ADC2 Announced, But There’s A Catch
So the new Android Developer Contest is finally announced (just 9 months late) and it has semi-open judging (via a Market app that appears to be open to anyone.) But there is some bad news too.
The original discussion – if anyone remembers that far back – said they’d be doing quite a lot more in the way of prizes (ADC1 was $5mil, ADC2 is just shy of $2mil.)
But thats not the bad news. The bad news is this:
The ADC 2 contest is open only to applications that have not been published — whether through Android market, a public web site, or any other means. An application that has already been made available to the public (at the time of judging) is ineligible, regardless whether it is free or sold commercially
Yeah.. they banned all OSS apps. Got a closed source “killer app” that is 99% written? Great! Delay the release until after the contest and you’re golden. Got an open app? Too bad guys, its been “published”. Got a nice bazaar-style app you’re working on (or planning to work on) that’d be great for the contest? Sucks to be you.
Very interesting news for a company that pushes it’s “open source” product so hard. (Yeah yeah, broken record. But its yet another example of actions vs words.)
Here’s the info on the contest:
Categories
- Education/Reference
- Games: Casual/Puzzle
- Games: Arcade/Action
- Social Networking
- Lifestyle
- Productivity/Tools
- Media
- Entertainment
- Travel
- Misc
Awards
Prizes will be distributed as follows; all prizes are in USD:
For each of the 10 categories:
- 1st prize: $100,000
- 2nd prize: $50,000
- 3rd prize: $25,000
Overall (across all categories)
- 1st prize: $150,000 (meaning the overall winner will receive $250,000)
- 2nd prize: $50,000 (meaning the 2nd prize winner will receive up to $150,000)
- 3rd prize: $25,000 (meaning the 3rd prize winner will receive up to $125,000)
on May 27th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Yeah, ADC2 seems quite disappointing. Regarding the publishing, you could maybe twist that a little and define publishing as having produced an apk. Source code in a repository is not really application by the strictest interpretation. There could also be open source projects out there that are not really public knowledge yet: there may be a public source repo, but no website, mailinglist, announcement or anything like that. The price money is perhaps a bit on the short side too, but any money is better than no money, eh? Finally, this competition is clearly targeted at producing mass market applications. Sucks if you have ideas for niche markets only.
Reply
on May 27th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I’m not buying your read on this, it doesn’t have anything to do with the license you use, just prohibiting recycling existing apps into this contest. Since the contest is explicitly intended spurn the creation of more, new apps for Android, not having such a prevision would be self defeating, as why would I both to spend all my weekends this summer on something new for the contest knowing full well that the apps that have 1+ years of polish will clearly smoke mine by the time submission rolls around.
Personally I’m glad for this provision.
You are right that this will prevent apps being developed in a bazaar style, but that’s a tradeoff I’m happy to accept. If you want collaborative development, just jump on one of the mailing lists and enlist some people to join your cause, if you have a solid idea with a shot at winning I don’t think you’d have to release it to get the excitement.
Reply
Disconnect Reply:
May 27th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Here’s 2 imaginary apps. Both are about 80% done, and being delayed for the contest. One is closed source. Its in. One is open source. Its out. (Or, by definition, it is still closed source..)
You can’t know that a closed source app was started after the announcement, maybe it was 99% done and they pushed it out for the contest, took some time to add extra shine.
They do force any open source apps to be started after the contest, and operate closed until the judging. That is basically a ban on open source apps until after the contest..
Reply
on May 27th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
You are conflating the license (open source) with the development style (bazaar).
Reply
Disconnect Reply:
May 27th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
If source has been released, thereby making it open source, it is ineligible for the contest. Yes, its an explicit ban on bazaar (as I said above) but it is also a ban on any app with available sources (aka open source apps) regardless of whether they have made a previous “actual” release or not. (Cathedral apps are, by definition, closed source prior to their first source code release.)
Reply
vitriolix Reply:
May 27th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
“any app with available sources” right, key word there is available. It is simply a ban on any existing app, open source or not. They want fresh, newly created apps. It sounds like you are inferring they would disallow new apps that rely on open source libraries, but considering that the SDK itself is open source, that seems unlikely to be true.
Reply
Disconnect Reply:
May 27th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Its a ban on open source apps. You cannot go, right now, to sf and create a new project (new app!) and enter it into the contest. (You can open your app -after- the contest. So – effectively – they are allowing -free- apps.)
As far as what to do – instead of specifically including open source apps on the “we don’t care” list, exempt apps with available source – so long as the project does not make apks available (on market, on the website or on alt markets) let them in.
Google seems to think that occasional, partial releases and monster code drops count as “open source” and they are reinforcing that with this contest.
on May 27th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Just out of curiosity, what would you rather have them do?
Reply
on May 27th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Oh I get it, it’s like a contest, you can’t know what other people are going to answer.
Reply
on May 28th, 2009 at 2:54 am
You are making a fuss out of nothing.
I am totally pro opensource (as I published a couple of projects myself) like many other android users.
Google is just trying to get fresh content in the market (and I like the idea), if I would like to enter a new (not yet published) open source app in the contest, I just need to code it and release the source at the same time of publishing.
Using sourceforge/bazaar to publish the code before publishing the actual app is not a requirement of an opensource application…
Reply
Disconnect Reply:
May 28th, 2009 at 6:46 am
FYI (to everyone who seems to be following that line of thought) I never said they were banning open source libraries.
Again, if an app has no source, its not open source. It doesn’t prevent you from opening it after the contest. But it does mean that if you have a closed app that you spent half a year working on, you can just delay (and add more polish) and enter it in the contest.
Open source apps, whether finished or not, are banned – the act of becoming open source (releasing the source) makes them ineligible.
I’d love to know where the library red-herring comes from btw, so I can clarify.
Reply
on May 28th, 2009 at 6:31 am
I see no catch.
There is a clear distinction between a library and an application. The article specifically talks of ‘applications’, and does not say we cannot use any ‘library’. It says that the application should be unpublished and also should not be an upgrade of another published/submitted to ADC 1 application.
e.g you could use the existing open source ‘bar code scanning’ library to create a ‘new’ application for a different kind of application than ‘compare anywhere’ for example. If that was the case we cannot take advantage of Google’s Location based services, Motion sensing api’s etc.,that would be like re-inventing the wheel, which is clearly not the goal of the exercise by Google. It is to enhance creativity given a basic minimum framework of libraries that drive the capabilities of a device.
Also, I did not see any mention of releasing the source at http://code.google.com/android/adc/ (generally winning entries are property of the host, but in this case they have clearly mentioned the possibility of generating further revenue by submitting Lite versions that have a date of expiry. This is just to give full advantage to the developer whose application can be judged in its fullness.)
Reply
on June 2nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I see your point but the fact is the rules are not yet settled. Continue to make your concerns known, as you have here, and maybe they can tweak the rules to both ensure freshness and allow source code to be revealed before the contest deadline.
Reply