----- Original Message ----- From: "Wolfgang Lenerz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] £ 1000 to spend! (2nd attempt!)
> SNIP< > I don't know whether offering something like 1000 pounds for software would > be a good idea. > > The reason is that it is, in my mind, too much and too little. > > Let me explain. > > It is too little. If you want to finance a software author, 1000 pounds will > get you - what? A month' worth of work? > > Look at what Peter has told us on this list - if he were offered 2000 pounds > for his ongoing work, he wouldn't accept it, because it would be far from > what the software would be worth... > This is a point of view I can share. > > So, thibking that a professoinal would do some real work for this amount of > money is, IMHO, just too optimistic. > <SNIP> Thanks for this contribution. I can agree with most of what you write. Obviously £1,000 is peanuts for a professional programmer's time. All we would be doing if we paid for software is giving the author a generous present as a token of gratitude. Nevertheless, there is a long history of people in the QL community doing a lot of work for little reward. Look at the traders who are prepared to make a yearly loss because of their belief in the QL. With Just Words! I do this quite coldly and calculatingly. There is a level I am prepared to go to and no further. (Hence the anger of last year.) The result is that for the first time in years I am now in control of the deficit, Just Words! remains in existence and if nothing else QL Today gets a bit of advertising money. (But not yet Quanta - they have yet to prove their reliability - famous last words - Just Words! will be financing the QL2004 advertising in the Quanta Magazine - however you will get the principle.) All I am asking is whether a little money would provide a little oil to a machine that is slowly rusting to a standstill. (There is, I believe, the precedence of the colour drivers.) The question you ask, "What would you do for £1,000?" should be considered by everyone. Thanks to everyone for their contributions. They are all being carefully noted, although unfortunately I have not yet seen much that I can recommend to Quanta. (Some good ideas would fail for legal and practical reasons.) I am very concerned about the future of Quanta. Most of its money is spent on workshops, which I suspect are becoming more and more burnt out, or the magazine whose problems are obvious. The one thing Quanta has is financial stability. How can we use that for the benefit of its members and the QL community? Geoff
