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Re: Itching and scratching (Re: source mgt. requirements solicitation)
Tom Lord wrote:
Speaking more generally, the folks that get paid to do free
software are the ones who are solving the problems of people
with the money. It's up to us to be clever enough to figure
out to solve the specific problems in a way that improves
architecture and infrastructure. That was a key but
underappreciated aspect of Cygnus' development contracts; we
would always try to go after projects that included
infrastructure improvement, but if necessary we would do
something that was random but lucrative and use the profits to
pay for generic work.
Was it customers who underappreciated that? or was that a selling
point?
Sometimes it was a selling point, sometimes the concept was too subtle
for the customer to grasp. In the mid-90s, a good percentage of time
still had to be spent explaining free software, reassuring people that
GCC didn't cause its output to be GPLed, etc. It was interesting to see
how much variation there was among customers, and also how important it
was to have actual sales people in the process - engineers left to
themselves would rathole on side issues and never get around to the
actual dealmaking.
Stan