DS Wi-fi Bounty

From StoneHome

Current Bounty: $ 0 of $ 3081.16

Bounty over!

Paid out! Steve Stair generated the libraries and documentation required, and recieved the money in full. Downloads are available at his website.

What's this?

Quick version: this is a big pile of money gathered by the community, which will be given to the first person to accomplish three goals (half for the first, one quarter for each of the others.) Half goes to the first person to document the DS WiFi registers; one quarter goes each to the first implementation of working connect and transfer code, and to the first TCP or UDP stack. Details are below.

Oh right, there's a web page

Man.

So, this bounty paid out months ago, and I just totally forgot to edit the page. Yes, there has been a short stream of tiny donations since; for example, I just got a dollar yesterday. I've given Steve money several times since the "final" payout, always in tiny amounts. I update him every twenty bucks or so. Why am I bothering to tell the story? Because this morning, something frickin' hilarious happened.

Just like in any community, the DS Development community has a couple of drama queens who make noise because they want to feel involved, have no actual development skills to speak of and can't tell the difference between causing trouble and being integrated into a community. This morning, one of my friends pasted me a log of just such a person, some Australian douchebag whose name isn't worth repeating, logging onto IRC and insisting that I was funnelling money from the DS Wifi Bounty to some secret Nintendo anti-piracy police. He even insisted it was true when the person who received the money sat there telling him he'd received all the money; why, look at how the values don't add up (why, it's not as if I addressed the reason at the end of the page more than a year ago or anything, and surely PayPal doesn't actually charge money for its services or anything, cough.)

I damned near spat orange juice all over my laptop.

Let me be clear, folks: three thousand isn't beans to Nintendo. Hell, it's barely even beans to me. The volume I could even consider secretly siphoning wouldn't be maybe $200 or so. Nintendo doesn't give a damn about $200. Hell, I put more than that into the bounty myself; why would I set all this up to fund them?

It's absurdism at its finest, and the best part is that he really doesn't understand why people think he's stupid. Today had an awesome afternoon, thanks to the continued antics of one of our drama queens. He hasn't yet cooked up a lie to figure how he came by this information, though since he consorts with the warez crowd that also came up with the bricker virus, it's honestly pretty obvious. One is led to wonder whether he even has the good sense to realize he's lying, or whether he's just another one of these duped dolts in the cult of ill personality festering on EFNet.

Milestone 1 Achieved!

Steve Stair has taken Milestone 1, netting him $1406.57. This will of course grow as the bounty continues to grow. The docs for which he netted this money can be found at his website.

Fruition is finally at hand. Thanks for all your support and patience; it's finally coming true.

Older news

We broke two thousand dollars! Thanks to Kaos, who pushed us to the line, and to Whacko, who inched us over it (yay paypal fees leaving us several cents short.)

StoneCypher has established a bounty on the first Nintendo DS TCP/IP implementation to be released to the community as open source.

Huhu yeah, I'm like a week and a half behind posting names again. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, and I'm extremely short on time. My apologies. I expect to fix that on the 25th of August (what is currently the day after tomorrow.) The money target is up to date as of this writing on the 23rd of August.

1. The implementation may not contain code from the SDK or any illegal source. If such a source is suspected, you will be immediately disqualified and will not be eligible for any later bounties from StoneCypher.
2. The implementation must compile in a free compiler (preferably GCC.)
3. It is acceptable for the implementation to use existing libraries, provided that their licenses are non-contaminating (Freeware, public domain, BSD license, MIT license, ZLib, etc are fine; GPL, LGPL, MPL, etc are not.) To that end, it is recommended that the TCP/IP Stack List be briefly perused. Remember, commercial stacks cannot be used without written special dispensation from their vendors.

How to help

Obviously, one way to help is to donate; through the gifts of (currently) nearly a hundred generous individuals, we have built up a significant chunk of change for whomever performs the difficult work involved. However, many people have expressed the desire to help, but the lack of money. Because I had a similar desire when I was a kid with no money, I understand the frustration that comes from good will and no resources.

Press has given us a significant boost; I suspect (there's no way to tell) that nearly half the bounty was brought to us by people that found out through news services like SlashDot and G4. We haven't had any serious press coverage in more than a month; if you want to help and find yourself without money, there are two good ways you can still help.

For one, we've had no coverage since about the $1200 mark. The bounty has gone up by more than a thousand dollars since. Telling your favorite news service about us would be a major help.

For two, the banner has helped as well. If you feel strongly, please feel free to use either of the banners found below, generously made on my behalf by Whacko.

Current Status

Woohoo! We hit Orange Lounge, then HackADay, then GameDev.net; now we're on SlashDot Games and PdRoms, then ArsTechnica, and the donations are starting to come back in. Update: huh, we hit G4 TechTV, on "Attack of the Show." The host even suggested his viewers donate. Woohoo!

If you'd like to help, but cannot afford to, try pushing this to your favorite news service(s). As of recently, they've shown to be quite helpful - even ones in subcultures that don't seem terribly involved. If the word gets around, site traffic picks back up, and interested people get to this page which haven't seen it before. Remember, there are still some people holding out for the $2k mark, so we do have another goal left to reach.

Milestone One is almost complete. There are three people in grasping range, though none of them quite have it, yet. Once milestone one is in place, milestones two and three are in reach of the general programming populace. Gentlemen, if you haven't yet started your engines, now's the time. Pushing lwIP or its equivalent onto embedded could win you almost $800, and if this page gets onto news services, quite possibly a much larger amount.

Remember, it only need to get on one major news service - ArsTechnica, Fark, HardOCP, whatever, then someone will get it to SlashDot, and then it'll be everywhere. (Why they keep publishing stuff about some new swap trick for the PSP but not a $1000+ bounty for interesting DS Dev I'll never know.)

Come on, community! You've given, but you can give more. Make the person who gives us wifi a rich man or woman. Open your wallets and your mail applications, and eventually we'll see the bounty as a real tool for driving development in this community.

Thank you for all your support; it's been marvelous. Now give me more. :D

One last bit

If you'd like for your nick to point somewhere, drop me a line. Nothing pornographic, because this page is (well kinda) business-safe; nothing warez, because I HATE YOU WAREZING BASTARDS. That said, if you want to point to your project site, your homepage, or to another page which you support, please feel free to tell me, and I'll set your nick up as a link.

High Scores

There are actually three sub-bounties. The total accumulated will be divided between the three individuals or groups which first attain each milestone. The register milestone is worth 50% of the bounty, and the other two are worth 25%, to reflect the difficulty involved in the first as compared to the other two.

1. figuring out the register set to accomplish (specific list)
2. implementing correct connect/disconnect code and implementing correct send/recieve code, each of which works both with DSes and PCs
3. bootstrapping TCP/IP (or, icky, UDP/IP)

Specific criteria for what qualifies are under development, since everyone's going to try to sneak something by.

PBS is supported by viewers like you

People which want wifi are encouraged to donate $10-$20 to the bounty, to encourage the few whose skills can address the problem to go after it. If you are not comfortable with PayPal, StoneCypher is willing to take donations by mail (contact by email for details, or just get the address from his resume;) still, he would much prefer PayPal, because there's a third party paper trail.

People with websites are encouraged to disseminate this page.

Contributors

• [DS]Lynx ($300) - Received!
• StoneCypher ($250) - Received!
• estudio ($250) - Received!
• DesktopMan ($150) - Received!
• Voluntarily Anonymous ($125) - Received!
• MachinShin ($100) - Received!
• DarkFader ($100) - Received!
• dsboi ($100) - Received!
• Cohmapapp ($55) - Received!
• DoubleC ($50) - Received!
• The if2a project ($50) - Received!
• Stingray ($50) - Received!
• Prime Ape ($48) - Received!
• John Sensebe ($42) Pending
• Davr ($37.81) - Received!
• Forza ($30) - Received!
• Kleevah ($30) - Received!
• Torjus ($30) - Received!
• Juletre ($30) - Received!
• Rory McCann ($30) - Received!
• HNA ($30) - Received!
• Firefly ($25) - Received!
• Gladius ($25) - Received!
• Guybrush, Norway ($25) - Received!
• The Jedi ($25) - Received!
• Yus ($23) - Received!
• DynamicStability ($21.37) - Received!
• Kritix ($21) - Received!
• loopy ($20.83) - Received!
• Miqualke ($20) - Received!
• Dovoto ($20) - Received!
• ShaunJ66 ($20) - Received!
• Fragraham ($20) - Received!
• telamon ($11) - Received!
• videogamerj ($11) - Received!
• HonkeyKong ($10.29) - Received!
• JeyK ($10.24) - Received!
• Shizzy[Ole] ($10) - Received!
• BuZz` ($10) - Received!
• DieselBrad ($10) - Received!
• mocnicom ($10) - Received!
• smash ($10) - Received!
• jb55 ($10) - Received!
• El Hobbito ($10) - Recieved!
• Grapefrukt ($10) - Received!
• Eggy78 ($10) - Received!
• Chibitemp ($10) - Received!
• Hoss ($10) - Received!
• Mic__ ($6) - Received!
• Tahanimator ($6) - Received!
• gman ($5.68) - Received!
• Tectonic ($5.01) - Received!
• mrnull ($5) - Received!
• Coolkcah ($5) - Received!
• Jerco ($5) - Received!
• Foxy ($5) - Received!
• Bit Soldier ($5) - Received!
• Disabled ($5) - Received!
• FlawlessWalrus ($5) - Received!
• Pepsiman ($3.95) - Received!
• tsr ($3) - Received!
• Whacko ($3) - Received!
• Welshy ($2.99) - Received!
• miek ($2) - Received!
• Elrinth ($2) - Received!
• Amall ($1) - Received!
• Max Power, Hungary ($1) - Received!
• Patater ($0.83) - Received!
• Glenn Duncan ($0.42) - Received!

Unknown Contributors

If your initials are in this list next to the amount you gave, that means I have your gift, but I don't have a nickname to which to attribute it. I will not use your real name unless you explicitly tell me to, because I'm worried about privacy. If you are in the unknown contributor list, please tell me what you'd like for me to do.

• $75 DD (tLM)
• $50 KT
• $50 JP
• $50 MF
• $40 AS
• $40 FN
• $30 HJ
• $25 KS
• $25 PT
• $25 RB
• $25 JG
• $25 C McC
• $25 EC
• $25 NA
• $21 TA
• $20 MR Check cleared
• $20 PL
• $20 JT (Probably a second donation from the same person)
• $20 MB
• $20 JS
• $20 RH
• $11 TI
• $15 DB
• $15 AG
• $10 AT
• $10 AM
• $10 JM
• $10 J@LAb[au] (duplicate?)
• $10 AC
• $10 PC
• $10 NyLy
• $10 OW
• $10 ST
• $10 SJH
• $10 TP Ltd
• $7.37 MB
• $7 CR
• $5 BH
• $5 ZZ
• $5 AH
• $5 MM
• $5 BK
• $5 BB
• $5 DS
• $5 DV
• $5 GB
• $5 Jerco
• $5 DWF
• $4 MB
• $3.25 SM
• $3.14 MMB
• $3 SM (Duplicate?)
• $2.50 DL
• $2 DMcC
• $2 JS
• $2 TF
• $1.95 NE - Donator reneged and took their money back (scumbag)
• $1.81 PS
• $1.69 DC
• $1.07 TH
• $1 SR
• $1 JW
• $1 DTM
• $1 RC
• $0.50 AA
• $0.04 JT, you cheap bastard

There are a number of pledges for whom I have names, but not nicks. If you donated, don't see your nick on this list, and want your nick on this list, please contact me either by e-mail or on IRC.

Awaiting

• ws@dkm - $25 when complete (Not counted)

A note

Some astute readers have noticed that the donations add up to about ten dollars more than the bounty. Fear not - I'm not stealing from you. Those are paypal's transaction fees. I feel that if someone gives $25, even though paypal takes $1.28, they should be credited for $25, not $23.72 . If you want to figure out the breakdown for what was actually received, witness PayPal's public rate schedule.