Re: DO NOT USE JAVA BECAUSE IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE

Oliver Wong wrote:

I recently stumbled into open source project "Lilypond", a music
notation software, whose business model I found interesting. They let you
download the program for free, and use it for free. If you want a new
feature, you put out a bounty for it (e.g. I wish I could export to PDF,
and I'm willing to pay $5 for this feature). If someone has already put a
bounty, you can add to it (e.g. I'd also like to export to PDF; I'll add
$10 to this bounty).

Interesting system. As long as the bounties are small I think it could work
well. The money earned would then be acting as brownie points (quantifiable
tokens recognising contribution). It's easy to imagine it breaking down
horribly if the bounties are large enough to act as a genuine economic
incentive.

All it takes is for less skilled and knowledgeable programmers to price
themselves cheaper than the better programmers[*]. They then undercut the good
programmers. The code-base goes downhill. The good programmers are then faced
with the choice between working on the cheap, working for free to fix the code
(while /other/ people are getting paid!), or doing something else entirely. I
know which I'd choose...

([*] Note that this does not require any dishonesty on their part -- quite the
opposite in fact.)

-- chris


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: DO NOT USE JAVA BECAUSE IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE
    ... you put out a bounty for it (e.g. ... and I'm willing to pay $5 for this feature). ... All it takes is for less skilled and knowledgeable programmers to price ... If you want the code to actually end up a specific way, that may mean writing a requirement document, a design document, and unit tests. ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • RE: MS search function horrible
    ... Is seems MS programmers think we all want to waste our time ... The SEARCH function on my XP'd computer doesn't work at all. ... today I was just searching for a pdf, ... others) actually have NO INTEREST in being computer programmers. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Mastering Python
    ... it up and then publish it to the Python for Programmers page or ... make it a downloadable .pdf. ... I've added it to [the above wiki page], ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: Is Chris Hills a troll?
    ... is why I stopped producing them. ... all in PDF format. ... A text version is mandatory for most programmers so they ... Vi and other non IDE systems but that does not mean that they don't have a PDF viewer on the computer as well. ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: "Delphi Component Design", 1997
    ... >> If you are worried about piracy, maybe you could watermark the PDF ... >> with a GUID in the footnote for each purchaser and make the PDF ... but programmers know that programmers ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)