Re: BDI install disk for EMC

> 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.
>

I suppose one question is to ask why you would expect this group to fund
your learning curve.

One of the fun parts of being a consultant is the unpaid homework time
you need to put in to stay saleable.

If you're really serious about EMC, do some homework and develop a
knowledge base that's useful to other people. Then there is the
possibility that you might be able to charge for it. No guarantee though.

There is a lot of opportunity to improve the code and send the changes
back to NIST and get your reputation made (one way or the other).

Alternatively, assume the risk yourself, build a saleable product, make
enough money to cover the costs and then release it to the public
domain, if that's what you desire. Otherwise, you're just dealing with
vaporware. Of course, there's always the chance that you won't recover
a nickel for your time, but that's life. What you will have learned in
the process doesn't have a price tag.

The one case I'm aware of where the user community funded an open
software development project was the port of the UPS debugger to
Solaris. But the guy who did that had already built it and released it
to the public. Everyone loved the product and desperately wanted it
ported to Solaris, so they chipped in to cover his time. The
difference in his situation was he already had a track record of
producing a wonderful, useful program.

Paul
--
Paul Amaranth | Rochester MI, USA
Aurora Group, Inc. | Systems & Software
paul@... | Unix / Windows / NT