[cvsnt] Re: information currency economic proposal - ic-cvs f unctionality in cvsnt for $9500?

[Tony Hoyle]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> Tony Hoyle wrote:
> 
>> I don't object to the post, but feel the concept is completely backwards - 
>> expecting to get paid upfront for opensource work?
> 
> Aren't there quite some university coders that produce open source code and
> get paid up front?

I think google sponsors some.. not sure how they pay them - I think they get 
it on delivery.  They may get an initial amount upfront too.

Certainly the coders don't go to google and start setting terms!

> I don't really know what the OP is talking about, but something like a
> stock exchange for open source (not necessarily GPL or free) code
> copyrights could be interesting. A different model. And up front payment is
> not excluded in such a model (given a track record, of course, or at least
> some solid hype :). I haven't thought this through at all, just got a kick
> out of the "information currency" keyword :)

It's been tried and really didn't get anywhere.  There was a website where 
people could post requirements for features, and others could sponsor 
programmers to write it.  What happened is you ended up with thousands of 
requests and very few sponsors.. companies that pay for stuff generally want 
to own the code - even march hare (who put money into opensource with no 
strings attached) are ultimately after some return on investment.

Information Currency sounds like it fell out of a buzzword generator TBH but 
if our customers started saying they wanted it time would be spent 
implementing something like it.  We have a list of things for 2.5.04 like 
that...  (btw. I listen to the opensource requests as well and there's a lot 
of OSS driven development... in those cases I generally have to be persuaded 
that it's a good idea and worth doing - having a premade patch helps too!).

Tony