[OSM-talk] Crossroad names

Hans Schmidt z0idberg at gmx.de
Mon Mar 25 17:07:32 UTC 2013


Am 25.03.2013 16:45, schrieb Peter Wendorff:
> If you want to have feature X done and you're not able to do it
> yourself, but you want to pay for it, go for it: find a coder, pay him
> and provide patches that are easy to maintain or where the current
> maintainers believe you or your coder maintain the code in future (by
> your payment or without), and you might get what you want even without
> coding skills.

Yes, but there you have the problem that there is an established
“system” for that missing. Of course, I could start a kickstarter
project for every small issue (let’s say I really want to have smart
quotations in a newly created word processor). But then all the things
like searching for a developer, introduction into the project etc. takes
too much time and thus money.

At least in projects with some size it would be nicer if there were some
kind of affiliated programmer would be nice: He already knows the
project and how to implement something. On the bug tracker it would then
be necessary to donate some kind of money which will then be associated
with a specific bug or feature (or a feature group). Maybe there can be
some milestones which are needed to be reached.

I guess for most bugs, the OSS projects are happy if new features are
implemented. I am not talking about “i want a radical different
interface and I pay 2138354 Euros so that it is supported” (well, you
could do that, but then you would likely get a fork), but rather these
small issues, where the only problem is lack of manpower (or personal
interest of some programmers).


>
> I understand people that do not spend time in their own (free) osm
> routing service implementation, if there's a chance to get a paid job
> from osmf in a couple of months - as long as nobody else is doing the
> same for free up to then. I probably would prefer doing something else
> first then, too.

I do understand that problem. Some people may think “why should I do
this for free if somebody is paid to do it?”. But look on the other
hand: From an outside perspective, many OSS projects, as advanced as
they are, are in no way up to commercial standards. Sometimes, a
commercial program is at the same level after 2 or 3 years of
development as some OSS application which is developed for 15 years. And
the development is not standing still: in the future, it will change
even more. I don’t think that there will be some kind of convergence,
but rather even more divergency in the future. If application
development has become so difficult these days (one does expect more
than a simple command line application from most programs), it seems
that money can help with that.




More information about the talk mailing list