Future of the project

[Lukasz994]

Hi, Before I get to the point, I'd like to mention that I am aware this is a free software and that I appreciate all help from the contributors.

In recent months I've noticed that release cycle halted significantly. My question here is: Is this project being silently phased away due to lack of interest? Answer to this question is quite important given new hardware is being released as we speak and no ethminer support is anywhere in sight. I understand we're dependent on manufacturers releasing dev kits for new architectures, and specialists in our community dedicating their free time, but question still stands "Does this project have people still being interested in this subject?"

Any feedback is welcome.

[AndreaLanfranchi]

My personal two cents (I'm not the spokesman for anybody other than myself).

"Does this project have people still being interested in this subject?"

There are two kinds of people:

• End users : they're apparently still interested in this project as (must say with decreasing frequency) they post now and then some issue. I feel like they seek more for a "free from costs" solution rather than a "free to use and open" one.
• Developers : I've been one of them for long time on this project. All I got is lots and lots of work hours spent, much anger from users complaining about missing features, dicating timings for releases, begging for compatibility with fancy pools, and very few "thank you" etc. Despite mine donation address (on front page) is well visible as well as the one for other devs, I personally have collected in a year and half, if i recall correctly, roughly 65 usd.

I never meant to pay my bills working on OSS but the gap among what users claim and what they do to help developers have made my mind : never again.

Best.

[Nikolaev-Nikolay]

There is still a more serious task - to write a pool for self-Assembly. That's a joke. The latest version works very well, there is something to improve, but as say of the Russian: best enemy good. Thanks to the developers!

[gennadiv]

Мои личные два цента (я не являюсь представителем кого-либо, кроме себя).

"Есть ли в этом проекте люди, которые все еще интересуются этой темой?"

Есть два типа людей:

• Конечные пользователи: они, по-видимому, все еще заинтересованы в этом проекте, поскольку (должен сказать, с уменьшением частоты) они публикуют время от времени некоторые проблемы. Я чувствую, что они больше ищут решение "бесплатно от затрат", а не "свободно использовать и открывать".
• Разработчики: я был одним из них долгое время в этом проекте. Все, что я получил, - это много и много рабочих часов, много гнева от пользователей, жалующихся на недостающие функции, диктуя тайминги для релизов, умоляя о совместимости с причудливыми пулами и очень мало "спасибо" и т. д. Несмотря на то, что мой адрес пожертвования (на первой странице) хорошо виден, а также для других разработчиков, я лично собрал через полтора года, если я правильно помню, примерно 65 usd.

Я никогда не хотел оплачивать свои счета, работая над ОС, но разрыв между тем, что утверждают пользователи и что они делают, чтобы помочь разработчикам, заставил меня задуматься : никогда больше.

Лучшие.

the people do not mind if you turn the charge collected in the program to continue with the project

[chfast]

I just marked the current master as 0.18 release to get over it.

I have switched to other tasks and I don't have time to play with ethminer any more. Besides meeting some friendly developers here, in general working on ethminer was rather frustrating experience because of the lack ability to have automated testing, quality checks and benchmarks. In the same time receiving little support from mining community.

[mavrent]

Please consider following the example set by a few of the Monero mining software authors.

Put a variable developer fee in the mining software source code, enabled by default. This way anyone who simply downloads and runs the binaries would be earning you something, and anyone who's motivated to look at the source code and compile it themselves could disable it.

It's not unethical to take a small fee or give users a reason to look at the code and compile it themselves.

[chfast]

@mavrent, we have considered this, but we have not been convinced it is good thing in general and if it's worth the effort for unknown gains. Technically, it is still a big piece of work to implement and setup the infrastructure. And then we have to decide how funds are going to be distributed.

[AndreaLanfranchi]

@mavrent the "beauty" of ethminer has always been it hasn't any developer fee besides being an Open Source projects. If any dev fee had to be insterted (which should imply a lot of work as @chfast pointed out) it'd automatically enter the playing field of other well known closed source softwares. This means it's effectiveness should match at least the effectiveness of other ones with an equal (or better lower devfee). On the CUDA part I believe we could do great improving it ... not as much for OpenCL or, better, on Rocm. Should ethminer not match other's performances any insertion of a devfee would be meaningless as its usage (and the revenues) would not cover the development costs.

[mavrent]

I do think its cooler not to have a developer fee in the code, as that "feature" doesn't really add anything to the miner's effectiveness.

That said I would think there's room in the market for an open source miner with a dev fee in the source code, even if its not up to par with the closed source miners, as being open source is a desirable feature in and of itself. I Don't think there's another ethereum miner that stays open source.

Stallmans vision for Free Software is "free as in freedom, not free as in beer". As long as we have a moving project with the code open and free to be modified, the issue isn't whether or not someone is making money.

As an end user that likes to use code I can review myself, I'm just hoping to see the project move forward.

[AndreaLanfranchi]

On a wide userbase perspective being open source is meaningless.

The ones who really take into account OSS for its principles, and respect the revenues this might generate, are a very little minority. If we had to insert a dev-fee into a publicly available source code be sure that in the matter of minutes new releases of binary recompiled without the dev fee will be available. And users will use the latter simply voiding any effort from the devs. Seen with XMRIG and a few others. Look at how many "products" there are trying to "steal" the dev fee from other well known.

I do think its cooler not to have a developer fee in the code, as that "feature" doesn't really add anything to the miner's effectiveness.

That's not true ... proper funding ensures continuos delopment thus effectively improving performance and better tuning for newer GPUs

As long as we have a moving project with the code open and free to be modified, the issue isn't whether or not someone is making money.

You have to match the mentality of average Joe miner. They all live with razor thin margins. Ask them for 0.5% and they will find any method to remove it.

As an end user that likes to use code I can review myself, I'm just hoping to see the project move forward.

I'm glad for you but accept, again, you're part of a very little minority.