Just out of curiosity, how much donated money is usually required to
develop a major feature like smp or 64-bit support?

Steve
_______________________________________________
Steve Staneff
Construction Data and Research, Inc.

>Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 09:42:58 +0100
> From: Jacqui Caren <jacqui.caren@...>
>Subject: Re: Multi CPU machine
>
>Tim Ledgerwood wrote:
>
>
>
>>You mean, they should do exactly as they have done? Announce that the
>>feature will be available, and what timescale?
>>
>>
>
>Its a good start.
>
>
>
>>What more would you have liked them to do?
>>
>>
>
>Make it far more obvious that they timescales can be changed it
>with an influx of money :-)
>
>
>
>>And it's not being SOLD. The developers etc., make no profit from the sale
>>of Firebird.
>>
>>
>
>Money != profit.
>
>Selling yourself does not always mean profit either. Sometimes it
>requires just a second re-read of a support email to consider how
>your email is going to look and how it could be misinterpreted by
>a third party.
>
>
>
>>The warm fuzzy feeling they get is from developing and distributing a damn
>>good product. FREE. (As in Beer this time) :-)
>>
>>
>
>Dev+test "costs" (IMHO design is something that should always remain a
>team effort)- Jim et.al need to pay bills and if they are paid by
>someone who needs the feature - hooray!
>
>I (like many others here?) develop software (well provide solutions to
>customers by "adding value") to pay the bills. If I had a client who
>needed something I did not have the expertise or time to implement
>and he had two choices;
>
> 1) pay some third party to configure/extend a closed source system
>
> 2) pay a well known author of open source to do the same thing
> to thier own software (releasing the changes back to the
> community)
>
>I know which I would prefer (at a personal level) :-)
>
>OTOH I have seen at first hand companies fund things
>to destroy them, even goings as far as buys sales rights
>for a commercial system for seven figures just to ensure
>no sales ever take place.
>
>In conclusion, money and profit is a dirty messy business but
>we have to believe in the integrity of folks running the show
>(Jim and co) - in open source "the product === the people".
>
>Jacqui
>
>
>