"Stephen J Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Anyway, the more I thought about this and the more we discussed it
> > amongst ourselves here at SciTech, the more we realised that the
> > problem is that there is currently no mechanism for any commercial
> > organization to put funding behind Mesa.
>
> I have a few thoughts on this:
>
> * I think it would be better for the organization with the money to
> use it to implement what they need using conventional employees
> and/or consultants and to then simply contribute the resulting
> code. That way, they get exactly what they want and there is no
> rift or feelings of unease amongst the unpaid developers.
Yes, I agree that this is one of the best ways for people to get paid
for their work. This is how we sponsor development of Mesa, by having
out paid employees work on the code and contribute it back to the
community. This is also really how Keith W. organised the funding,
and I wish that this had been more clear in the original announcement.
However an infrastructure to handle funding for Mesa would be nice,
and sourceXchange sounds like a very interesting concept.
> This also gets around some ugly issues of how tax gets paid on
> these fund, whether the person doing the work needs a work permit
> for some countries, vacations, benefits, etc, etc.
Actually anyone working for money via sourceXchange would simply be
working as a contractor. In normal contract work no tax is paid by
the employer, but rather any necessary taxes need to be paid by the
employee on any funds they recieve. This is how we handle
international contract work at SciTech.
> * In that light, it would be interesting for there to be a kind of
> consultancy company to whom casual freeware authors could sign up
> when they do need to take money from someone like Id.
Right.
> > Then to my utter surprise, I saw the announcement on
> > Linux World:
> >
> > http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-05/lw-05-ora.html
>
> Interesting. Unfortunately, it's the *lack* of all that corporate
> red tape (milestones, reviews, etc, etc) that makes freeware development
> so much more interesting than "real" work. Whilst I'd like to
> earn some money for doing this stuff (well, technically, it's my
> wife who'd like me to earn some money doing it) - if it turns into
> a job just like real work, I might as well just work more overtime
> on my day job.
True, but these are the types of hurdles that need to be overcome for
this type of thing. Some people may want to have their day job be
writing Open Source software, and a funding organisation like
sourceXchange can make that happen. Some people may still want to
work in their spare time because it is their passion.
At the end of the day, if RMS's original vision of all software being
Open Source is to ever become a reality, the developers working on
that software will *have* to get some kind of remuneration. Hence if
the day job for Open Source developers is writing Open Source code,
they need a way to keep food on the table for their families ;-)
> There was another one too (different model for doing
> business - but also interesting):
>
> http://visar.csustan.edu/bazaar/bazaar.html
Interesting, I will go check it out.
Regards,
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