[DotGNU Announcement]DotGNU Collaborative Coding Competition

[Norbert Bollow]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I need your help with publicizing the DotGNU Coding Competition
(see below or http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/competition.html
for the detailed announcement) among university and college
students.

To a large extent, what the world of technology will look like
tomorrow is determined by what is researched and taught at
universities today.  Microsoft Corp. understands that very well,
and is steadily working on increasing mindshare for their .NET
stuff among academics, see http://www.msnbc.com/news/956800.asp .

The DotGNU Collaborative Coding Competition seeks to give gifted
university and college students a strong incentive to get involved
in DotGNU and thereby contribute to building a real Free Software
alternative to .NET

The incentives offered by this competition are strong indeed.
I have been told that for example in India, the US$ 2000 first
prize almost corresponds to a year's salary for a university
graduate.  In addition, Collaborative Coding in DotGNU Portable.NET
is a great learning experience in its own right for everyone with
ambitions to become a world-class programmer.

Therefore, if we manage to make all gifted computer science
students in universities and colleges worldwide aware of this
opportunity, that will allow the DotGNU project to get a good boost
from their contributions.  At the same time it this a first step
towards making computer science departments aware that they should
not endorse .NET without giving at least equal coverage to the Free
Software alternatives.

Reaching all universities and colleges worldwide is an ambitious
goal.  I need your help to achieve this.  If you have some time
on your hands and care enough to help, please respond to me by
private email... we'll then divide a list of all countries of the
world among those who respond, and contact GNU and Linux users
groups in order to recruit further helpers... the next step after
that will be contacting universities and colleges.

Greetings, Norbert.

- -- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of http://gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/
Free Software Business Strategy Guide   --->  http://FreeStrategy.info
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/TIuroYIVvXUl7DIRAuCaAJ9L1qgjEKOV5NbxKRBoK1G+nRYAOQCeMy3H
S3A7hhZIoDmrTcwRprP1KfU=
=WaUn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

                    1st International

                          DotGNU

             Collaborative Coding Competition

   http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/competition.html


   Besides some very nice prizes, participants get
   the good feeling of having contributed to setting
   the IT world free from the dominion of a certain
   monopolistic company.


The DotGNU Project, which is part of the GNU project of the
Free Software Foundation, is pleased to announce its first
international Collaborative Coding Competition.

The participants in this competition will collaboratively
complete the implementation of the System.Windows.Forms part
of the C# class libraries for DotGNU Portable.NET, with the
goal of duplicating the functionality of the proprietary
library so that programs written against it can be run on
Free Software.

The competition starts on August 26, 2003 and ends after four
months, or when DotGNU's System.Windows.Forms implementation
is essentially complete, whatever happens first.

The following prizes will be awarded by a jury to five
competition participants who make particularly valuable
contributions:

  1st prize:  US$ 2000
  2nd prize:  US$  600
  3rd prize:  US$  400
  4th prize:  US$  300
  5th prize:  US$  200

The contributions will be judged considering not only the
quantity and quality of the contributed code, but taking
in consideration also how well the competition participants
use the #dotgnu irc channel, the mailing lists and the wiki
for coordinating their coding efforts, and for helping
newcomers with getting started.

Ten additional prizes of US$ 100 each will be awarded to
ten contest participants who are selected randomly among
those who have not already been awarded one of the above
five prizes.

Therefore, in total there will be 15 winners in this
competition, and the total prize money is US$ 4,500.  The
prize money, which has been kindly donated by Neil Cawse
(thank you so much, Neil!) is waiting on a bank account of
the FSF (Free Software Foundation), and the FSF has accepted
responsibility for transferring the prize money to the
winners.  You may therefore be fully confident that this
competition is "for real", i.e. the prizes will truly get
paid out.

Requirements for participating in the competition:

1. You need to file copyright assignment paperwork with the
   Free Software Foundation for your code contributions to
   System.Windows.Forms .

2. At least one of your code contributions (a new file or a
   modification of an existing file) must have been accepted
   into the pnetlib System.Windows.Forms codebase.

3. You need to submit a tar.gz file which contains the
   following:

   * A file AUTHOR, which contains your contact information.

   * A file COPYING, which contains a copy of the GNU General
     Public License.

   * Copies of all new files which you have written for the
     competition, and which have been accepted into the pnetlib
     System.Windows.Forms codebase.

   * Context diffs of all your changes to System.Windows.Forms
     which have been accepted into the pnetlib codebase since the
     beginning of the competition.

   * A file THANKS, which gives credit to all people who have
     helped you during this work in particularly valuable ways.

Submissions of tar.gz files as described above will be accepted 
until two weeks after the competition ends (it will end after
four months or earlier if the jury declares DotGNU's
System.Windows.Forms implementation to be "essentially complete").

Participants may submit multiple tar.gz files, only the latest
submission of each participant will be considered.

Excluded from participation are DotGNU Steering Committee
members and their close relatives, Free Software Foundation
employees and their close relatives, and also jury members
and their close relatives.  In particular, those who covet
the $2000 first prize will be relieved to know that Rhys
Weatherley, the chief architect of DotGNU Portable.NET, is
not a participant in the competition, since he is a Steering
Committee member.

Furthermore, excluded from participation is everyone who has
had access to proprietary source code of the Microsoft Windows
system, or to source code for any proprietary implementation of
System.Windows.Forms.

The jury will consist of Norbert Bollow, Neil Cawse and
Bradley Kuhn.  Rhys Weatherley will be an official advisor of
the jury.  Decisions of the jury are final and cannot be
appealed in any way after the decision has been made.


HOW TO GET STARTED:  Subscribe to the pnet-developers mailing
list at http://dotgnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pnet-developers
Then read http://wiki.dotgnu.org/SystemWindowsForms ... that
is a wiki page, you are welcome to add additional helpful
information to this page, correct errors, add further wiki
pages, etc.  When you need help or information which is not
available on the Wiki, ask on irc (#dotgnu on irc.freenode.net)
or by email via the pnet-developers mailing list.



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/S3msoYIVvXUl7DIRApkFAKDrvdU8OGMJ5WypT2Bo95WnE9bo1ACeOFhi
sLLHEfwzxG1HC2nmHzLIs3o=
=1HQN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----