On 03/16/2013 07:52 AM, Vesa Solonen wrote: > Because development of KiCad is based on donations of time, skill and > effort, there are some will and resources that can not be used for > development under the current development model. That will and resources > come from the users of KiCad who don't have time, skill or other > opportunity to put direct effort in the development. > > Fortunately the system of exchange economy was devised to solve the > exchange of time, skill, effort and other resources. A common exchange > item called money made this even more efficient. Crowdsourcing is going > to be the next step in the exchange economy where the producer and > consumer parts get interwined. KiCad is an example of that. > > So what about opening a feature bounty system for KiCad? On Kickstarter > or something. For me it would be easiest if an euro area company could > invoice for patches. I haven't done any tax related investigation > regarding funding free software, but as the results of funding will be > available for everyone there must be some way of taking it in account. > > My reasoning for funding free software development is that I get better > return of investment than from paying proprietary software license. When > I'm paying proprietary license cost I don't get anything but a right to > use the provided binary. My investment will benefit the future customers > and the maker of the software. I most probably don't get any benefit > from the future customers benefiting from my investment. I'll be > benefiting from the customers before my time, but I have no assurance of > any kind that my investment will benefit anyone. The company may close > it's operations next day and all I got was a buggy binary that I can not > rely on for any amount of time. Free software changes all that. That's > why I choose free software even if it costs money. > > To put my idea in real world terms, I'm willing to put 500€ on the table > for: > > * Differential netclass rules (potential classes) > * Differential line support > [* Finishing up KiCad-gal] > > I see that the amount offered is not enough to pay ones salary (in > Finland) for the job, but I'm not demanding the copyright either. I'm > neither expecting to fund all of it myself, but the above would be my > part of the investment. > > Best regards, > -Vesa
I wonder if a written specification of the work (resultant features) might allow it to be measured by candidate developer(s) sufficiently well to actually bid on it. Although there may be a temptation to simply say something like "just like Altium", that may not be familiar to somebody. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
