zbedic: feature donation driven development

What is a feature-donation driven development?

Feature-donation driven development ($->*) is an application development model in which new features are added to software when enough money is raised to implement them. Users can choose which features they would like to see in their favorite application by donating money for them.

For example, you can see at the bottom of this page a choice of new features that can be implemented in zbedic. You can support development of any listed feature by donating money to this project. The programming will start as soon as the money raised exceeds the 'to be raised' amount.

Transparency is the key aspect of feature-donation driven development. Everyone can choose the features one wants to have, and everyone knows where the money goes. Everybody is welcome to suggest new features. The new code is open and licensed under GPL. This web page will be updated each time a new amount of money is donated and it will also contain the current status of the development.

Further development of zbedic will rely on donations

zbedic already required a lot of work and further development would consume even more valuable time. Obviously, everybody would like to be compensated for hard work. Therefore, I decided that all new features will be implemented on the feature-donation basis. This does not mean that zbedic is going to be commercialized and making a lot of money on zbedic is not my goal. The donations are going to be only a partial compensation for the time I spend programming instead of doing more enjoyable things. Of course zbedic still remains GPL and everybody is welcome to work on the application.

I realize that this kind of development scheme can be either successful or it may result in nothing being done because nobody is willing to spend any money on software. But the good thing is that this will depend on the users, who will decide whether zbedic needs further development an, if it does, what should be improved in the first order.

Feature-donation driven development FAQ

1. How "expensive" are new features?

The table below lists the amount of money to be raised for each feature, which is rather modest compared to the costs of creating commercial applications.

2. How much time do I have to wait for new features?

Firstly, before I start working on a feature, the full amount of money must be raised. After that it should take on average 2-3 months (unless otherwise stated) to release a new version of zbedic with the new feature. If for some reason I can not get to programming in that time, I can hand over the raised money to whoever is willing to implement the feature.

3. The feature I really want is missing on the list

Fell free to write me an email or submit an RFE at the SourceForge page.

4. I don't want to support a particular feature but the overall development of zbedic

There is a separate fund 'overall', which will support in the first order those features, for which a significant percent of money has already been raised, or those features which are the most valuable in my opinion.

5. I changed my mind and I would like to transfer my donation to a different feature

It is possible unless the development on the previously donated feature has already started. Just write me an email.

6. What if more money has been raised for the feature than needed

Any excessive amount of money will go to the 'overall' fund.

How to donate money on new features?

Simply click on the button below

then follow the instructions. Remember to put in the comment the name of a feature you would like to donate money to. If you don't do it, the money will be directed to the Overall fund.

zbedic - new features

Below is a list of the proposed new features, money that needs to be raised to implement them and a detailed description of the features.

Feature	Money to be raised	Money already raised	Status	Last status change
Overall	n/a	$31	$9 donated	28 Aug 2006
Performance	n/a		Canceled	25 March 2005
Better and fully navigable list of words	$90		Waiting for donations	08 August 2005
Multi-dictionaries (virtual-dictionaries)	$130	$19	$19 donated	15 June 2006
Linux version of zbedic	$100	$100	Completed	05 Jun 2006
Editable dictionaries	$200	$200	Completed	05 March 2006

The money is given in USD and does not include SourceForge fees (currently 5% of the donation, with a $1 minimum, see link for details).

Better and fully navigable list of words

Currently the list of found entries, displayed on the right or at the top, contains only limited number of entries. It is not possible to browse the whole dictionary word by word, or to scroll back above the top entry in the list of words. Furthermore, the huge scrollbar for that list takes only precious space, though it is not very useful. Instead of this, zbedic will have a new list of words, that would be fully navigable, from the first word in the dictionary to the last entry. It will be possible to move by one entry or by one page. If a key-word is too long, it will be wrapped to another line (useful for long Wikipedia keywords).

Multi-dictionaries (virtual-dictionaries)

What if ones wants to lookup a single word in several dictionaries? Currently one needs to type the word and then change from one dictionary to another. But why shouldn't it be done automatically. The list of words could contain found items from several dictionaries. When the features is implemented, it will be possible to create multi- or virtual-dictionaries, which can consist of several ordinary dictionaries. Searching multi-dictionary will result in performing search on several dictionaries at once and browsing the result of this search in a single list of words.

Linux version of zbedic

A linux version of zbedic, qbedic, already exists but it has not been updated for ages. As a result, all neat features and improved GUI of zbedic are not available to Linux users. The goal of this feature is to make the latest version of zbedic compilable for both QT and Qtopia. Therefore all new versions will be released for both platforms. This step can make zbedic available to much broader community and hopefully it will incite more people to work on zbedic or zbedic-compatible dictionaries.

Editable dictionaries

This is one of the most demanded features, which can change zbedic into a very efficient personal database. After implementing this feature, it will be possible to create new dictionaries and add or modify their entries. Editable dictionaries will be most probably bigger than read-only dictionaries. However, searching them should be equally fast.