Where is FreeBSD going?

[Ceri Davies]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 09:45:25PM -0600, Ryan Sommers wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 20:29, Nick Rogness wrote:
> >     1) Allow for paid development for a specific bug/feature
> > 
> > 	 - Setup some program that allows users like myself to pay for a 
> > 	developers time to fix a specific bug.  The company I work for 
> > 	would easily pay serious dollars to fix our SMP problems with 4.X.
> > 	Unfortunetly, getting someone's attention that has a great 
> > 	understanding of the OS is hard to find without rude remarks and 
> > 	what-not.
> > 
> > 	You could even extend it as far as saying we will promote this PR
> > 	to the top of the list of tasks if you pay us XX dollars.  Or 
> > 	maybe, the more you pay the higher you go.
> > 
> > 	This would reassure the user base that things CAN get done if 
> > 	needed and also let the developer/bug fixer feel like they can 
> > 	make money and have some fun.  It will also bring in money for the 
> > 	project as part of that money could go back into the Project.
> > 
> > 	You could easily setup a "pool" mailling list (like -requests) 
> > 	which someone like myself would email a request with the problem 
> > 	description (or PR).  If a developer is interested in tackling the 
> > 	problem for money, we could privately negotiate a price.
> > 
> > 	The same can be done for driver development and others.  Make it a 
> > 	"Donation for a specific request".  I don't want to give money to
> > 	some Foundation where money can be thrown around in the wrong 
> > 	areas.  I want to pay the developer personally for their efforts.  
> > 	( I feel the same should be done with our taxes as well ;-) 
> > 
> 
> I really don't like the idea of making this a "policy," or even some
> official part of the project. I think this might discourage some from
> contributing in hopes to be paid for it. I think a better solution for
> companies looking for this would be to post to the jobs@ mailing list
> noting that it is a temp job.
> 
> I don't think giving priority to paying entities is a path the project
> should tread down. If someone needs FreeBSD developer work they should
> look for someone to hire. Something like this might also jeopardize the
> project's "not for profit" status. I think the jobs@ mailing list would
> be a better start.

Absolutely.  At least in Britain, the Project could then be seen as
working as an agent which has the potential to cause problems that we
don't need and probably would find very hard to deal with.

Ceri

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