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The underestimated Power of collective intelligence

Hey guys,
I have to admit that without all the custom ROMs that you offer here for free I would have sold my Touch HD long long time ago. I see this website as big driver for HTC/ MS to sell their products. (Maybe some people of HTC/MS dont) Once again thanks for your great work and time that your spending on this webside.
Currently I am writing my bachelor thesis about "Social Commerce". One point is about "the lack of firms understanding that collective intelligence and wisdom of crowds is an opportunity rather than a threat".
To show practical examples I also chose this webside. I appreciate if you could help me with some open questions that I have:
1. From which source does the rom cookers get all their ROMs/ builts?
2. Does this site has any special contacts to HTC/ Microsoft?
3. Do you get support in any-form (money, software, acknowledgement) from htc/ ms?
4. Do you send knowledge in any way back to help MS or HTC to improve their devices/ software?
4. What was the purpose for the operators of this side to built up a webside that is mostly concerned about HTC-Devices?
5. In this threat their is a dispute between ms and xda-developers. Does ms attitude have changed, yet? How did the story ended http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?threadid=294142
Thanks in advance for your answers. This forum and some others changed my life and engaged me to buy products. I hope I can contribute with my thesis to support forums like this and to show firms that community like this are a big opportunity rather than a threat

A great way to say thanks to all free stuff you grab here is to make a donation to XDA!!

You are right why not. 10€ for all the fun is nothing.

Great to see your star!!

Hi nobody has any information to me? Or did I post in the wrong section? thanks

A community is comprised of social participants, participants who work to build an environment that is beneficial to its participants. The phenomenon would very likely take place regardless of specific participants; only the quality of the results benefiting all those that participate would decline.

Can you code in Android? Could you spare some time to help people with brain injury?

Hi All,
I have been asked by a UK charity to develop some software to support people with brain injury. I’m not being paid to do this as the charity has little or no funding, but if the resulting software has commercial applications we retain the rights to exploit it. I’ve managed to convince a few people and major mobile networks to help out for free to get this moving and we’re at a critical stage.
I’ve scoped out the project and designed all the features. I’m skilled in C++ but not in Android and I really need someone who is to help us out.
Though we can’t pay you, you will own a part of the resulting company and we hope to provide a commercial service by April next year and that will mean you will have a full time job and directorship when we do.
If you have spare time, understand that money is not the only thing in life, want to help start up a company and are willing to support us in our efforts to help this charity please get in touch via my email or phone and I'll give you some more info.
You can be based anywhere in the World as this can be done remotely.
Thanks you so much for reading this and I look forward to hearing from you.
Fred Deer
+44 (0) 7971 834404
PS If this isn't for you but you know anyone who might be interested please pass this message on to them..

I sent you a PM. I have a family member in a situation where this kind of software can make a huge difference. I'm interested in hearing more about the project.

How can it is defined as stealing in open source community?

Earlier this day i read a post claiming a developer is pirating other developers rom.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1327651
The rom that i am referring is the gingerxperia for X8
In this open source community, can you blame people that use your property (without asking your permission first intentionally or not) and tweaking it to suit hiw own needs then distributing it for free without asking for donation, as a thieve?
Yes, you still can since he is using it WITHOUT your permission. But isn't is a bit unethical when you did not contribute any significant effort (your own creation)to the community but yet you quite openly charging people as thieve and flaming hatred among others?
What's great about the open source is support among the community. The guy that blamed here is a 15 year old boy who just tried to make his X8 works better and share it with others. It is quite rare to see kid into this arena while others are into justin beiber. Sure he got talent in him and all he need now is support from you guys, the seniors. You can teach ethics but talent and genius are hard to come by.
I feel bad for this kid since he keeps discouraged by other peoples who are just know how to blame,but contribute nothing.

Is that from a total non-English version of XDA? I could barely understand anything there... Anyway, did the kid give credit to the original dev that he kanged the work from? If not, I'd be pissed too.
Sent from the bastard child of Zeus.

Nope. Actually the op wrote in english but since there is replies in malay language cursing the op, they started blaming each other.
Yes, he did kang but the problem is other people who are not related to the development are getting qiote pissed like it's a really big issue to them and blaming him as thieve stealing other people works. =.=

the simple idea of open source is sharing, and exchanging codes & ideas
the moment you take or use a code, and don't share back the changes that you have made, you are violating the open source, or in legal terms the GPL
many of the people that cooks ROMs here that only Kang from others work, but don't upload back the changes to the original coder, are technically in violation of the open source/GPL
more detailed and long winded explanations here http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

It's called Courtesy.
If you modify somebody elses work and then release it back to the community as your own, without seeking permission or crediting the original dev for their work, then you can expect to be villified.
He may not have known any better but i'm sure he's learned his lesson.

CyanogenMod scammed by one of there own

Holy cow! CM just posted this on Facebook a few minutes ago. I hope this guy gets whats coming to him. Real **** move if ya ask me.
Original Post - https://www.facebook.com/CyanogenMod/posts/10152367978770425
We at CM are very trusting of our members, showed by both respect and permissions granted to those people we consider part of the team. Last month, this trust was violated in a substantial way. In the spirit of openness, here is what happened.
CM’s history is well established, with Cyanogen releasing his original ROM for the G1 on XDA forums. Back then, there was no “CyanogenMod” in terms of the organization and structure that we have today. The builds were hosted on Steve’s personal machine, the original server was a donation of spare kit from Phaseburn. And due to the small size (and lack of funds), the CyanogenMod.com domain was bought by a third-party back in 2009 and donated to CM, when CM was a much smaller project and had no online presence besides XDA.
Fast-forward 3 years, we have 3 extremely powerful build boxes donated by the community and an army of developers, contributors, and supported devices. But, a little over a week ago, things took a bad turn. The person owning the CyanogenMod.com domain was caught impersonating Steve to make referral deals with community sites. When confronted and asked to hand over control of the domain amicably, he decided he wanted 10K USD for it, which we won't (and can't) pay.
We contacted those he had established deals with, only to discover that the person tasked with maintaining our web presence was setting up deals under the CM name, and impersonating Cyanogen himself. Plenty of satisfying evidence was provided by those sites / entities to make us certain that this wasn't a misunderstanding or one-time thing.
This leaves us at a critical impasse. Being trusted with CM’s web presence means this member had control over the CM social network accounts (Twitter/FB) as well as domains (cyanogenmod.com). We have changed ownership of the social media accounts. When asked again to make the transition nicely, he responded with the following
“Hi, so you think by removing all my access across the infrastructure was going to be a great idea? We had a chat yesterday, you've decided to end this bitter. How about I just change the DNS entries right now. CM will practically go down.”
Refusing to be extorted for funds, and then being threatened is “ending it bitter”? Today, it happened: all of our records were deleted, and cyanogenmod.com is slowly expiring out of the Internet and being replaced by blank pages and non-existing sites. @cyanogenmod.com e-mail is now being directed to a mailserver completely out of our control, too.
We have begun the dispute process with ICANN to reclaim our domain. In the meantime, please utilize CyanogenMod.org and all applicable subdomains.
As mentioned, this member also managed our Google Apps for Business account, and therefore our @cyanogenmod.com email addresses. These addresses should be considered discontinued until further notice. We will be contacting the Google team to reclaim rights to the apps account. In the meantime, please contact [email protected] for any devrel questions or other issues. A mailserver is being established to transition devrel and other support email addresses. We will provide those when they are finalized, and they will utilize the .org domain.
We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt. Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’ - though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension. We will update you all as things progress.
Know that we are pursuing every available legal means to regain control over our domain.
Please note, all donations that were given directly to Cyanogen (aka [email protected]b.org) did indeed reach their destination and are not affected.
If you are a company out there that believes they have also entered into agreements with “CM” by this person impersonating Steve, please contact [email protected]. We’d like to get a handle on how widespread this was before we file charges.
-The CyanogenMod Team
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I run CM on my Hero and once and a while a CM based ROM on my Evo3D and like CM or not, these guys have worked hard to support a lot of android devices and have brought a lot to the table if you ask me.
If this is in the wrong place feel free to move it.

I find it hilarious lol. As sad as this is, it was pretty ballsy of him which you have to give props to.

Hgaara said:
I find it hilarious lol. As sad as this is, it was pretty ballsy of him which you have to give props to.
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How is this in any way funny? This guy could have/might have done a lot of damage in CM's name.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Hgaara said:
I find it hilarious lol. As sad as this is, it was pretty ballsy of him which you have to give props to.
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How many times you gonna post this same comment? It'd be pretty ballsy of you to post something different from time to time. But we probably wouldn't give props if you did.
Tool.
Sent from my EVO using xda premium

Bounty Threads - to be or not to be

It seems to me there are a raising number of bounty threads appearing in different forums. A bounty thread is when one or many persons state a problem and offer a reward to the one finding a solution. The goal is of course to motivate other to work an the case
In the short run may this seems lika a good idea to get a solution for a problem. One or many persons want the problem solved and are willing to pay for it and the one succeeding gets awarded.
In the long run, on the other hand, I see it as the beginning of the end for the open source community and the fundamental ideas upon which irt rests.
The idea of Open source and the reason for it's success the last 40 years is that transperancy of the code and progress makes it possible for anyone to contribute. Ideas are communicated, technichal progress are shared and the community brings the "product" forward. Someone may contriibute with one piece, another person gets an idea and brings it forward a little forward a little more and so one. The progress are monitorred by the community which both contributes to its progress and to its testing and verification.
The bounty thread kills much of this. The persons motivated by the bounty don't want to share their progress because it is more important that it is THEY who solve the problem than that the problem actually is solved at all. The first acceptable solution gets rewarded as long as the quallity is "good enough" and the rest, the loosers, drop their work since the bounty is fulfilled. Further development in not encouraged and evolution comes to a stop.....until the next bounty....
Normally, in the good ol´days, people of honour within the community may have paid a little tribute to members who have provided valueable work of which the have gained. This "honour"-culture, which is more or less the same way shareware works, is something I think we as a community should honor and praise. It's way much better than the bounty system in every aspect.
Of course there are a lot of honourable persons who work on and solve bounty threads who is not there because of the bounty itself but rather to contribute. I think most of the contributers are genuine community members with good morale and values. I just think the bounty system sends the wrong signals and the phenomenon is a serious threat to the community idea in the long run

To be honest I don't agree with bounty threads anyway and I see where your coming from. I've never pledged in a bounty thread I remember a time when as you said developers got together to work on things.
Sent from my Sony Xperia XZ1 using XDA Labs

I agree complettly, a bounty thread is not the right way.
If you look at the invested time, the money hourly earnings are quite low. If you are a high skilled developer I think you wouldn't do it anyway. During time, some withdraw the money, for some it is not the right solution.
We should focus on sharing knowledge. Unfortunately right now, I can't contribute knowledge (there is not any, at least in regard to Android ) I think it is fair to support the developers. I don't care if there is a bounty, since I donate anyway (e.g. to get a phone for testing).

_Mdroid_ said:
I agree complettly, a bounty thread is not the right way.
If you look at the invested time, the money hourly earnings are quite low. If you are a high skilled developer I think you wouldn't do it anyway. During time, some withdraw the money, for some it is not the right solution.
We should focus on sharing knowledge. Unfortunately right now, I can't contribute knowledge (there is not any, at least in regard to Android ) I think it is fair to support the developers. I don't care if there is a bounty, since I donate anyway (e.g. to get a phone for testing).
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We are not all developers and have all different skills and interests, but most of us can contribute anyway in some way. We can test, verify, discuss, encurrage, contribute and inform. There are many ways which all matters. You surely contribute in your way and are without a doubt a true community member. You contribute with your writings, you express your gratitude to other contributers and you do not demand or press other members.
Cheers to you [emoji4]
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