from Hacker News

Crowd Funding the Release of OpenCV 5

by kscottz on 11/1/23, 6:32 PM with 17 comments

  • by sorenjan on 11/1/23, 8:09 PM

    I'm a bit confused by how they priced some of these things, can anyone help me understand?

    • Deep Neural Networks Module: $150k

    Considering how important deep learning is for computer vision and image processing in general now, this is a very important. But will this be a completely new library for both training and inference? Why not use what's already out there, like Pytorch or ONNX? $150k pays for 1-3 developers for a year, depending on where they live.

    • Accelerated image processing: $150k

    I don't know what this means in practice, refactoring the code adding more SIMD code? OpenCL kernels? Again, the price tag seems steep, but maybe they will hire an expert for half a year?

    • Improved support for fisheye camera calibration: [$100k + hardware ($20k approx) shared with multi-camera support]

    I know OpenCV is often used with very expensive research cameras, but couldn't this development be done with a couple GoPros? If companies want to certify it for their esoteric cameras let them pay for the added expenses.

    • $700k stretch goal, CI and build server.

    Does this cost $100k?

    Don't get me wrong, I like OpenCV, I've used it and will donate to this, but I don't get how these things can cost that much for an open source project. There's no price attached to the improved documentation and tutorials, those are important and take a lot of time. It's probably faster to write a canny edge detector than writing all the documentation and examples for it.

    On a separate note, their $1M stretch goal mentions a future OpenCV cloud service. That seems like something that should be sponsored by one of the cloud providers, or handled by a separate company instead of a crowd funded open source library project.

  • by rocauc on 11/1/23, 7:58 PM

    I can't recall the true first time I used OpenCV because it's simply so embedded in all image processing work. I've backed the project, and my company has contributed as well.
  • by mrpollo on 11/1/23, 6:34 PM

    Great just donated, OpenCV has really helped me in my professional career, hoping more companies also donate to the campaign.
  • by gumballindie on 11/1/23, 7:35 PM

    Upvoted and plan to donate. Wish they’d change their license so any company with > x amount in revenue pays a license fee. There’s no need to subsidise them once they earn billions.
  • by squallssck on 11/7/23, 5:14 AM

    Just donated, OpenCV is used in my daily work no matter in a classic cv algorithm or DeepLearning img Data Processing task.
  • by kscottz on 11/1/23, 7:51 PM

    There is a live stream telethon happening now at: https://opencv.live/
  • by asa977 on 11/1/23, 8:47 PM

    This made me finally create an account just to upvote. Without OpenCV our start-up would not work.
  • by reteltech on 11/1/23, 6:49 PM

    Just donated - support OpenCV!