Ken Causey wrote:
> Draft of my reply, I appreciate any comments you have.

I saw your other email, nevertheless I will comment. :)

> On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 20:50 +0100, stéphane ducasse wrote:
[snip Stef's email]

> Well, this may put me in the context of a 'laissez-faire' open-source
> developer (leave well enough alone and let it take it's own course), but
> I'm not of the opinion that it's possible to 'influence'
> or 'push' for further development within the community on anything other
> than a narrow or short-term basis.  In the end people are only going to
> work on something that provides some form of return.
> 
> Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form.  I
> think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
> if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining.  What I mean is that a bounty
> is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
> in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
> the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
> development will falter.  At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
> in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
> to be that it kills the community.

I disagree because you leave out too many variables.
The community in general has skills, time and money.

I have skills to use Squeak and to develop with Squeak in many ways. But 
I am most definitely limited in my scope.

Others have the skills but have not the time or interest.

I may have a desire or need for which I have not the skill to develop, 
but have the skill to use.

Others may have a need for which they have the skills to develop and 
use, but have not the time.

Bounties (money) is an inducement for sometime to spend time using their 
skills for someone else's interest. Most of us do it everyday, its our job.

Example:

What if I wanted to be able to use my favorite database, say SQLite or 
such with Squeak. I have no C or low level skills. But give me a driver 
and the methods to access said database and I'm a happy guy. If I 
want/need such, but no one else in the community with the skills and the 
time has such a need, then an inducement may provide incentive to 
someone to develop such.

I don't believe that any such development would flounder after 
development any more than any other code.

And the codes existence may be inducement for others to use at some 
point, because it has become an available option.

Nor do I believe such would cause any negative directional change.

I only wish I had the funds to hire some Squeak developers. :)
Oh well.

Now if were talking about development for developments sake and simply 
attempting to fulfill a laundry list of features...
I'll agree with you. That is wrong and wasteful.

But I do believe there are legitimate needs that can be met by proper 
monetary inducements. Doing it right is the challenge.

Jimmie