On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 09:44:26AM -0400, Bill Rushmore wrote: > There was one bit of news from CommunityOne (i.e. the JavaOne pre-show) that > I thought might have interesting consequences for the OpenSolaris community. > That was the proposal to pay open source developers for their work. That > doesn't seem like a bad idea and I am wondering how such a thing would > affect the community here. The thing that is great about most open source > communities is that the main motivation for people is their passion for the > work and the all the other benefits gained are secondary. I would have to > say that this community is no different.
A number of developers have done this in the FreeBSD project. The key
point that most made (and I believe this was important to the integrity
of the exercise) was that they were just going to work on things that
would get done anyway, but it would take less time if they didn't have
to do other jobs to pay the bills. A number also worked on whatever the
client wanted, but there you have to very clear to the benefactor that
paying for something doesn't mean that it will get accepted by the community
or committed to the source tree.
So yes, it's an idea that can work out well.
> So I do not really think that if all of a sudden Sun started paying for
> contributions to OpenSolaris it would make a big impact on the quality of
> the contributions but I do like the idea. But if I was running the show I
> wouldn't pay people in cash. Why not do something like this for example: if
> there is a someone that is doing a great job why not send them something
> like an Ultra 45 to use for awhile.
Do General Electric accept Ultra 45s as valid currency? If not, there's
likely a small problem with this suggestion :) Also, it would most
probably be seen as a benefit in kind by HM Revenue & Customs on these
shores.
Ceri
--
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
-- Moliere
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