Re: gEDA-dev: Re: gedaconsulting.com

[al davis <ad106-at-NOSPAMfreeelectron_dot_net>]

On Friday 15 December 2006 05:21, Evan Lavelle wrote:
> Timmerman, Bert wrote:
> > Let me see if understand this correct:
> >
> > If a user wishes to pay an "acceleration fee" (read
> > donation) for adding improvements to a GPL'ed tool he/she
> > would pay for the acceleration, and not pay for the GPL'ed
> > tool that is the result of this acceleration.

To me, yes.  Deciding what to do first out of an infinite list, 
or even whether to continue developing the project, is a 
decision that must be made somehow.

With no external input, my decision is based on personal needs.  
If some company that wants something comes up with "here's 
$10000 for enhancement xyz", that immediately brings 
enhancement xyz to the top, unless someone else offers a higher 
bounty for something else.

Something like "here's $500 for enhancement xyz" will have some 
weight, but likely not enough to bring it to the top.  Each 
additional on brings it a little higher.

Either would be cheaper for the funder than $50000 for their own 
private version, and actually better for us too.

> Even better, IMHO: produce a native Windows build (*not*
> Cygwin), wrap it up in a fancy installer, and sell it to
> Windows users, for maybe $100 - $200. I bet this would make
> far more money than gedaconsulting.

You could say that "xyz = native Windows build with a fancy 
installer".

Selling per-seat licenses is a model that I think most of us who 
are developing do not want to get involved with.  There is a 
lot of overhead, both in time and money.  It would be able to 
compete without apology with Protel and the like, even if it is 
lots cheaper.  To be successful, it would require some volume, 
leading to the need for paid staff.  (or no time to develop).

(been there, don't want to do it again).

I think there is a market for pre-packaged ready-to-go EDA 
servers, complete with hardware.  Each could be semi-custom, 
with computer, plotter, etc.  Prices start at $5000, could go 
up to $50000 for a full custom with good peripherals.  The 
customer would install X on the Windows box and access it that 
way.  I think there is at least one brand of X that mixes 
X-windows in the MS environment very nicely, even allowing 
communication between remote-X applications and local-MS 
applications.

> Steve's pretty much there already, but I suspect that the
> gschem/pcb developers would be unimpressed by this.

Gnucap is close too.  The 0.35 and earlier releases do compile 
with mingw, which gives a native MS binary.  There is a problem 
with recent development snapshots with plugins.  Mingw doesn't 
have functions like "dlopen".

Don't underestimate the business overhead.



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