Milestone Launches $50,000 Developer Contest

Author: Brian Karas, Published on Oct 26, 2016

Milestone wants independent developers to enhance XProtect.

In a hackathon-style contest Milestone is soliciting developers to submit ideas for a shot at a $50,000 prize. If they like your idea, they'll even pitch in to help with development.

We discussed this contest with Milestone and have our analysis in this report.

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Comments (17)

Undisclosed #1

10/26/16 02:28pm

This is an insult to the intelligence of programmers everywhere.

...upon submission of such code the Submitter hereby grants Milestone Systems A/S, and all of its affiliates, a perpetual, royalty free, nonexclusive and transferable license to use such submitted code, to include but not limited to, all prototypes, designs, drawings, algorithms, specifications and/or software programs for any purpose Milestone deems necessary, whether such submitted code is nominated for the Milestone Community Kickstarter Contest Award or not.

Submitter agrees to indemnify and hold Milestone Systems A/S, and its affiliates harmless against and from any other third party claim which arises out of or in relation to an infringement caused by Milestone’s commercial use of the submitted code.

  1. Programmer submits code for nomination
  2. Code rejected
  3. Code used by Milestone/affiliates, royalty-free, for any purpose
  4. Somebody sues Milestone because of it
  5. Programmer pays

Are you kidding me?

Eddie Perry

In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 10/26/16 02:54pm

Milestone

finding new ways to makes money as if they charge enough for their product.

one more reason I wont use it

Undisclosed #2

In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 10/26/16 04:36pm

valid points.

so. who would do this?

and if nobody does do this, what does Milestone do/say about that?

I hope that at least one industrious coder submits a Rube Goldberg application that uses XProtect to drive it's useless functionality.

Come on, UD1 - sounds like fun, no? :)

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed #2 | 10/26/16 05:23pm

"who would do this?"

Grandma's ready.

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 10/27/16 01:46pm

We passed your comment on to Milestone, and this was their response:

#1UD had a good point about the initial terms, which were counter-productive to program participation and strengthening community collaboration and innovation.

The terms on the landing page have updated now and state the following:

All submitted code and examples, to include but not limited to, prototypes, designs, drawings, algorithms, specifications and/or software programs, must be legal and not infringe the IP of any other entity.

The ownership, to include all patents, copyright, trade secrets or any other proprietary information, and the representation of labor in the project must belong to the Submitter.

The Submitter shall maintain ownership rights to all submitted code and Milestone shall refrain from use of such submitted code unless such code was known by Milestone at the time of submission; or such code was independently developed by Milestone, or a third party on behalf of Milestone, prior to submission In addition, Milestone may in the future, through Milestone’s own unique and independent code development, create and implement an idea possessing features which may be similar in functionality to those of the Submitter.

Further, if such submitted code is nominated by Milestone as one of the five (5) finalists in the Milestone Community Kickstarter Contest Award, the Submitter of such code agrees to grant Milestone the rights to publish the Submitter’s overall concept on the Milestone website, as well as to present the Submitter’s overall concept at other Milestone corporate and industry events, such as the Milestone Integration Partner Symposium (“MIPS”).

All prizes and benefits, such as free expo passes or the like, will be personal and non-referable. All local taxes or restrictions must be dealt with by the receiver.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Brian Karas | 10/27/16 01:49pm

#U1, congrats, nice work!

You are (semi)officially now part of the Milestone community!

Undisclosed #2

In reply to Brian Karas | 10/27/16 02:36pm

"The Submitter shall maintain ownership rights to all submitted code and Milestone shall refrain from use of such submitted code unless such code was known by Milestone at the time of submission; or such code was independently developed by Milestone, or a third party on behalf of Milestone, prior to submission In addition, Milestone may in the future, through Milestone’s own unique and independent code development, create and implement an idea possessing features which may be similar in functionality to those of the Submitter."

So submitters of code are covered, unless:

Milestone says 'yeah, we already thought of that - so it's ours'

Milestone says 'yeah, we can develop that on our own - so it's ours'

Milestone says 'yeah, our new thing does a lot of what your thing does - so yours is yours and ours is ours'

John Honovich

IPVM | 10/26/16 02:48pm

This Valentine's day, Milestone will select one lucky developer...

In addition to #U1's concern, I think Milestone would help themselves and developers by making it easier to purchase apps / solutions. Currently, while Milestone sales and marketing does help promote partners, the friction to buy 'add ons' is high. If Milestone had some form of store that simplified discovery, purchasing and install, this would help attract more developers and make it easier for Milestone customers to take advantage of them.

Undisclosed Integrator #3

In reply to John Honovich | 10/26/16 05:56pm

I cannot agree more with this. As someone who has tried to integrate various products with Milestone it can be time consuming and frustrating. An "app store" where things are ready out of the box, tested by Milestone for integration, and do not have constantly mismatched compatibility would be a game changer and truly unique in the industry. A mammoth value add to both partners and Milestone.

Undisclosed #2

10/26/16 04:57pm

The Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio does free weddings all day long on Valentine's Day - and they have done this for many years now.

Maybe Milestone should pony up the $81 license fee (please submit 72 hours prior to 2/14) in an effort to entice participants with long-time significant others.

Valentine's Day Celebrations in San Antonio

Avatar

Bob Kusche

In reply to Undisclosed #2 | 10/27/16 02:38pm

Or how about dinner with Lars at the hotel along with a big box of chocolates and roses??? For ALL the five finalists?

Vlad Craciunescu

12/20/16 08:48am

It would be interesting to see how many of the 5 finalists are on this forum...

John/IPVM Team, will you attend MIPS this time ?

PS I know one of them already :)

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | 12/22/16 03:47pm

Milestone has announced the 5 finalists.

From the link:

Integrating with the security force of the future - Autonomous Mobile Security Bot Squad
Preparing a complete turnkey Security Bot Solution that has an API integration with Milestone. Customers can choose what they need the robot to do and it will be ready for video monitoring surveillance with Milestone.

CCTV for the IoT age with OpenCV and Milestone XProtect®
Developing an open-source solution based on OpenCV, with a simple people-counting and virtual fence functionality as a starting point. This simple solution consumes video streams from the Milestone XProtect server, and publishes events to a NodeRED server.

Parking Spotter
Helping end-users find the closest available parking spot and parking owners to improve operational flows by analyzing the video images from cameras installed inside a parking lot and gathering all parking places inside a city/country in a single app.

Security control for XProtect
Providing an entry level PSIM solution inside XProtect: Customer can receive alarms and view device position on maps from intrusion or fire panels. From XProtect, customers can perform basic commands like arm, disarm, enable or disable. This project aims to provide a unique user experience to all alarm devices, regardless of manufacturer or model.

Asset of Things (AoT)
Cataloging video with assets, messages and events, creating a framework to allow the flow of messages from VMS to device and vice versa using the security APIs, event triggering, rules system integration and most other features. This is done by implementing a new tab in the Smart Client and incorporating a MQTT protocol layer into the VMS server using the plug-in integration.

Any predictions on which one will win it all?

Undisclosed #2

12/22/16 04:11pm

The entry level PSIM solution should win.

...a 'unique user experience to all alarm devices, regardless of manufacturer or model ' makes training/operations faster and more intuitive.

Robots and analytics for people counting, virtual fence and open parking spaces are so 2014....

For the last one, I'm not sure I want my VMS talking to everything else that has an IP address...

Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed #2 | 12/22/16 04:29pm

For the last one, I'm not sure I want my VMS talking to everything else that has an IP address...

Anyway I already wrote something that will identify and connect to any and all devices it can. I called it IdIoT ;)

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | 02/16/17 12:35pm

UPDATE - Winner

Parking Spotter, an app that uses video analytics to monitor open or occupied parking spaces, providing feedback to users and to parking lot owners/managers, won the Milestone Kickstarter contest at MIPS 2017.

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | 11/09/17 06:05pm

For anyone who missed this last year, Milestone is running the developer contest again this year with roughly the same layout as before.

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