On Fri, 2010-01-01 at 21:28 +0530, jtd wrote:
I disagree. In the past i needed some features in a certain package and wrote to the main developer who was then a research student, asking for a quote for the features. He said that he was too busy studying and would not be able to commit a time bound schedule. He also asked me to contact another team member. That 2nd developer was too busy with the same project, which he used commercially in NZ. So we wound up doing it in house.
I beg to differ on this. My experience shows that while strict development schedules are not always needed for small things like writing an extention to firefox or creating a small mail client, for apps like ERP or accounting/ finance which is a subset, needs dedicated development. Projects like gnowsys has a big volantary support, but it would not develop to this level of maturity without a dedicated team which may have changed in terms of its number of members. I know good modules in isolation can be developed in vacation mode with some voluntary time, but that may happen in cases where people are into research, essentially meaning that their main work timing itself is flexible enough.
But if we want to sustain consistant development of a commertial grade project then payed developers who can give their full time to the project (and volantary spare time to some other project ) is necessary.
Why should free software based project not be treated as professional job or full-time commertial commitment?
I totally appreciate the fact that people did considerable work in the spare time which they offered voluntarily, but full-time dedicated team is no less better than the bunch of people working on their spare time. At least they can't be expected to provide a commertial grade software in a deadline. Add to the fact that free software projects have additional responsibility to fix bugs pointed out by the public, (there is nothing to hide and nothing to generate proprietory versions of bug fixed softwares ). So work is all the more tough. If we want market for free software and make it popular then we must join the pase of the main industry and help remove the mis conception that free software is an unorganised immatured attempt of some people who like it.
My general suggestion for any project is that maintain a small core team and try generating a huge community of users and developers including a large number of volantary contributers as well.
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.
That is a proposal for a startup. If it is ready for use AND has a market you are in business. It is an issue faced by every new product / project / business. You need to build your business case and give it to a VC / bank / FI.
I can't agree more. that is absolutely right. But VC will mostly not understand that "free " word and even if it is understood, no one sees scope of profit. I don't see mark shuttalworth everywhere.
Happy hacking. Krishnakant.