---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ross Bencina <rossb-li...@audiomulch.com> Date: Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 7:20 AM Subject: [Portaudio] Seeking support for PortAudio development To: Portaudio Mailing List <portau...@music.columbia.edu>
Hello Everyone, Question: would anyone be willing to contribute resources to help finalise the PortAudio V19 release? Specifically: developer time, cash, or sponsorship for specific development. [1] Previously, I have funded my work on PortAudio through work on related products such as AudioMulch. For the past two years this has not been feasible. Currently I spend a portion of my time doing contract work. I would be happy to work on PortAudio if that work could be paid for. Perhaps other PortAudio developers are in a similar position and could also participate in a sponsored effort. Depending on the level of available support, I believe that we could put together a workable plan to finish a release-quality version of PortAudio V19 within the next six months. The work would need to include development, testing and release packaging. Possibly we would need to address the release process and improve the website too. Some amongst you might be aghast at the mention of money. But PortAudio is used in many commercial products as well as in widely used (and funded) open source software. Most if not all current PortAudio developers are professional developers. It is entirely reasonable for us to seek to reach our goals in a sustainable way. To give an idea of the budget that I have in mind: for $30-70k we could put together a sustained push with multiple developers working part time. This could comprise a small number of large contributions (2-4 x $15k) or a larger number of small contributions (10+ x $3k). If you think that you might be able to help out, please get in touch either on this list or to my usual email address (ro...@audiomulch.com). I'm happy to discuss details and answer questions. All comments welcome. *** Thanks for reading this far. For context, I've provided further background on current development status below: In spite of there being many unimplemented features and bugs to fix, main-line PortAudio development has been in maintenance mode for the past year, some would say longer. [2] If you've been following the "New stable release?" thread you'll know that we are discussing how to short-circuit the V19 development process so that we can move from releasing development snapshots to releasing 19.x.y version numbered releases. I would prefer that PortAudio V19 was production ready. In other words, that it achieved some standard for feature completeness and lack of crash-bugs. My personal view is that it's more responsible to continue to release development snapshots than to pretend that the current state of the code deserves to be called release grade. For those who don't remember, the last time that this issue came up we optimistically set up a development plan including a set of milestones targeting unimplemented API features and bugs. The idea was to address these issues prior to releasing V19 as production ready code. That plan has seen no tangible progress for at least the last year. Progress has been stalled in part because Phil and I have been on the critical path and we both have been otherwise occupied with trying to make a living. What little time we have had has been spent on more pressing maintenance and support issues. Another issue was that the development target was chosen with broad scope. With hindsight, that was a mistake. I underestimated the amount of work that would be involved. I think many of us optimistically hoped that by organising the task list we would see additional contributions help us achieve a shared goal. While we have received many excellent contributions, most have been maintenance or bug fixes for new issues, they have not moved us closer to the goal of finishing the release. I am very grateful for *all* of the contributions that PortAudio receives, both from the core developers and maintainers, and the wider PortAudio community. We have a difficult job balancing the need to uphold development standards, support users, and also to try to progress development with limited resources. Thanks for reading, Ross. [1] Patches for existing tickets would also be very welcome -- but we will need a lot of patches to meet our goal, and someone will need to have time to merge them. [2] There have been major contributions during this time. However for the most part they have not been moving us towards finalising a release. _______________________________________________ Portaudio mailing list portau...@music.columbia.edu http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/portaudio -- Albert Santoni Developer, Mixxx http://www.mixxx.org http://www.oscillicious.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Android apps run on BlackBerry 10 Introducing the new BlackBerry 10.2.1 Runtime for Android apps. Now with support for Jelly Bean, Bluetooth, Mapview and more. Get your Android app in front of a whole new audience. Start now. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=124407151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Get Mixxx, the #1 Free MP3 DJ Mixing software Today http://mixxx.org Mixxx-devel mailing list Mixxx-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mixxx-devel
