I think this is a fantastic idea.
The only downside is that such a fund may be difficult to manage so one of
the companies could give management/people time to the grant process in
lieu of money I imagine. So if we take Stas' case, Stas would have to
market himself and get several companies to pay for him.
The are other issues. If the person being sponsored by grants is a
foreigner to the US, but wishes to be in the US to be closer to companies
doing similar things such as Covalent, relevant conferences etc, then that
foreigner needs to be sponsored by a company. Probably this would entail
someone giving money to a company which would be a vehicle to allow that
foreigner to in the country.
Of course, the location of the person or person(s) being sponsored may make
a big difference in being able to be sponsored. If we use Stas (again as an
example since he brought it up)... For example, for companies to sponsor
Stas to live comfortably in Singapore or Israel would cost much less than
to sponsor Stas to live comfortably in San Francisco located next to Doug
in Covalent.
Obviously it would be nicer for Stas to be closer to Doug when he works on
core mod_perl stuff.
Since you brought up the idea of sponsoring mod_perl development for 6
months, that also brings up an interesting point. Would someone like Stas
simply want a year of salary to do mod_perl experimentation. Or would be
actually apply a set of grants that he puts on his web site to say "I plan
to do XYZ with mod_perl" and it will take 3 months and therefore, I would
like a company to sponsor this XYZ feature.
That is a lot nicer than some vague commitment of one company to fund Stas
50% and another to fund him 25% and another to fund him 10% or what have
you. Then company's instead sponsor features to specifically be added to
mod_perl with clear deliverables. Then the sponsor can forever have their
name tied to a feature as part of the agreement and sponsorship.
But then this gets into the Collabnet SourceXChange model which Collabnet
just shut down due to lack of capability of making money (I guess). So I am
not sure if this would bode well for this type of model on mod_perl.
Anyway, this seems promising. Where I know we wouldn't pay money to fund an
entire year of Stas developing mod_perl solely, I certainly know that there
are probably features I would seriously consider sponsoring.
Later,
Gunther
At 10:41 PM 4/27/01 -0400, barries wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 11:44:49PM +0800, Stas Bekman wrote:
> >
> > Since mod_perl is an open source, it's a tough quest. Basically what I
> > want is get some company that will benefit from me working on open source
> > project full time and pay me a salary. Of course it's probably hard to get
> > a full time open source position, so probably some compromising offer,
> > where we do some 50-75% of the time mod_perl development and the rest
> > doing something else, if it makes the company more happy.
>
>Another possibility is to try to gather a bit of a consortium together.
>See if there are several interested companies that might fund half a
>developer for a year. If you get enough for 4 or 5 developers and some
>office support, you might be able to make a go of it.
>
>Existing Apache/mod_perl support companies might pitch some in, and
>some that want to make a contribution without committing to permanent
>staff or longer term could ante up commitments.
>
>The commitments could be in the form of guru grants, speaker honoraria,
>PR grants, feature purchases. Hmmmm, found a YAS (Yet Another Society)
>mod_perl wing? See if "the community" might pitch in to fund Stas and
>one or two others for 6 months? Not sure if you need to be slightly mad
>or from down under to pull that on off. Kevin Lenzo's a hell of a nice
>guy and probably would be happy to offer up some advice. In fact, I
>think I'll Cc him, and leave the rest of the message attached to
>backfill, if he's got time to read it...
>
>As you and others have mentioned here now and in the past, mod_perl
>needs PR and working apps (which are both good PR and good reasons for
>others to start using it as a means to an end: like the new Slash code,
>for instance).
>
>Such an organization could do (aside from the feature development listed
>above):
>
>- general advocacy: press releases, reference cards, publish
> articles and sell a qr/this (article|research) funded by
> (ActiveState|VMWare|Covalent|IBM S/390 Marketing Division|.*)/ credit
>
>- coporate outreach offer a free or cheap on-site intro to mod_perl
> technologies to any corporate division
>
>- offer a "take a mod_perl guru to lunch" program
>
>- emergency ssh/telnet/onsite problem SWAT services (that's a bit of a
> stretch). This could be done in partnership with existing firms like
> Covalent, or (so as not to compete with possible sponors) it could
> just advocate the availability of them. Heck, just getting "market
> survey" type articles published that research who offers what services
> might help promote these services.
>
>- in-depth training
>
>Anyway, this turned out to be longer than I intended, just some fuzzy
>thoughts after a long day...
> > Definitely I'm aware of the situation in the market. But you know what,
> > look at the history, at any recession times there were always those who
> > continued to prosper. Therefore I believe that some companies not even
> > slowed down, but have accelerated their growth and have enough cash to
> > invest into open source and make probably improve their image. Look for
> > example at Covalent, I don't know all the details, but this company seem
> > to stand strong on its legs. But Covalent has already Doug, so this is out
> > of question.
> >
> > So if your company thinks it can directly or indirectly benefit from
> > having one or more mod_perl experts doing cool mod_perl development, let
> > us know. There are at least 3 people (including me) that want this job.
> > I'm sure that there are many more that will be interested.
> >
> > I've mentioned in the subject that the request is unusual, so please
> > respond only if you think you can stand behind this offer and not promise
> > things that will never become true. I've bitten once on such an offer, and
> > will try not to do the same mistake a second time in a row.
> >
> > Thanks a lot!
> >
> > On the related note, does anybody know about the financial status of
> > Velocigen? How do they sell their products? We think to try to revive this
> > old idea where we create mod_perl company, that will sell mod_perl and
> > support. If Velocigen can do this with a closed source product, I believe
> > we can do even better, especially with the drooling mod_perl 2.0.
> >
> > We have discussed this with I think 6 mod_perl guys about a year ago, but
> > since all of us were programmers, we didn't get anywhere. May be we can
> > come up with some nice business plan, and make a commercial mod_perl
> > branch, boost the awareness of the product, get companies to invest into
> > people developing it and make mod_perl a standard for webserver products.
> > I know that it's a rewishful thinking, but with the right people and right
> > companies I'm sure that everything is possible. I'm sure that you realize
> > the potential of mod_perl.
> >
> > IMHO of course... I'm just a programmer, so if you ask about my business
> > plan, I tell: you find a good business shark and push it forward, we will
> > do the coding. Easy huh, but that's what we are good at -- coding, so we
> > better do that.
> >
> > Anyway, fresh ideas are welcome
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> > Stas Bekman JAm_pH -- Just Another mod_perl Hacker
> > http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide http://perl.apache.org/guide
> > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://apachetoday.com http://logilune.com/
> > http://singlesheaven.com http://perl.apache.org http://perlmonth.com/
> >
> >
__________________________________________________
Gunther Birznieks ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
eXtropia - The Web Technology Company
http://www.extropia.com/
