allowing 3rd party software to be used on its platform, apart from its own stable, usable software. But that is not the case! If TR developers stopped development of ICS tomorrow, is there an alternative? One directly from the company?
There is another critical issue to consider - when a company gets pampered getting its most critical work done for next to nothing, it cheapens the importance of the skills. It also sets up a behavior that critical work can be done for commercial purposes for very little by paying lip service to "community engagement." Community engagement means little if all meetings on product roadmap were "behind closed doors" and the TR rep. couldn't get an interview from NI during CES, so much for valuing TR as a partner.
My message is this to Notion Ink: If you have already compensated the developers to a satisfactory degree, then great - I appreciate that, and applause.
If not, then quit talking about future generation and this and that, and ensure this dev team gets its fair share along with a announcing a roadmap of what happens to Adam and support to it.
(Of course, no one wants to consider what happens if the developer finds a job, doesn't have time to support post release issues, where is formal bug tracking on NI's site and so on... but let's leave it for now)
* Kind of like saying Linus and the army of Linux kernel developers write code that's only for Oracle which in turn sells their machines with Linux and makes money off of it, while paying nothing to the developers. How "open source" is that?
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UPDATE: mrdeadlocked - one of the key developers in question - posted this comment (see in comments)
"Sup all. Just to clarify this. Rohit sent me a donation solely from himself. I even clarified it with him that it wasn’t specifically compensation ‘for’ anything specific. At the very least it wasn’t from Notion Ink as a company.
As far as I know, none of the team has received anything besides community donations."-----------------------
There you go. I guess they're getting it for free then. Sweet deal.
Update 2: Looks like this post needs a Part II. coming soon (not NI soon, but "jksaur soon" ;) which is a day or two)
Notion Ink advertised a froyo tablet. They sold a froyo tablet. End of story. Anything else is a bonus. Thanks to the NI/TR open collaboration, Adam owners can try out an unfinished but surprisingly stable ICS right now. Customers of other froyo (or even gingerbread/honeycomb) tablets don't have that option. And you, sir, have serious issues with you NI obsession.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post! I just have one question. In the past the bossman has mentioned that he has a massive team of over 100 programmers and 50 designers. I wonder what are they doing, if he's paying donations to get the ICS done externally.
ReplyDelete"Notion Ink advertised a froyo tablet. They sold a froyo tablet. End of story. Anything else is a bonus" -- you mean a working tablet was a bonus.
ReplyDelete"And you, sir, have serious issues with you NI obsession."
Hey, thanks for noticing, was worried you wouldn't!
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Edit: If what you're saying is to be accepted, then NI should never put ICS on Adam or push it on their official channel (the blog). They should develop their own variant (which they never updated after E1.5) and use that officially.
I don't know, I guess " they're working on more important things" whatever that is.
ReplyDeleteSup all. Just to clarify this. Rohit sent me a donation solely from himself. I even clarified it with him that it wasn't specifically compensation 'for' anything specific. At the very least it wasn't from Notion Ink as a company. :-) As far as I know, none of the team has received anything besides community donations.
ReplyDeletemrdeadlocked - appreciate you coming here and adding the clarifying note. I will mention it on top.
ReplyDelete(PS - I'm not an expert on business tax laws, but it might be possible for them to write it as business expense. If not, well, I guess they're getting it all for free then. I don't like it but then my opinion is one of many different. Hell, you might even disagree with me not liking it that I want them to pay you well, but then let's agree to disagree, shall we ;) heh)
Phew! That's cleared then. A small donation for services as big as getting the latest update of Ice Cream Sandwich on all devices. Hmm. No offence to Mr. DeadLocked, but seems to me that you've got a short stick for a lot of really really good work put into this. With my base knowledge of tech, this is the crux of the work, which Notion Ink needs to start working on their developments on ICS. Technically, this effort should be very well compensated. [ice ice baby ponies ponies] With the primo work you've put it you should be paid enough to buy the very best gaming level laptop in the biz. You've been exploited quite a bit. However, that's my view. I just tell it how it is.
ReplyDeleteyou missed this fascinating new blog post by the reincarnation of Jobs
ReplyDelete"There is a change in NInk’s strategy which was reflected in CES as well. You will seeing even lesser of NI in press. All meetings were private and confidential, and purely meant for business (in fact only business development team was at CES). Hence no public releases from CES, but there will be one coming next week, after which we will be sharing the developments on the next generation."
You see they were there but did everything out of site. Thats why one goes to CES - to quietly have meetings behind scenes.
;laugh or cry??
Eh? To be honest, the excitement of getting ICS to boot was how it started. It was never an intent for compensation. Community effort to support a fun little device. I thoroughly enjoy mine, PQi is great, I enjoy having it wherever I go. Then in order to get access to drivers and such we started working with Notion Ink, again the thought never came to my mind about money. It was just the fun, thrill of getting things working. We've picked up more people on our team now (4 of us) and are just enjoying working on the ADAM. None of us are prophets so who knows what's really going to happen down the road. I just hope the community appreciates our work, and that's enough for me.
ReplyDeleteJust don't get me started.
ReplyDeleteNice post and yes, thank you MrDeadlock to clarify a few things....
ReplyDeleteI have officially stopped reading Rohan's blog as it has only TR TR TR.....where are the employees? what are they doing? If they aren't contributing to NI's "revolutionary products/services", then he can rather use the salary of those "100 devs" and pay people like MrDeadlock.....Just a suggestion!!
So "Rohit" pays when someone else is extracting the work..Its a personal payment-out of gratitude maybe-and not from NI...and the amount is not even sufficient to buy a laptop.....as far i understand this...Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Question to MrDeadlock--Why are you helping them out even though except a note of thanks given on the blog, they haven't really done anything for you (financially atleast)? Why not use your talent for something more productive and beneficial....Just curious....
@rahul: I think u (as a fan) and NI should be thankful that atleast someone is obsessed with NI to actually follow their work sooo closely.....For all we know, NI may actually be doing some work due to such blogs chasing them around :-P So instead of consoling, you should actually let them prove their mettle (if any) and perform better (if they can)....Don't give reasons and explain their failure!!!
I think it is very disrespectful of us to question and second-guess somebody who is doing good work for the joy of it and for 'giving back to the community'. It would be unwanted advice indeed to be told that a person's time could be better spent somewhere else. It is just like telling a community volunteer to spend the time earning a salary.
ReplyDeleteI have a very high regard for Mr.DeadLocked and the other developers at TabletROMs, without whose help the Adam tablet would have been a paperweight by now. Let us please not drag them into an unnecessary controversy.
I would agree with that sentiment.
ReplyDeleteAgree! TR and the community have not only saved NI but also have given purpose to lot of the other good tablets out there that the larger corporations have ignored for some time.
ReplyDeleteDear Nishit,
ReplyDeleteThanks for butting and clearly JKSaur seems to be agreeing to whatever you generally post...To clarify few things:-
Nobody made any disrespectful comment...Ain't my fault if I think that MrDeadlock is capable of doing a lot more stuff and deserves much more than what he is getting currently...HOW does this make him get into any Controversy, necessary or otherwise????????!!!!
Its mostly out of respect for him, rather his work that I asked him (not even suggested/adviced) if he would be considering working on something else, something apart from the community.
"SUGGESTION" was made to NI that they can rather depend completely on such talented people and payback better (in cash/kind/support) and NOT to MrDeadlock asking him to quit or depreciating his work in any way. I think I've some rights to suggest or atleast put my opinion about a company across without people turning on me as Moral police!!!
I apologise if my statement came across as anything but this....If not, Mr.Nishit, please don't misinterpret and pass on your comments/judgement....
Cheers...
I think you din read what the person actually has written....Wrong interpretation chap...He/She is supporting MrDeadLock and his work...Or am I wrong? Whateva :-P
ReplyDeleteMrDeadLock-You r a darling!!! Awesome work!! Way to go. I don't like what I have bought, but happy that its finally working :-D Kudos to everyone at TR...
Godbless!!
Oh the joys of non-verbal communication. I think it's all clear now, and I agree with a lot of what you say too citrus.
ReplyDeleteIf not, punjabi sword fighhhhhhht!