Re: [Gnumed-devel] to fund or not to fund :-)

[Sebastian Hilbert]

On Friday 28 May 2004 08:52, Horst Herb wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:00, Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> > not. My time may be free ( as long as I chose) but Internet connectivity
> > is not , webspace is not( unless some company / person donates it instead
> > of money),
>
> BTW, since gnumed started, I have been donating two servers for the
> project, hosting gnumed.net and drugref.org for example. Tony Lemke has
> been donating the server hosting gnumed.org. Tony and I have been paying
> all related expenses so far out of our own pockets.
I know that. That's why I wrote webspace is not [free]( unless some company / 
person donates it instead) :-)
> > of money)
> Anybody related to our 
> projects can happily use the infrastructure we provide, or the
> infrastructure gnu.org provides us for free. More infrastructure is always
> welcome if it is donated, but it is not essential and if it incurs
> unbearable costs, than we don't need it.
Hmm, I see your point.
>
> Having internet connectivity is of course a must, but I would expect that
> this is nowadays as ubiquitous as phone, and hardly a dedicated expense for
> gnumed.
I wasn't going to complain but I had to name a few things. There might be 
people reading this list who have never thought of what it takes to develop 
Gnumed.
>
> I understand that nobodies time is really "free", and donating time is the
> biggest sacrifice people can make. I doubt we will be able to compensate
> contributors ever for their time in monetary terms.
That is not the point. At least not for me. If I would want/need compensation 
I should better stop working on Gnumed.  
>
I still see nothing wrong with potential users funding the effort as they 
chose . They will never get assurance that their donations will pay off but 
neither do volunteers get that insurance. Although it may be/is wrong to 
request donation of time , infrastructure, money I see nothing wrong in 
reminding bystanders that they can make the difference in terms of 
development speed and so forth.
> Horst
>
There are a lot of Open Source projects which turned out some quality code 
without ever thinking about potential users. I guess I still need to learn a 
few things about OpenSource in general :-) 

-- 
Sebastian Hilbert 
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