..hidden.. wrote:
Hello Ed: I have been following this thread on and off so please forgive me if I am completely off the tangent. You know with any work one should really define the scope before there can be a cost and etc., and in this case here not having the scope could hurt you in convenincing anyone to chip in. In the same token, the scope is probably what's going to stop other businesses from chipping in because it is probably rare that two businesses having the same requirements. In fact, other businesses could probably wait until 1.3 is released.
I am now straddling -devel and -users with this thread...The way I approach this in my mind is that the 1.3->1.4 path generally looks attractive and so I have split my budget into desire to sponsor that general path (where I won't micro manage the process, I just want a full time developer to get as far down that route as possible) and the features I need adding.
I don't want to pay to add features to 1.2, so basically I think it looks sensible to sponsor:
a) Getting 1.3 out of the doorb) My personal features that I want adding (eg credit card billing terminal inside the application)
Do we not have a core of people looking to sponsor a) "generally" who will tip in some money to advance the process? a) Largely boils down to a new "Contact" system which will then facilitate quite a lot of new development around new contact style processes and more flexible ways to invoice people based on a more flexible set of contact options
I don't think it will be easy to collect general money and then let everyone micromanage the project that money sponsors - it has to be a bit more flexible than that. Personally I just want to see the money buy a number of days of full time work on "unspecified SL development" which will be timesheeted and demonstrably advance the release date of 1.3/1.4. I plan to negotiate separately to buy specific features that are important to me...
Ed W