On Saturday 02 Jan 2010 4:01:15 pm Kartik Mistry wrote:
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Krishnakant hackingkk@gmail.com wrote:
For example, GNUKhata, the project I initiated and Brought this far is now stable and ready for use, this happened due to the generous funding from NIXI and support of Comet. But now we will soon die out of funds and might not be able to sustain development at the current pase. Voluntary time given by a bunch of hackers can't make commertial quality software. So if we need high performance accurate and commertial grade free software, dedicated team has to work full-time and such a team can only work with some financial security.
Why you're worrying if project is really in good shape? If idea and code is good, I think it will survive without immediate financial support. Someone will definitely pick it up from where you left it...
Give me money or I'll stop contributing is horribly bad idea.
I agree - for some of my projects, I have got my staff to contribute code. They did so willingly and enthusiastically, but when they left, they did not continue to do so. They feel guilty about it - I now and then get mails saying that when they get time, or get a laptop they will continue to contribute. Partly I do not blame them. On job they are not allowed to contribute - off job they are so caught up with surviving that they do not have the time or the computer to contribute. I do know one person who contributed underground on job at the risk of his job - but with most of our employees coming from rural/small city backgrounds with families and a large number of siblings dependent on their earnings - they cannot really risk their jobs. Which boils down to this - basically FOSS contribution is a spare time activity, which can only be indulged in by people who have the spare time and resources to do so.
at one stage I used to reject all .doc resumes. Then one person who I know contributes to foss applied with a .doc resume. I asked her why she of all people did this. Reply: she was too ethical to use her college machine (which had linux) for her personal work. She had to go to a browsing centre for this. So I asked why not ascii? and am informed that word does not do ascii. Neither of us was aware that word could do pdf - but she found out and sent it in pdf. I now accept any resume regardless of the format.