kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/18/2012 03:48 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> 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.

Well let me tone that down a bit.  The concern is the coding standards and the bug free
nature of the code.

Beyond that if you can get this done with the lowest bidder, no objections whatsoever. 
Well done.

Dick