kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/18/2012 03:21 PM, Karl Schmidt wrote:
> On 02/18/2012 01:58 PM, Hans Henry von Tresckow wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Fabio Varesano <fabio.varesano@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote: I think the
>> main point the OP was trying to make is that just merely adding a "Donate" button without
>> thinking about the underlying structure risks splitting a project apart.
> Exactly! Other projects have gone down that road (bad things happen) - the project should not
> collect money itself.  What I've been thinking about is a set up where someone that wants feature-x 
> completed can write up the discription (including the coding standards) and then put it up for bid 
> at someplace like http://www.projects2bid.com/ where the project gets awarded to the lowest bidder.
>
> At the same time, post in the mailing list that the feature is up for bid.  The project doesn't get 
> destroyed by the politics of collecting money, yet the work gets funded.
>
> This is really not much different than when companies like Intel have their programers work on OS 
> projects on company time.
>
>
> My hope is to get this meme in the minds of people asking for features so that kicad can continue to 
> grow. I wonder why no-one hasn't set up a web site that is dedicated to doing this for OS projects?

They have.  One example is called Red Hat.  Last year their revenue exceeded 1 billion
dollars.

Quality programmers don't work for free in general.  KiCad is an economic anomaly, and is
a mere fraction of what it could be if it was funded.

Asking for the lowest bid and then expecting a bunch of crap to get committed to the
project is also not workable.  It won't get committed.

Dick