[About XDA developers] Robert_it:
Crowd funded ROM development...

Now here is a thought.. Sure I am not the first one, but here is a suggestion and description of what I believe to be a brilliant idea.

I have bought quite a few Chinese devises for me and my family, and it has been a little hit and miss when it comes to usability on some of these devises. I have always gone for what I believed at the time to be best value for money products considering whom to buy to and what it is going to be used for.

The thing is if you do a lot of research and end up buying a phone with brilliant hardware but a ****ty Chinese ROM your in trouble. Sometimes you get lucky and find a third party custom ROM and if you are REALLY lucky there will be a ”latest and greatest” CM or Paranoid ROM available and then you are really flying. Most of the Chinese devises I have bought have actually been OK in assembly quality but all of them have been pretty useless as daily phones / tablets with the OEM software filled with Chinese bloat-ware and worse.

Recently I bought my own personal Tablet ( previously bought some for my kids) and I bought the ONDA V975M which have absolutely brilliant specifications but a useless and stuttering / freezing ROM. I have searched the web only to find several Fora all hunting for the same thing. I found Russian,French,Dutch speaking Fora as well with the same questions.... Where to Root and where to obtain better ROM's.....

To me we all need a kind of crowd-funded way of requesting new ROM's. My thought goes towards the APP selling market where somebody have a idea for an APP but no programming skills and then post the idea on sites like Sellandapp.com or Fundedapps.com. This is how I think it should work:

If I want a ROM for a device I would go to this new ”Request a ROM-Site” and request a ROM, I will have to give as many details as possible on the hardware, and then I would commit myself to a certain amount of my choice (any amount can start the request) if others is willing to commit to pay for the ROM they submit a commitment form on the site. The commitment will have to be binding. If enough people is doing this the money goes up to a sum that might attract a developer whom will take the task at hand. When a developer commits to develop a ROM the Money is ”frozen” to him for a period of time (2 weeks / a month?) and when he submits the ROM he will be paid a third of the sum in the ”pot” for that request. After a month he will get another third but only if there has not been more than 20% complaints on his ROM (will encourage him/her to correct bugs) and again if there is less than 10-15% complaints after 2 month he will be paid the rest.

If there is too many bugs in the initial ROM and they are NOT corrected the now reduced ”pot” can go to a new developer whom might easily correct the first one?

All ROM's have to be open source naturally. The developer has to accept that the work he does is paid for and there is NO royalties after...

I am present a member in 3 Android Fora and I constantly see the same names popping up, so I am sure there is a lot like me who is in several different Fora, it would be great if there would be some administrators who could put this idea into the right place and maybe duplicate it to others. My point is that in this matter there is only an advantage to spread the message as far as possible, over as many Fora as possible.

I would prefer this to become a non-profit site with reference to ALL the different Fora out there but if somebody wants to make this into a business I am OK with this, I hope if they become successful they will remember me and pay a small contribution towards the idea.

I can be found on XDA and Slatedroid as user-name: Robert_it

There will always be a risk of some low life with a shattered moral trying to steal the ”pot” but if we keep it simple and trust each other I believe this would work.

I do not have the skills nor the time to start this project but I would like to start this by offering my idea's and I would be the first to commit to $15-$20 for a smooth performance ROM for the before mentioned ONDA tablet...

If I am not violating the forum rules I would like this post to be Sticky in the right place and to be copy/pasted into as many Fora in as many languages as possible. Anybody out there up for a task like this?

Here is a little side-note: I did for some time ago try to get some info of a Chinese vendor only to be turned down, I see again and again people / developers requesting software / drivers for devices, the Chinese have a culture where they steal with arms and legs from everybody and yet there are scared for anybody gaining access to there already poor software. Just imagine if a Chinese company took the chance and released ALL drivers and hardware specifications to the gurus at CyanogenMod and asked for help to create a fully working multilingual ROM for a top but cheap device?? Now would the risk of another Chinese factory copying this device be bigger than the hype, rave and huge sales-numbers such a device would create... Think about it, if we could buy a $250 Octa-core high resolution, dual sim phone with all the latest hardware AND get CyanogenMod 11 on it as well??

And YES I know the quality is not the same as a true branded phone, my Nexus-5 is lovely but I use more that one phone on a daily basis and having a “cheap” powerhouse is fun :) and some of these Chinese phones is actually not bad at all...

Hope I have not offended anybody or broken any forum rules, I will post this both on SlateDroid and XDA as this is where I can, again feel free to copy and paste into other Fora.

Robert