"Curtis L. Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > come along once in a while. As can be expected, anything that would > pay me or anyone else to work on FlightGear would most likely need > some sort of financial incentive. FlightGear would have to satisfy > some need they are trying to fullfill.
Like the basis for a sophisticated and low cost flight training appliance (FS-Tivo)? > I would prefer a culture where companies go through us and work with > us to achieve their objectives rather than go around us. I'd prefer > that we were in control of the process, rather than having companies > simply do whatever they want. Hmmm...Covalent and Apache? > Another reality is time (or the lack thereof.) It seems that as life > goes on, I have less and less time to spend on any particular thing. > Life just get's busier and busier, and I get stretched thinner and > thinner. I have less and less time for hobbies. Finding ways to > generate income from my would would free me up to spend more time > developing code for our project and less time helping my boss get > rich. Yep. Me too :-) > There are trade offs to whatever course we take. Personally I made a > conscious choice when I got involved in this open-source project. I > knew we could never pull this off in a classic commercial sense and > there were other groups (fly, propilot, etc.) that actually tried > without any long term success. The open source approach allowed us to > get to where we are today without needing to ship a product, pay > employees, etc. And also I know that on my own, I could never have > come up with something even to close to the same calliber as > flightgear. > > There is also a matter of trust. If I go off and participate in some > commercial venture involving flightgear, am I selling out? Am I > screwing everyone else? I see it as getting paid to spend my time > working on FlightGear. Most likely the bulk of that time would go > towards contributing to the open-source body of code. Nothing is > taken away from the FlightGear project, but many things are certain to > be given to it. I know I'm far from perfect and can say/do some > stupid things now and then, and people certainly should be cautious, > but hopefully I've earned your trust over the years. If I was in this > to try to make a quick buck ... well ... after five years of not > having made a quick buck ... I'd either be a complete idiot, or more > likely I'm doing this because I love it. That still doesn't mean I > wouldn't like to find a way to get paid for my efforts so I can spend > more time doing it, but lacking that, I'm still happy to continue > giving as much time as I can afford for the love of mixing computers > and aviation. I think you can have your cake and eat it...no problem. :-) > So in terms of licensing our code. I think it is a good thing if we > can position the code so that we can take advantage of our own work or > at least make it possible to do so. I'm proposing that we move very > slowly and very carefully. I'm not proposing anything radical I don't > think. What I would like to do at some point is start looking at key > sections of code, and with appropriate discussion, move them > individually to SimGear and convert the license to LGPL. From other > feedback I've heard, people have generally been receptive to this > idea, and if we attack it one section at a time I think it is doable. > In many senses I'm talking about moving towards my original goal with > simgear to turn it into a simulator construction set, or simulation > kernel, depending on what you want to call it. There's been discussion about moving stuff to SimGear anyway...sounds like a good approach. > Having said all that, I have no immediate plans to quit my full time > job, Darn :-) > Have I dug myself a deep enough hole yet? :-) Hehe...getting there. Best, Jim _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
