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From: | Dan Kuykendall |
Subject: | Re: [Phpgroupware-users] idea |
Date: | Thu, 06 Nov 2003 14:33:57 -0800 |
User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030901 Thunderbird/0.2 |
Brian Connolly wrote:
Well, I certainly would be interested where this magic money tree is that would have paid for what has been on average of 5 developers time for 4 years. The developer salaries alone would cost about $375k per year in the US plus associated costs of taxes and health coverage and such, which is generally about 25% of the base salary, so that puts us at $470k per year. Now over 4 years that is $1,880,000. From the work I have been paid for doing support over the last 4 years I have collected a total of about $10k, and a few others have also collected even less.Pooh, Okay, you asked for an idea; here's an idea. You guys discard the hobby model and adopt the Red Hat model. Developers make real money and have a vested interest (security). Users get a more reliable product (less frustration). Capital makes for more rapid development. Capital attracts talented developers.
So, Im not sure where you are able to get that kind of capital for software that you then give away. I know its possible to make money from a well organized support solution, but so far that has not come to exist in phpGW land.
So until you can produce your magic money tree to cover the costs of this project the hobbiest are what keeps this project alive.
If those that do this as a hobby werent here, I am confident that the project would simple fall apart and cease to improve at all.How's that? Now for those that just want to play ZONK or diddle with their thingies, that's probably not attractive. I am sure they'll weigh in with the "you don't understand Open Source" excuse.
Dan
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