Miro wants you to adopt a line of code and help fund open video on the net
Miro combines VLC -- a free video player that supports virtually every format extant -- with BitTorrent and RSS, creating a simple means for publishing and receiving Internet video without bankrupting independent producers with bandwidth bills. The producer serves up an RSS feed of torrent files; viewers download these in the background and receive the latest video by torrent file, sharing pieces of it among themselves. The more viewers a channel has, the faster everyone gets the file and the less the producer has to pay to serve it. Miro is free and open, and does not have any DRM.
I'm proud to have served as a volunteer on the Board of Directors for the Participatory Culture Foundation (Miro's parent organization) since its inception. In just a few short years, Miro's gone from a slightly clunky proof-of-concept to a Mac/Win/Lin cross-platform video tool that presents a credible alternative to proprietary and/or DRM-crippled systems from Hulu, Apple, Amazon and others.
Adopt a line of source code
We're a small non-profit in a sea of big budget, for-profit competitors, and the recent stock market crash has severely hurt the foundations that fund the bulk of our work. But we want to take this crisis and use it as an opportunity to flip our funding model on its head. If enough of our users adopt lines of Miro code, we can create an organization that is funded from the bottom-up and not dependent on the top-down.We aren't here to make money, we're here for a mission: to distribute wonderful video around the world in a system that's more open and decentralized than ever before. To do that, we need you to help us care for a little tiny piece of Miro.
We have thousands of lines of code that are waiting for you to adopt them. Not only will you get an adorable line of code with a cute name and face, we'll also put your name in the source code and in the about box on every copy of Miro
the latest
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Do we get a refund if our line is buggy?
If they refactor your line out of the code base, do you get a cute little death certificate?
OR I spend $4 a month sponsoring a child in the third world, I wonder which would be a more valuable use of my cash.
I lol'ed. Really. The toothpaste for dinner-esque baby in swaddling. The whole card. It's all so amusing. Not $4/mo amusing, but still..
OK, the problem that I have is 24 hours a day with 8-10 hours at work, traffic, books to read, people to love, BB, DBR, Reversed cowgirl... ONE TV program a week, movie if there are any good, sleep 8-9 hours... where to fit Miro or anything else in this life?
There's no reason for negativity about this. Miro is a great program. Check it out people, it's really neat. There's a lot of useful educational programs, as well as some that are just for fun.
Thanks to Cory for introducing me to this program.
But you might end up paying $4/month for this:
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The Participatory Culture Foundation is a really great organization dedicated to diversifying internet media. It's thoughtful that they are going out of their way to recognize individual contributors. But your money isn't really paying for a cute little image and whatever clever name you came up with. Before disregarding this marketing strategy, please consider the importance of what the money is going towards.
The PCF aims to keep internet media user-controlled. Miro provides everyone with the access to upload their own programs and submit their own opinions and content. The organization is attempting to keep internet media free of the bias and censorship involved in television media. It is a valid point that this may not be as important as supporting starving third world children. On the other hand, it is a very important cause, and one that greatly furthers free speech and education in our own country which is facing many of its own significant problems. Many of which effect those in the developing world.