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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Allow money donations for precise bugs
From:       Michael Nottebrock <michaelnottebrock () gmx ! net>
Date:       2005-03-13 0:38:32
Message-ID: 200503130138.33207.michaelnottebrock () gmx ! net
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On Saturday, 12. March 2005 23:50, Maurizio Colucci wrote:

> My proposal exploits the selfish interests of people, and turns it into
> advantage for the free software movement. 

I'm very sceptical. I think I'm actually appalled.

I mean, what this is really about is that you think that 'votes' are just too 
easy to ignore, right? These developer guys just need the right incentive - 
after all you don't get a lapdance because you keep shouting for it - you 
gotta hand over some cash first.

So you're thinking if there's an easy way to shout "show titties!" *and* slip 
developers cash into their panties with "show titties!" written on it, 
they'll more easily forget that they are on the stage because they want to 
have fun (coding) and let an audience participate in the fun (with the 
compiled code) and instead turn into titty-twisting code-whores.

If that were really the case, people wouldn't spend the amount of time on OSS 
that they do. Instead, they'd just take on three more projects in their 
dayjobs, earn more bonuses, buy bigger cars and travel to tahiti in their 
sparetime instead of staring into screens and hacking code into editors.

Seriously, most of us are *NOT* in it for the money. Or for world-domination. 
Or for pleasing Eugenia Loli-Queru or the 70 voters for wish #abcdef. Waving 
around dollars will not have anywhere near the effect you seem to think it 
will.

Microsoft on the other hand clearly is in it for the money, and perhaps 
world-domination, too. But, unfortunately, they don't have a bugzilla where 
you can go and vote on wishlist items. You also can't just checkout 
Microsoft's repository of Office translations and fix that annoying string 
that's been there since Office '97. 

But you *can* in KDE. And *that* is the advantage of OSS software, that it is 
open. So instead of pondering ways of bribing OSS contributors into not 
having fun,




*****************SHUT UP AND CONTRIBUTE! 'CAUSE YOU CAN!********************




(paraphrasing Anne-Marie here).

Finally, if anybody is really *that* desparate about getting some code 
written, they should pay a contractor. There are more than enough out there 
and you'll find that they will gladly let *you* define featuresets and 
priorities as long as you can pay their hourly wage rate.

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi@freebsd.org
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
 
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