Re: Renting Developer time to advance 1.3/1.4 - anyone want to chip in?

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Ed W <..hidden..> wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
> I won't presume to speak for the core devs, but I gather the limiting
> factor is time availability for the people with commit rights.
>
>
>
> And to be clear I am hoping to rent 1-2+ months of full time
> development from 1+ core developer.  If this doesn't buy a substantial
> advance in functionality then I'm paying the wrong person...
>
>
> Well one issue you are going to run into is cost. I don't know about
> Chris but for us to do that you are going to have to come up with (even
> with a discounted rate) 20k+. That is with a significant discount off of
> our normal rate.
>
>
> What currency?  USD?  Seems not unreasonable (is that per month or for two
> months?)
>
> Given that I am happy to fund around $10K, but perhaps 50% of that is held
> back to pay for some less general stuff which will be more useful for me (in
> particular I would like a credit card terminal feature in the software), I
> really don't see why a few other business won't stump up some sensible money
> to sponsor some serious development and meet that number?

I will be following up with you off-list regarding what my business
can do for you.  For better or worse, however, I think that a lot of
this is going to have to wait for 1.4 for planning reasons (rather
than resource reasons).

What you need to understand is that 1.3 is going to be a MAJOR step
forward.  In it we see a wholely new architecture and way of
developing the software, a new permissions and security system, and a
lot of fundamental changes under the hood which allow for LedgerSMB to
be viable in a much wider range of markets.  With these deep changes
come a number of QA headaches.  However, we have deliberately avoided
moving too much of the existing financial logic to the new framework
so that the QA is not overwhelming.

Among the areas which are in LedgerSMB /trunk (pre-1.3) at the moment:
 * New architecture for new code
 * Full separation of duties and bulk processing system
(vouchers/batches, and draft/approval of transactions)
 * Move of all template pathways to use TemplateToolkit.
 * Strict db-level permissions enforcement and the move to pgsql roles
for user access control.
 * Hold status for invoices
 * Capability to export many reports to Excel and OpenOffice Calc, as
well as CSV.
 * Entirely redesigned contact management (multiple addresses per
customer or vendor, customer can also be vendor, etc).
 * New payment interfaces for better user friendliness and better
handling of heavy workloads

Among reqirements for 1.3 yet to do:
 * User management interface (for permissions etc)
 * DB creation/update wizard
 * Reconcilliation interface w/possibility of integrating with
bank-supplied files.

This was a deliberate choice in terms of avoiding (though not
entirely) redesigning the AR/AP/GL transaction and invoice interfaces
because this just makes QA that much harder.   We have started to
redesign these, but those changes will not be included until after the
changes above are well tested.

What I am trying to say is that patience is also appreciated and that
we haven't forgotten about the other parts of the program.  By 2.0, I
expect there will be no code left from SQL-Ledger.

> At least where I live it cost me around $1,000 to buy *one* copy of MS
> Office Std and Vista Ultimate (long story, don't ask why).  My accounting
> bill as a small company is north of $2K.  My friend who has a larger 10
> person business pays around $12K/year for accountancy fees.
>
> If this software can save me 30 minutes a day then it's worth paying for
> because I will get that back in less than one year.
>
> I hope that we will see 10-20 other businesses look to fund $2K+ each (is
> that really so much for an unlimited licence for a bit of software?  It's
> one decent laptop? Sage would cost me more than that just in the first
> year...), which would fund some substantial development time.  I would like
> to think that we will see businesses contribute around $40K+ which we can
> turn into some serious development...?

What I would suggest is that everyone who is in a similar boat and
wants to help contact people who are willing to do such development.
My firm does this, as does Josh's.  If the firm does not have people
on the core team, that is fine too-- we can work with them.

However, what is likely to take the most time (not labor) is just
coordination with the community, making sure that what is generally
applicable is separated from that which is not, etc.

>
> Step up to the plate folks - I really don't see why there should be any
> hesitation to chuck down some money.  I think many folks get blinded by the
> "free" sticker and forget that it's ok to pay to see it improved.  Also I'm
> not proposing "sponsorship", I want to get value for money out of *my*
> investment - I expected to get an agreed amount of hours full time work on
> LSMB for the money I put down (so should you)...

Just for the record, I know of at least one other company that has
contributed a large amount of developer time towards the project (as
in code, not cash), and at least one other company which has
contributed a lage amount of financial aid towards development of
features they need.

Just because it is not extremely visible doesn't mean that people
aren't helping out.  As mentioned before, I expect both of these to
increase after 1.3 rather than decrease simply because the quality of
code will be better.

Hope this helps!
Chris Travers