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

[Ed W <..hidden..>]

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?

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...?

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)...

OK, let me move aside to avoid the rush...

Ed W