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Re: attitude
by Eric Laffoon on Sunday 28/Mar/2004, @19:21
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Well that's not my attitude, Andras' attitude, Michal's attitude or Özkan's attitude. Could it be that you either didn't read it, jumped to conclusions or just don't really know much about us? Let's look at the facts...
1) I started sponsoring development with Dmitry and Alex in 2000. They needed to move our of the hostel they were living in and into a house with a phone line for an internet connection. They were almost out of college and it's hard to contribute when you have to put it on a floppy and borrow a friends connection.
2) I sponsored Andras mid 2002 after he had gotten Quanta in order in December 2001 for a 2.0 release without asking for money. Because he was looking for work and stressing it was hard for him to work on it prior to being sponsored. had he taken a job the employer policy where he lives is to work you as many hours as they want for the same money. It would have been quite likely that he would not have had much time or energy to code Quanta.
3) I spent thousands of dollars of my own money before I thought that maybe I should ask for help.
4) Michal has another open source project he's working on and just finished his PhD so he hasn't had much time for Quanta.
5) Özkan did say he'd work on it no matter what and told me that since he broke up with his girlfriend a few days ago he would have more time. I think I can understand that. Considering he said a few hundred dollars a month would put him in good shape I don't think I can call him greedy.
Each of the people developing under sponsorhip or hoping to be sponsored with our project loves what they're doing. Özkan produced an alpha of his program already, Andras released Kallery and Michal released Knowit.
* Nobody here is saying they won't work on this unless paid, unless it is just not feasible for them to do so.
* Everyone we sponsor is able to put in substantially more time and as I've often explained this makes them several times more effective with that time because they are more familiar with all aspects of it.
* Everyone here has produced code in advance of asking for sponsorship help.
* It costs money to live and earning it can get in the way of having time and energy for other things.
What this has done for Quanta is gotten us noticed, like our recent LinuxQuestions.org user choice award. It also got us one of the lowest counts for open bugs of KDE applications as well as a turn around time for user support that is often in the minutes. One contributor made a feature request that was filled in 3 hours in CVS!
What actually has been the downfall of XFree86 is a number of unrelated but different issues including their license and looking for recognition. We don't in any way resemble XFree86 at all!
Maybe what really sucks is the idea of financially supporting a project that does a good job? Note that I NEVER try to make people feel guilty as a motivation to contribute nor do I ever beg. I detest both and I respect our users too much. I don't even like asking for money, but at some times I think it is too important not to.
I'm not personally offended by what you said, but I think I proved that you don't have a solid perspective here. Everyone here knows who I am. If I've messed up go ahead and point it out, but if you're going to do so you had better have your facts straight. People are contributing money to our project and it's EXTREMELY important to me that I do the right thing by them. As far as attitude goes, it is difficult to ascertain sometimes without some study. I think it's reasoable to assume, based on what we've done, that ours is okay. How's yours? ;-) |
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