Greg, > Darrell, > > I think Mitel needs to kick down some type of a consulting fee to you. From > the standpoint of viewing SME development from this list, it looks like you > do more development than they do. > > Greg
Darrell doesn't do this as a favor to us. And that is the thing that bothers me about your statement, Greg. It implies that the free collaboration that characterizes the open source movement is dead! I believe that people participate in open source communities because it's in their self interest - it's based on free and fair trade. Read Eric Raymond's works sometime. I kinda figure Darrell does okay in all of this. :) Truly, he's done tons of great work with the community. On the other hand, he got software for free that reflects thousands of hours of development effort and he's building a business for himself off of that. *He* hasn't needed to sink a few million into building the developer community, developing the nascent offerings, etc. He participates in a community that is hosted, seeded and moderated by another company. So he does lots in return. I like that - Fair trade. In fact, he solicits business for himself on our forums for a competitive offering (Are we schmucks, er what?!?). As in all things, it's important to strike the right balance. It was our long term goal to build a community where projects took off on their own. It's a positive thing that people are able to work together without us. You shouldn't need or expect us to control every interaction and development project! Certainly it'd never work if the model were that Mitel did all the development work themselves and gave it away for free. (or rather, it'd work for you but it wouldn't work for us). :) It's true that the Mitel development team hasn't devoted as much time recently to the free software. The pressure is on companies around the world to more tightly focus efforts on activities that lead to revenue. Mitel's no different. Mitel continues to devote resources to hosting the project and in fact we do spend significant amounts of our available extra time working on the server software. Less so lately though - that's true. Our resources are tightly managed right now and once we take care of the things that lead to revenues there isn't tons of time left over anymore. Find a company where that isn't true right now. Right now that means that we are focusing intently on ServiceLink. As resources allow, the development team is able to focus on the server software. Many of the folks on our development team wish they could be even more active than they are, but, heck, we've all gotta earn a living. :) - Kim --- Kim Morrison +1 (613) 368-4390 General Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Server Solutions Group http://www.e-smith.com Mitel Networks Corporation http://www.mitel.com -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives by mail and http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
