Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

True - to a point. There are programmers with knowledge of other fields 
and with interests beyond the technical hacking. (Your humble narrator, 
for example, happens to know something of accounting and has an interest 
in developing such an application) But the critical point being that 
unless someone sees it as an opportunity to somehow get paid for doing 
the development work, a project like this doesn't get very far.

A lot of the server and network and other "geek tools" that are 
available under things like Linux as GPL'ed projects got developed 
because some geek in some company needed it for internal purposes and 
saw no point in not releasing it to the rest of the world. Something 
like an accounting package doesn't fit in the same category. Companies 
don't usually develop these on their own anymore - they only buy 
off-the-shelf packages. To get someone to develop an off-the-shelf 
accounting system in some version of Open Source they either have to do 
it as some sort of "labor of love" or they have to see some potential 
for financial payoff. The "labor of love" variety of projects don't 
always get real far.

MDC



Hyman Rosen wrote:
> 
> Thereby demonstrating exactly the problem that Ernie Ball was talking
> about - programmers like to do programmer things, and that's what they'll
> do unless they're paid to do otherwise.
> 
> Also, programmers know how to do programmer things, but not necessarily
> other things. And the people who know how to do the other things aren't
> necessarily programmers. That's why you don't get much free software in
> non-programmer areas.
> 


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Marin David Condic
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