It’s great news that you’ll be collaborating if and when appropriate. That makes the process seem less doomed to me, though I’d still be afraid of thoes 18 remaining finalists :)

There seems to be a lot of doubt on this blog that the MDA developers are going to be fired up about working on somebody else’s ideas. Pretty sure it’s not gonna be an issue.

So far, we’ve picked 6 of the 24 finalists, and, speaking only for myself, I’d be completely thrilled to code any of those 6. The other two developers seem to feel the same. They’re all either “damn, wish I’d thought of that!” ideas, or ideas that present interesting technical challenges that will make working on them fun, or ideas that are just inherently fun, and which will be entertaining to work on as a result.

To answer a few other questions, the plan is one developer per app, with John acting as development manager, and with at least one graphic designer dedicated to each app. However, since we don’t yet know what the winners will be, we’re hedging our bets a bit by not setting this in stone.

It’s likely that the devs will collaborate on bits and pieces of things. For example, let’s say Martin winds up coding something collaborative, which would make sense given his SubEthaEdit background. But let’s also say that the app has some component that involves heavy math work or physics simulations. I’d probably code that bit since I’ve got a background in scientific computing. And so on.

Basically, we’ll allocate tasks as makes sense. A big part of John’s job as development manager will be to figure out what makes sense. :)

Support will be handled by My Dream App - the winning-idea person won’t be concerned with it (unless, of course, she wants to be, in which case we forward all the emails to her and go to Hawaii!)

P.S. Or I could submit my idea and let Jason do the hard work, while I sit back and reap 15 percent.

Or will it be one of those situations where it’s a HOT HOT HOT app that has a lot of community support for a year or two, and then the folks in the community realize that someone else is making money off their support time, and the community moves on to the next hot thing?

I hope for the sake of everyone involved that it all just works out.

“This contest will do nothing except put a heavy burden on a small development team to turn somebody else’s ideas into the type of application that can usually only be inspired by the developer’s own dreams.”

I’m a web-developer, so my angle is a bit skewed…no experience in software programming. But I have learned a long time ago that it is much harder to develop based on someone else’s ideas than it is to develop your own. Sure, once the application exists *somewhere*, it isn’t often a problem to add features per the request of the populace. And, to be honest, it’s sometimes rewarding to do so. But having to develop an application around someone else’s thoughts…it’s terrible. Especially if the person doesn’t understand a damn thing about application development in the first place.

As for legal: I agree with you 100%. The legal restrictions on this site cause serious problems, in my opinion. I’m a big advocate of the Open Source model. This seems like an attempt to bring open-source to proprietary scene.

Daniel, it sounds a lot like getting handed somebody elses dream app when you work at a big company. Not the end of the world, many programmers do it, but not the kind of inspired environment most people choose a small development shop for, but livable.