Hi Peter, It looks like you found an interesting award. I have been considering presenting liquidsoap to several OSS contests. I never took the crucial step. The interest of that Gary Frisch Bursary is that it is specifically about radio and innovation. It's a specific niche, and we're in.
Concerning your application project for that award, I'm not sure about the right focus. I don't know if liquidsoap is a good trade-off between usability and power, if it's stable enough, well-managed, etc. but I know that it's innovative. And it's already usable. You want to focus on your project of graphical interface, which I understand -- especially since that award is meant for "individuals" rather than "teams". But it seems difficult to defend a draft -- do we even have a draft of how that GUI will match liquidsoap's versatility in order to control it? But I don't want to drown in that difficult question, but rather discuss the general issues with contests and awards. The big question is: what for? Running (even without winning) for an award is a good adverstisement, and maybe a good motivation for some devs. Liquidsoap doesn't have all the features and stability that I want, and I prefer to develop rather than communicate, but I agree happily if some of you (Romain, Peter, ..) want to advertise our project. The difficult part is: what to do with an award? Romain proposed to handle that in a simple way: create a paypal for the project, use it for sending developers to OSS conferences in order to present that project, or servers if we ever need some. I agree with that system, which uses the money primarily for the project, and not for people -- although of course, conferences can be fun to attend. I'd be embarassed with any direct donation to a developer. I'm afraid to see people trying to estimate their share in the project, compare each others' implication or merit, etc. I believe that it's more fun if it remains a hobby for all of us. I think it's sane to discuss this sort of question before applying to anything. Now back to the initial question, summing up: (1) I have no right to say anything if you focus on the GUI only, because I didn't do much there -- but I doubt that you can get a serious application without stressing the innovation from liquidsoap (2) I agree with presenting liquidsoap to contests, although I might not want/be-able to spend my time in preparing the application and (3) I'd like that any award given for a project that significantly relies on savonet/liquidsoap is used on a stronly project basis rather than individual basis. What do you guys think ? Cheers. -- David
