Re: battle-plan for 2.5 development

[Erik Sandberg]

On Thursday 18 November 2004 09.10, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> > > Well, I'd think of an email-based (and for much money also phone-based)
> > > support for *users*, i.e people who don't want to be bothered with a
> > > compiler, but have to get work done. Ideally the questions would be
> > > answered by persons who know lily in her deepest core, and if bigger
> > > problems arise, also travel to the customers (for good money, of
> > > course!).
> >
> > [..]
> > When it comes to making a boxed lilypond (possibly including some kind of
> > support), it's not at all obvious that the lilypond team must create it.
> > It could just as well be an independent company (like Red Hat) which has
>
> OK.
>
> Can we stop this discussion? This is about what you and I are going
> contribute ourselves. Not what "an independent company" is going to
> do.

The point I'm trying to make, is something like: Given that time is limited, 
we might not be able to do all things ourselves. Distributing some of the 
work to other people might be worth considering. There's of course a scale, 
between doing everything ourselves (in this case 
boxing,marketing,selling,supporting), and letting someone else do everything, 
independent of us. The optimum is probably somewhere between the extremes. 
Management/economy stuff is quite much outside my area of expertise, but I 
find it reasonable to believe that things like marketing+distribution might 
be best handled through some existing company.

> > experience of boxing free software. I think it's a good idea to let the
> > lilypond team focus on developing lilypond as a high-quality music
> > engraver;
>
> The lilypond team would be very glad if they could do so;
> unfortunately, the bills have to be paid as well, which means that we
> have to do other, less-exciting, stuff as well. Of course, it would be
> the coolest if I could devote 100% of my time to lily, so I'm always
> interested in ways of earning money for myself with lily.

This is very true; in this case it might even be worth considering to make a 
boxed lilypond.

All this talk about selling stuff, just started in my head as a wild idea for 
far-future/post-3.0. The main motivation was really to reach more users with 
the software, rather than making money.. but of course the money could be an 
even better motivation. I got the idea when I told a friend of mine about 
lilypond, and he told me to tell him when we have finished the program, so he 
can buy it. Sadly it seems that this is the way many people think about 
software.

Erik