21 Jul
2012
21 Jul
'12
4:52 p.m.
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Charles Henry wrote:
Also, you never know how long you'll spend working
on a problem, until
you actually do it.
Not only that. It's also quite possible that users will never collect
the amount of money required to implement or fix something.
Ardour still has $1375 proposed by users for implementing MIDI
editing. That's after 2 related GSoC projects $4500 worth each (for
the student) and barely estimatable years of work by other developers
(I'd say +$50K at the very least).
AAF/OMG support is next with mere $505 proposed by users. I'd say, the
real estimation would be ten times as much for an experienced U.S.
based programmer, and that would only cover a very basic support with
probably not much testing.
Of course, the environment has changed a lot since this initiative was
started. Fetching 5K-20K funds for an open source project (even more
for games) has become quite possible. Bu the prerequisite for that is
decent media coverage.
<puts on his devil's advocate hat> Suppose
I write a potentially
useful software, and then leave several bugs until people start
funding it. Then, rake in the dough and fix the bugs (I already know)
in record time. It changes the incentive whether and how to create
software. </puts on his devil's advocate hat>
That only works if people give a damn about your software :)
Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org