Re: BDI install disk for EMC

I think we have a simple error in communication here. Let me restate
my terms again.

I am proposing to do software development work involving EMC, on a
commercial basis, for $125/hour. After the bill is paid, the work
goes into the public domain. I propose to spread the bill equally
over all purchasers. Suppose I offer to do a certain task for $2000.
If there are 100 purchasers, I would charge each of them $20. If
there are 1500 purchasers, I charge them $1.33 each. If there are 15
purchasers, I charge them $133.33 each.

There are two details that complicate this simple model. One, the
cost of CD fulfillment appears to be somewhere between $2.50 and $7.50
each, and I pass this directly along to you. (I said I'd eat the CD
cost for the $20 BDI bid, because I goofed when I bid it and didn't
include it.) Two, customers may want me to not release to the public
domain immediately, because it creates a game where everybody waits
for somebody else to pay for development first.

Your opportunity as potential customers is to attach a price to every
change you'd like to see in EMC, organize with your friends to see who
else wants that change, and locate changes where the total pot of
money meets my quote. By hiring these changes we all win.

My expectation is that volunteers will do most of the small, fun jobs
for free, because they are small and fun. But there will be an
opportunity for a commercial vendor to do the large, boring, nitpicky
work. I want to be that vendor, because working with EMC would be
less boring than the database work I'm doing now.


A member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) http://lpf.ai.mit.edu
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Brian Bartholomew - bb@... - www.wv.com - Working Version, Cambridge, MA