Community Server

Hey Tango,

If you want some custom enhancements for your pool,  you can email your request to cjbiggs@theinnovationbox.com.

Thanks,

Charlie J. 

Wow, so many people want to profit off the this awesome open-source program Mike has spent countless hours developing! All of you need to take a look at the depth of his code and look at how much work he is doing for all of us.

 Go make a dontation. and if you got some code for free or you paid for give it up. It will only help you more in the long run...

 I agree

Hey Poolie.  I don't see anyone else on any discussion threads where people of trying to make a profit off of this, so I guess you are directing this toward me.  With all due respect to Mike and his hard work on this pool software.  As a Professional Consultant with over 20+ years software architecture and development for many major companies, I fully understand the hard work and effort Mike put into this code.  I have looked at the depth of his code to value the effort and professional level of coding that has went into it.  We can have a long talk about Licensed Product v.s. Open Source all day.  Everyone has there own opinion on the matter.  There are larger and more complex open source code than this pool software that people extend, enhance, and deploy.  Examples are PHP, MYSQL, Apache, etc.....  People make profit and build companies around Open Source on a regular basics.  I have written alot of open source and licensed products in my career, so I have seen it from both sides. 

I have customize Mike's football pool for about 5 different pools in the last 2 months.  I asked each of them to make a donation to Mike.  The customized changes I did for LiveAd was the only one of the 5 pools I make a profit off of, because he offer to paid for my time.  Because he had a tight deadline, and many features that wasn't in the current pool software.  The other 4 pools setup and customization were done free of charge.

So Mr. Poolie and everyone that agree with him, what should I do as a Professional Consultant when someone offer to pay you for your time to extend an open source program in a rushed period of time (I am not only talking about the pool software.  Apache Projects, MySQL, Postgres, PHP, and the list goes on and on and on .......)

Mr. Poolie.  If you really want this to be an Open Source Project, create an Open Source Project in SourceForge, etc... so others like myself can contribute to the development of the wonderful thing that Mike as started.  I would be more than happy to help out with the coding.  There are a lot more that can be done with this pool software (Mobile support, Social Networking, etc...).   The pool software is based on ASP, which was the technology to use over 10 years ago.  This pool program could easily be written with less code and less time using the newer technologies.  More of the ISPs support the new technologies, even the free web hosting site.  But I understand the use of ASP.  Most ISPs and Web Sites deploy using PHP.

So in short, it is easy to talk about open source.  Doing something about is the harder part.  So I agree with sharing code, because benefit everyone in the end.  That is the beauty of Open Source.  Something I wish Microsoft would get and realize one day.   

It took me longer to write this post, than it did to do the Auto-Pick coding.

Great Code Mike.  You actually did something with your vision, and not just talked about.  If you want to do some join development on future enhancements to your pool software, I am more than willing to pitch in.  Just set it up as a true Open Source Project.

Well Mr. CJBiggs,

Do you feel bettter now that you washed all those tears away? All I was trying to do was persuade your customer into posting the code you wrote for him.

So are you gunna post that code or what? :)

Take Care Mr. Biggs

Hey Mr Poolie,

First of all, Real Men don't cry (hints my name Mr. Biggs).  I will continue to take the high road in my response to you.  For you to think about tears over something as simple as this, then I am sorry if I got your gender messed up.  I assumed you was a man.  So Mrs Poolie.   You was doing more than trying to get my client to post his code.  You was trying to guilt him into doing it in the name of Open Source.  You still don't get it about the beauty of Open Source.  I challenged you to start an Open Source project so developers like you and me can contribute to it.  I really thought you was a developer and understand the concept behind Open Source.  Below is your post to Mike about forming a team to enhance this Open Source pool.

 There's nothing wrong with some one making a few bucks doing honest work. As CJ pointed out, anyone is free to use open source code for profit within the terms of whatever particular license that code is offered under. Even within the football pool, I used the TinyMCE editor whose authors are kind enough to offer freely.

In a case where you have to work against a hard deadline with code that admittedly isn't well documented and then agree to some terms of support, you can certainly charge more than what might normally be considered fair. In any case, it's really up to the buyer to determine what it's worth. And it sounds like this was a personal customization, not a case where some one made or paid for some changes and then sold it off for a profit (although that would be perfectly legitimate as well). I'd also say that having paid for something for your own personal use, you're under no obligation to share it.

I've benefited from open source code like almost every other programmer both personally and professionally so I'm more than happy to share my much of my own work in the same way. I'm certainly not offended by anyone making some money off of it through their own efforts.

All that said, if there's a demand for this kind of feature (and it sounds like there is) I'm willing to look into adding it to the pool or at least providing some examples. I'm sure there are other capable programmers here who could contribute as well.

My first question would be, how do you all think the auto picks should work? For example, do you fill in the entire season for a user when they sign up (maybe giving them all the home teams) or do you want to create them week by week (maybe picking the team with the best record)?

wow, do you feel better now? all i hear is wah, wah, wah! Im definately will not comment on this...

Poolie

I feel like you are a better joke and just don't get it.  I used your own words and you still don't get it.  How sad.  Talk is cheap and action speak louder than words.  See my actions as we take this to the next level with or without you.

"Mike does this board have any collaboration tools? For example like sourceforge where we can post files for testing a co-devlopment?

 If we have a few serious developers we could really add lots of feature mods here." 

Hey Mike,

I feel that the the Auto Picks should be a User Preference that the user setup on there profile.  If the user does entry there picks during the week, than the set user preference for the Auto Pick should kick in.  So if they never enter there picks for the year, than there user preference would apply for the  whole year.

Auto Picks

1.)  Select all home teams

2.)  Select all visiting teams

3.)  Random Generator to pick between home and vistor

4.)  Ranking System per team.  So if you rank a team 3 that plays a team ranked 5.  The Auto Pick would be the team ranked 3

5.)  Over and Under for that week

6.)  Trend

7.)  Better Record/NFL Power Ranking

Just to name a few criteras for Auto Picks.  The user would be able to pick the one the want to be used/applied for that week.  They  could set it in head of time, and have different ones for different weeks.  I am Currently working on 1-4 and will have it available at the end of this week.

Charlie J. 

 The only problem I had with this thread at the beginning was the fact that we were requesting for some help with creating this autopicks feature. Then Livead piped in and all he had to say was that he had it and he paid for it. It was almost like rubbing our noses in it and possibly suggesting that the only way we are going to get this feature is to pay. Then people asked him to share since the info he already posted was useless and rude. He finally came back to say that he paid like $4-500 for a couple mods. This in my opinion is alot. Then cjbiggs, you came in and stated that it wasnt nearly that much and stated how much you ACTUALLY did and in such a short period of time. This I would agree would not be a rip off.

I have no problem with people making money for their hard work. Especially since you answered his ad offering to pay for the mods. You just responded and excepted. Mike should be making money as he has put alot of hard work into the site. I am thankful he doesnt charge for it though. 

I have 1 job and support my wife and child. I dont have extra money to be spending elsewhere.

Mike, as for the requests. My requests would be for user and admin(for users) getting 3 options each week:

1. all home, random points

2. all away, random points

3. random everything

When the user makes the selection it auto fills appropriately but they have the option to alter anything, such as if they choose all hom teams, but really want to pick the away team on the monday game, they simply click the away radio. then they can also edit the TB score. then click submit.

EDIT:

having a ranking system in their profile is a cool idea too, but the user has to rank them. I dont think it should be auto ranked by the best team stat wise. That gives the advantage to the lazy user.

My $.02

I would much rather donate to a cause that adds features to a project. Paying to customize a product that isn't mine and not have those features included in future releases doesn't seem like a good option for my money.

I am not a programmer so I can't comment on the code. All I can do is look at the concept and see the potential. This product fills a need and I would love to see it evolve into something greater than it is now (note I used greater because it is currently great :). I have tons of ideas that I would like to see included.

If there are other options that are better or more mature for the price I havent found them. And please if you know any I would love to take a look. I know there are commercial products available but the community is where the value come in.

An open source project would be awesome and I would track it closely.

Thanks for your time and talent. Keep me informed.

 Seems like the big question is whether this is meant to be manual or automatic. In other words, should this just be a kind of helper function for when a user is making picks, or is it meant to automatically generate an entry for some one who hasn't submitted one?

As a helper function, it would be fairly easy to add. I have an quick prototype set up at http://www.brainjar.com/pool (same passwords as on the demos, check the links on the front page for test stuff). It has a ways to go but you can get the idea.

Going the other way, as a means to force entries for players each week, raises a few issues like what to do if you add a player late in the season. But I'm sure those can be resolved somehow.

Hello Mike,

 Prototype is cool, works well, however what I would like is the automactic one, something to be there if I forget or can't get my picks in before lock down.

Tango

 That prototype is awesome. just need it to generate the TB score when choosing the random option. Where did the inputs for faves and underdogs come from?