Lawrence Woodman wrote at 09/25/2013 01:50 AM:
On 24/09/13 23:28, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
Anyway, I'm thinking of starting a side business of developing
general-purpose Racket packages on demand -- modules that satisfy all
clients' requirements and are incidentally open-sourced. Perhaps with
some discount over normal rates in consideration of the package being
open-sourced. Of course, separate from that, I'll continue to
open-source modules that I develop for my personal projects
("http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/";). Anyone have input?
I probably wouldn't offer a discount for open source as it muddies the
waters and it can often make good business sense for a client to
release a module as open-source.
I think you're right in general. I was thinking about different scenarios.
The ideal scenario is with clients who really believe in practical
benefits of being a full participant in open source.
Another scenario is when the client is indifferent to open-sourcing, but
they believe in hiring&retaining top talent, and they're willing to open
source some things to attract&retain that talent. (Some of the
GNU/Linux distro vendors worked this to attract some of the better
talent, and I still know people who will only work on open source.
Similarly, ITA Software worked the "we let you program in Lisp" to
attract better talent than I believe they could've otherwise.)
Another scenario is when the client's decision-makers don't see
sufficient value in either of those open source angles, but they see
they can save some cash on this expensive consultant if they open source
general-purpose modules that they have no incentive to keep proprietary
anyway. As you pointed out, I avoid discounts for for-profits, because
it's usually not appropriate and sustainable. But I suppose a discount
could be an option for working with the client's priorities, taking into
consideration whatever external value I might see in open-sourcing some
things. It's an option I'm toying with, and might not be worth
complicating things over.
Neil V.
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