[ILUG] looking for linux software people

[Colm MacCárthaigh]

On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 12:43:21PM -0500, peter at gfgcgroup.com wrote:
> WE are a new insurance company and will be headquartered in Dublin. We
> plan to start limited operations in April. 

Cool

> What is the best way for us to attract software people with open source 
> experience? 

In this climate ? Just saying you want them is enough ;)

You need to be clear about Licensing and not place any undesirable 
contractual obligations on potential developers. I had to turn down
a development contract with a large multinational once because of
the insane requirments of the contract (which included not doing
development for any other organisation, ever, even on my own time).

If you want to attract good developers, you have to be doing something
Novel, and be prepared to live a little on the edge. Good developers
enjoy doing things noone has made work before. 

> We plan to build our entire computing environment on linux/ postgres/php/c/qmail/ etc.

How can such a plan be in place without having hired the people who
have to implement it? Surely the best thing to do is to outline
the requirements and let the people who have to work with these things
on a day to day basis, and who know what will work best, sort out
the implementation details ?

One of the best ways of scaring off developers, or IT staff generally
is to have a rigid structure handed to them and getting told to
implement it. You want the solution to be engineered from the ground
up.

-- 
colmmacc at redbrick.dcu.ie        PubKey: colmmacc+pgp at redbrick.dcu.ie  
Web:                                 http://devnull.redbrick.dcu.ie/