There are several factors involved.

1) There is risk that any project will fail, fail to be acceptable to 
anyone paying for it, or take longer than acceptable, or be overtaken 
by events.
2) A developer needs to eat.  You can assume he has a day job, but then 
it takes longer (see above).
3) If you pay before it is done you can be shafted by a lazy or bad 
programmer (see above).

So the issue is how does someone doing significant work get paid to eat 
(salary level income).  And who takes on the risks.

1) A typical corporate model is to get someone to front the money with 
the hope of making more in income than it costs to pay for development.
2) An entrepreneur model is that the programmer takes the risk and 
expects a rate of return in exchange for the risk (say 10x salary).
3) Open source hopes to get people to give their time away because they 
are so frustrated with their day jobs, have jobs that pay them to 
donate software, or they are grad students that do not need much money 
because they are slaves to the university they hope will give them a 
piece of paper with PhD on it.
4) There is always programming as entertainment, but that produces very 
unreliable levels of effort, which we do see in part currently.

I have to admit I understand why options 1 and 2 work, better than why 
3 works.  I see it working, but I still do not understand why.  Why 
would you not spend time with your kids or doing something else if 
there is no reward.  I suspect that the reward is more pronounced to 
those that either do not have a day job in the area they want to work, 
find something intellectual more rewarding than money or other 
activities, or some such sentiment.

So is there a big enough Squeak community to support itself doing paid 
work on the product?  If the result was a commercially viable Smalltalk 
it would have more chance, but with that would come responsibility for 
maintenance, training, documentation, etc.

I have no problem with the notion that the community pay for work that 
then becomes the property of the community.  What is key is who takes 
the risk, and how are they rewarded for that risk.  We could look at 
the JBoos example, but I suspect that we need to demonstrate a larger 
market than we currently have.

Michael


On Dec 16, 2004, at 2:56 PM, Jason Rogers wrote:

> On Thursday 16 December 2004 16:37, Michael Latta wrote:
> [snip]
>
> For a long time I have wanted something like this because I would like 
> to be
> able to offer some funds to the development of Seaside, for example, 
> or to
> the writing of documentation, etc.
>
> I think it would be fine to collect money for work performed as long 
> as we
> could have a structure in which we can predetermine the cost for a 
> project.
> I don't like to mistrust anyone, but neither do I want to tempt 
> someone to
> greed.
>
> My idea goes something like this:
>
> 	- a proposal for work is made (by a developer or sponsor)
> 	- the proposal eventually includes a price from the developer
> 	- that price pays for all development costs for the targeted release
> 		- do you charge more for documentation?
> 		- do you charge more for tests?
> 		- do you expect tests and documentation to be included?
> 	- a quorum of "sponsors" pledges funds for the work
> 	- the developer creates the release
> 	- the sponsors validate that the targeted release is what they wanted
> 	- ... after which the developer is paid for the work by the sponsors
>
> A developer could do this on multiple cycles -- 1.1, 2.0, 2.01, 3.0, 
> etc.  The
> community decides what they are willing to pay for, it's the 
> developer's
> responsibility to please the sponsors.
>
> This doesn't cover everything, but it's a rough idea.  Some things to
> consider...
>
> 1. Somewhere along the way the developer and interested parties need 
> to have a
> conversation to decide what the release contains.
>
> 2. It's plausible that the developer may need to have another 
> conversation
> with his/her sponsors to ask for more money, so there would need to be 
> a
> mechanism for that.  However, since this isn't a binding contract the
> sponsors are not obligated to pledge any more money, in which case the
> developer may decide to abandon the project.
>
> 3. We may run into issues where people don't "cough up" their pledges, 
> in
> which case we can have a process for dealing with this (perhaps 
> black-listing
> a sponsor).
>
> 4. Who would administer such a program?
>
> 5. What costs are there in administering such a program?
>
> 6. Can those costs be rolled into the cost of the project?  I think 
> they can
> and should be.
>
> It's a loose structure but it could work.
>
> -- 
> Jason Rogers
>
> "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I,
> but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in
> the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
> me, and gave himself for me."
>     Galatians 2:20
>