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Thanks David
by Eric Laffoon on Saturday 16/Oct/2004, @22:28
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Thanks David! You are a truly great guy and I'm thankful to know you and honored by your association. Amazingly much less than 1% of our users contribute anything, and yet that fraction of a percent has made a huge difference and by the standards of most projects we are a great success. We also received a lot of help from users when we wanted to get all of us to aKademy to meet for the first time, for which I can't thank everyone enough. Exciting things are in the works from that.
It gets tiring asking for support and I'm sure some tire of being asked, but in September we received payments from 8 sponsors (several sponsors weren't included because they pay larger amounts quarterly or annually) with David's being the largest. We did not receive any donations in September outside of sponsorship payments for the first time since July of 2003. If that continues I have to come up with maybe another $1,000 by the end of the year. This is also the busiest time of year for me. So I need to focus on income because I hardly make any in the first quarter of the year. So the last thing I want to do now is fund raising, because ironically it will cost me too much money. I have no time for it.
What people probably don't fully realize is the amount of stress and time consumed dealing with trying to come up with funds when we are short. The negatively affect my business and development on Quanta. These fluctuations also mean sponsorships are more comforting than donations. Certain critical times of the year a few hundred dollars invested rather than spent can make a difference of thousands of dollars of income.
David Joham is one of our three most generous contributors. Those three people contribute the majority of our financial support and they are all private individuals personally moved to make a difference. I don't count myself even though I've put more money into the project than I want to count. I hope others will join me in expressing appreciation and encouragement to David.
Thanks again David, and as I said before I hope all goes well with your adoption efforts, not nearly so much for Quanta as because I think you and Kim would make the best possible parents and I greatly admire your love and devotion in this pursuit. |
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Re: Thanks David
by bh on Sunday 17/Oct/2004, @02:54
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> Amazingly much less than 1% of our users contribute anything
sequiter, you do realise that this is free software (in both senses), don't you?
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Re: Thanks David
by Christian Loose on Sunday 17/Oct/2004, @03:45
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Sure it's free software but that doesn't me you shouldn't give someting back.
Quanta is a professional tool that's comparable with software that costs hundred of dollars. If you earned money with it, then what's wrong giving a very small percentage of this money to the people that created this tool?
Especially when this money is used to even more improve the tool?
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Re: Thanks David
by Eric Laffoon on Sunday 17/Oct/2004, @05:07
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> sequiter, you do realise that this is free software (in both senses), don't you?
Let me see... I'm the author and I am the one who made the decision to use the GPL for the license. So it is free as in freedom, but just because we provide it free to use doesn't mean it doesn't cost real money to produce. As Christian points out here, if you're making money with it why not give back a little? Why not indeed? If 1% of users gave 10% of what they spent on commercial software the kdewebdev module would be substantially more impressive because we would be able dramatically change the demands on our developers as well as expand the reach of our tool set. Our goal is to produce a killer app, not just a decent tool.
GPL software gives you advantages in not being locked in and being assured enhancements are possible. KDE provides a great architecture. Commercial programs require money and expect to make a profit. Shareware asks you for money in creative ways. Free software allows you to pay if and when you feel that you would like to and in whatever amount works for you.
Paying for some software may make little difference to the actual development of it, but in this case it makes a big difference.
1) Had I not invested finances in 2000 the project might have died. The original authors did not have a home with a phone line and were about to lose access to university computers.
2) After the original authors left in 2001 had I not invested in Quanta again in 2002 bringing Andras in I would have been toiling trying to keep the old 2.0 code base compiling with KDE 3. Many people thought the project was dead.
3) When I was critically ill in 2003 I was months behind paying Andras. If people had not stepped up and helped he might have had to find some other work, which would have made it very hard for him to contribute. Where he lives companies typically work you as long as they can but don't pay by the hour.
Personally I think the selfish reasons to contribute to this project are huge. While we do have some volunteer developers and I contrubute small amounts of code Andras continues to produce most of the code in Quanta. Michal has helped Quanta and transformed Kommander. As to what this effort has produced, here is the sloccount summary for kdewebdev CVS...
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 198,879
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 51.83 (621.91)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 2.40 (28.81)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 21.59
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 7,000,999
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).
SLOCCount is Open Source Software/Free Software, licensed under the FSF GPL.
Please credit this data as "generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'."
This is why software is expensive and why it is in a web developers best interest to invest in our project. If we quit and you had to spend $7 million to replace it you still wouldn't have the Kate part or KHTML. Yet we've only spent as much as it would cost for a really cheap car you would not want the valet to see at a nice restaraunt. ;-)
When I was a kid I saw a monument that said "Freedom is not free". It made no sense to me and I asked my dad how that could be. Now I understand that all freedom is purchased at some cost. To be free to use something is of no value without there being something to exercise that freedom on. Freedom is power and it is always under threat from those who want power over others. Join me in spreading freedom.
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Re: Thanks David
by Derek Kite on Sunday 17/Oct/2004, @08:03
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Indeed it is free. Both ways.
But the social contract of free software demands much from both developers and users.
Developers give their time and expertise without any guaranteed (as much as there is anything certain) return on their investment. They give away control of their code, and allow others to use it within certain broad limits. In doing so they build a community of users and hopefully contributors.
Users get the fruits of the developer's labor, usually at no monetary cost. Now what? Can users expect to get this stuff for nothing? No. Users of Quanta get a good piece of software to use, but also get the opportunity to make it work for them by contributing to the project. Either contributing fixes, documentation, code or money. Really, what right does anyone have to expect someone to do something for them at no cost to themselves?
When the giving is going only one way, the whole system grinds to a halt.
Derek
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