[ILUG] [TonStanco@aol.com: follow-up question]

[kevin lyda]

Kenn Humborg wrote:
> Am I the only person who thinks that developers should be paid a royalty
> based on the number of lines each developer contributes to a program that s
> shipped and sold? Of all the responses I got on the first question, only 2
> discussed ôhowö any royalty system could be done and they both concluded that
> it couldn t.
> 
> As President Clinton recently said, ôdon t make the perfect the enemy of the
> good.ö Even though a perfect royalty system may be impossible, one that
> imperfectly gets some money to developers is still a very good thing. More
> money to open source developers only means more developers for the movement.
> Who would work for Microsoft if they could get paid in open source? Who would
> work anywhere else for that matter? Open source is a superior development
> model, after all, that empowers all developers.

is the "royalty model" the best method you can think of payment?  why
not web pages for each project and a "wall of fame" for people that
contribute (like theaters and churches for instance).

also settling for good not perfect sounds wonderful and all, but paying
by lines of code?  that leads to wheel reinvention and code bloat. 
these are desirable?

> 1.  Developers ought to be paid. Software is the most important product in
> the world today. It should not be trivialized by depreciating its value.
> Developers are a new nobility based on brains. This is the first chance the
> world has had to have a real worldwide meritocracy.

food is the most important product.  i'm a geek and all, but i'm not
under some illusion that i'm a member of some all important industry.

kevin
-- 
kevin at suberic.net       "we were goin' for breakfast.  in canada.  we
fork()'ed on 37058400    made a deal: if she'd stop hookin', i'd stop
meatspace place: home    shootin' people.  maybe we were aiming high."
                                                   --porter, "payback"