Re: [tlug] GPL vs. paid version and ethics

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Sun, 5 Aug 2012 16:03:49 +0100
Jamie Learmonth <jamie-lists@example.com> wrote:

> Their business won't rely on a single feature. Submit a patch,
> if it gets refused then make the patch publicly available.
> The people who find your patch don't want to pay those guys 
> anyways just for that one feature, that's why they've searched
> for a patch. It's not a question > of ethics, it's a question
> of can your team of paid staff members create more value than hobbyists.

In most cases i would argue that a group of dedicated hobbyists
can easily outperform any paid staff.

Why? Because most paid programmer groups i've seen so far work
in a group of lone-gunman kind of way. Ie they have a project lead
who tells them what to do, and they toil until they have finished
their task. Discussion between group members only happen when
interfaces need to be designed or when one is so much stuck that
he hasn't found a way out in days/weeks. And every time someone
new is hired, there is long time until he has a grasp on how the
software works and who the right guy to ask questions is.

While on the other hand, hobbyists talk with each other constantly,
review each others work and thus improve each others programming
skills and dublicated work is greatly limited. New people entering
the group usually start from an "easy" point they have choosen
themselves and diskussion and feedback comes to them, as soon as
they publish their work on the mailinglist. This greatly simplifies
and speeds up the initiation of new members.


			Attila Kinali


-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?