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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Developers, get paid for your work!?
From:       Christoph Held <c-held () web ! de>
Date:       2002-03-16 15:16:02
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> Well, personally I quite like the idea but I see a few problems: Someone
> needs to manage this, acquire customers to sell the power to etc. 

In the vision of grid computing, there are markets. These markets are 
comparable to stock markets known today. If you want to sell 1 000 shares of 
IBM stock you simply use your web-browser and ask an online-brocker to sell 
it for you. Selling compute power will be just as simple. Of course, the 
markets and the technology don't exist yet...

In the mean time it needs to be handled by the community either with a static 
environment or a dynamic. 

-static environment(like seti):  A single worker is packaged in the kde 
distribution (e. .g. as a screensaver). 
I would suggest to set up a web site were companies can register and tell how 
they want to support the kde community (e.g. :

----------------SETI (noncomercial) ---------------
Support: 
  Deployment: No support
  10 000 Participators: No support
  100 000+ Participators:No support
-------------Amgen (commercial) medical reasearch--------- 
Support:
  Deployment: 1000 $ for KDE League
  10 000 Participators: 10 000 $ for KDE League
  100 000+ Participators: 100 000 $ for KDE League
---------Dreamworks(commercial) animated movies--------------
Support:
  Deployment: product placement
  10 000 Participators:  pp + A wonderful icon theme from our artists
  100 000+ Participators: icon theme + pp + 
             +mount-rainer kio-slave for drag and drop support of CDRW-Drives

After a certain voting period of the kde users, the winning client will be 
packaged in kde.

I think this modell makes sense from a user point of view. I am not sure if 
it makes sense for a buisness. Anyway, I just wanted to show, you could 
imagine a system that runs with hardly any effort. 

-In a dynamic environment executables can be staged to the hosts. The hosts 
are protected through sandboxing. Such a evironment is currently in 
development. It's a working prototype. There are several benefits: Through 
monitoring the community knows exactly how many clients are participating and 
the rough performance of the virtual super computer. This would ease up many 
things.

Well, I agree, this part is critical and probably the most difficult. It will 
need further reasearch and thought. But I am optimistic there is a suitable 
solution.  Currently, I would like to know only if there is general interest 
to justify my efforts to myself and to my PhD.

> And the financial benefits won by selling the computing power needs to 
> outweigh the potential costs. 

On the client side, there are no cost except the internet connection. 
However, flat-rate, high-speed internet connections became frequent lately 
and will become common in the future.

The server with the registration should be run by the community( low traffic, 
low load). The server making work-units availible will be run by the company 
itself. 

So, there would be hardly any costs for the community.

> Another thing is that if i'd ever find out that my
> computing power was used for military interests (for example by companies
> building weapons) I would be _very_ upset and say goodbye forever.
> The user needs to be able to control the fields in which his/her power is
> used.

agree

> Furthermore there would need to be transparency: How much money was
> acquired and how was it spend? And does this money go to KDE e.v. or the
> KDE League?
>
agree


Greetings,

Christoph Held
 
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