5 ms·

Whatever happened to just paying people for the work they do? The 10k prize money isn't even enough to cover costs of thinking up and speccing an application, l

by roel_v 15y ago

Whatever happened to just paying people for the work they do? The 10k prize money isn't even enough to cover costs of thinking up and speccing an application, let alone actually develop it.

ANH 15y ago
Exactly. I got excited about this when I heard about it a few months back because I was in the middle of developing something that uses data from the PDS, but 1) the prize money was tiny compared to the effort and 2) TopCoder claims ownership of all submissions. As I read it, that means you give up all rights to the work. Not acceptable. I emailed some folks at NASA about it, but got no response.
fletchowns 15y ago
Maybe not enough for you, but to some high school/college kid it's a good chunk of money. Not to mention that having this project on your resume (whether or not you win) is definitely not a bad thing. Being able to have an influence over how NASA presents all of it's data from the last 30 years to the public is probably enough incentive by itself for some.
- jlarocco 15y ago
  No, I think if a high school/college kid is smart enough to solve this, they're smart enough to make more than $10k. If anything, they're just too naive to realize it.
  - bgilroy26 15y ago
    There are folks out there that really love NASA. Other organizations might not be able to pull something like his off, but if NASA can, they aren't fleecing everybody, they're just taking advantage of their market position amongst computer enthusiasts as the recognized leader in space research.
loverobots 15y ago
There is a difference between a job and a challenge. For a second, just imagine the press you'd get if NASA chose you as a winner.
- gliese1337 15y ago
  Given how much popular press NASA gets, probably not a whole lot.
developer9 15y ago
The problem NASA, quasi-govermental entities like the USPS, and our government in-general seem to have is that they are overly bureaucratic and political, and solutions they produce are not nearly of the same caliber as their business-driven cousins. So it seems that we should welcome any attempt to open up things for the purpose of making them better. But, the sad fact is that open-source projects I've seen that aren't driven by business need do poorly. What ends up happening is that these open-source projects end up being run by people that do get paid for what they do, because the work needs to be done in one way or another, and many people can't afford to work for free. In the end, this hiring of people outside of the fold to manage an open-source project which in turn has its own management overhead to deal with uninitiated developers and project managers wasting their time can cause a lot more time and money spent that does not benefit anyone except the contractors doing the work. But, I applaud NASA for their efforts and hope they succeed. I love the idea of an open source NASA.
martingordon 15y ago
It's amazing how many contests/challenges exist in the tech community given how poorly spec work is looked upon by the design community. I'm not as knowledgable about the design community as I am about the tech community, but it seems to me that the design community rallies against these types of challenges a lot more strongly than the tech community does.
- jordanb 15y ago
  I think there's a lot less pressure on programmers because demand is so high and supply is limited. If some naive idiot wants to waste his time working on a contest, let him! there's still a surplus of well-paying work to go around.
  - TheCowboy 15y ago
    NASA is facing massive budget cuts. NASA is part of the government, not a for-profit corporation. Assuming NASA actually contributes something positive, when did it become wrong to actually volunteer your time to the pursuit of science or promotion of learning for the public good? I'm really surprised at what seems like a general eye-rolling response when most geeks recognize the value of NASA.
Bjartr 15y ago
Not having/being able to justify the money to do it in-house? A great example of this kind of challenge working well is Boston's MBTA live tracking transit data and stop prediction data. They released an API and said "hey app devs, go make apps!" and now there are a variety of apps on several platforms. Some solve different problems than others and had they done one in-house app it is very unlikely it would have satisfied all the use cases that the available apps satisfy.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mturmon 15y ago
It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some useful app for regular citizens will come from this. It's like the Netflix challenge (even the winners of the $1M prize were losers if your metric is $/hour) or the DARPA Grand Challenges (which have used a lot of unpaid undergrad and grad student labor). NASA spends a lot of money developing data services for hard-core science users (e.g., for ocean data: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it's not like they're trying to get off scot-free. But it doesn't really spend on services for curious citizens. The existing evaluation process for science data services is not well-suited for judging citizen-facing apps/services. There would be a bunch of science nerds wondering if it would be OK to release uncalibrated data, or if the map projection selected was OK, etc. Earth science data gets in front of citizens more easily because of weather and climate, but planetary data has been under-exposed.

by roel_v 15y ago

Whatever happened to just paying people for the work they do? The 10k prize money isn't even enough to cover costs of thinking up and speccing an application, let alone actually develop it.

ANH 15y ago

Exactly. I got excited about this when I heard about it a few months back because I was in the middle of developing something that uses data from the PDS, but 1) the prize money was tiny compared to the effort and 2) TopCoder claims ownership of all submissions. As I read it, that means you give up all rights to the work. Not acceptable. I emailed some folks at NASA about it, but got no response.

fletchowns 15y ago

Maybe not enough for you, but to some high school/college kid it's a good chunk of money. Not to mention that having this project on your resume (whether or not you win) is definitely not a bad thing. Being able to have an influence over how NASA presents all of it's data from the last 30 years to the public is probably enough incentive by itself for some.

jlarocco 15y ago
No, I think if a high school/college kid is smart enough to solve this, they're smart enough to make more than $10k. If anything, they're just too naive to realize it.
- bgilroy26 15y ago
  There are folks out there that really love NASA. Other organizations might not be able to pull something like his off, but if NASA can, they aren't fleecing everybody, they're just taking advantage of their market position amongst computer enthusiasts as the recognized leader in space research.

loverobots 15y ago

There is a difference between a job and a challenge. For a second, just imagine the press you'd get if NASA chose you as a winner.

gliese1337 15y ago
Given how much popular press NASA gets, probably not a whole lot.

developer9 15y ago

The problem NASA, quasi-govermental entities like the USPS, and our government in-general seem to have is that they are overly bureaucratic and political, and solutions they produce are not nearly of the same caliber as their business-driven cousins. So it seems that we should welcome any attempt to open up things for the purpose of making them better. But, the sad fact is that open-source projects I've seen that aren't driven by business need do poorly. What ends up happening is that these open-source projects end up being run by people that do get paid for what they do, because the work needs to be done in one way or another, and many people can't afford to work for free. In the end, this hiring of people outside of the fold to manage an open-source project which in turn has its own management overhead to deal with uninitiated developers and project managers wasting their time can cause a lot more time and money spent that does not benefit anyone except the contractors doing the work. But, I applaud NASA for their efforts and hope they succeed. I love the idea of an open source NASA.

martingordon 15y ago

It's amazing how many contests/challenges exist in the tech community given how poorly spec work is looked upon by the design community. I'm not as knowledgable about the design community as I am about the tech community, but it seems to me that the design community rallies against these types of challenges a lot more strongly than the tech community does.

jordanb 15y ago
I think there's a lot less pressure on programmers because demand is so high and supply is limited. If some naive idiot wants to waste his time working on a contest, let him! there's still a surplus of well-paying work to go around.
- TheCowboy 15y ago
  NASA is facing massive budget cuts. NASA is part of the government, not a for-profit corporation. Assuming NASA actually contributes something positive, when did it become wrong to actually volunteer your time to the pursuit of science or promotion of learning for the public good? I'm really surprised at what seems like a general eye-rolling response when most geeks recognize the value of NASA.

Bjartr 15y ago

Not having/being able to justify the money to do it in-house? A great example of this kind of challenge working well is Boston's MBTA live tracking transit data and stop prediction data. They released an API and said "hey app devs, go make apps!" and now there are a variety of apps on several platforms. Some solve different problems than others and had they done one in-house app it is very unlikely it would have satisfied all the use cases that the available apps satisfy.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mturmon 15y ago

It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some useful app for regular citizens will come from this. It's like the Netflix challenge (even the winners of the $1M prize were losers if your metric is $/hour) or the DARPA Grand Challenges (which have used a lot of unpaid undergrad and grad student labor). NASA spends a lot of money developing data services for hard-core science users (e.g., for ocean data: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it's not like they're trying to get off scot-free. But it doesn't really spend on services for curious citizens. The existing evaluation process for science data services is not well-suited for judging citizen-facing apps/services. There would be a bunch of science nerds wondering if it would be OK to release uncalibrated data, or if the map projection selected was OK, etc. Earth science data gets in front of citizens more easily because of weather and climate, but planetary data has been under-exposed.