On Wed, 19 May 1999, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> 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.
Yes, indeed.
> 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 ;-)
For something like Mesa, there is a clear way for this to happen.
Better Mesa for hardware X results in more sales for hardware X
and therefore company X could easily justify paying people to
write Mesa code that will be given away for free. Once Mesa runs
on all 3D hardware, there is nothing for company X to gain by
investing further in the core code since improving the speed of
the core doesn't help them beat out the competition.
Similarly, better Mesa results in better Quake-3 which results in
more income for ID. If Quake was also free, that wouldn't work.
If a significant number of ID's competitors were also using Mesa,
it wouldn't work either.
Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
Raytheon Systems Inc. (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hti.com
Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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