[openbeos] Re: Couple of non-sequiters

  • From: "Marcus Overhagen" <ml@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2002 22:37:41 CEST (+0200)

"Donovan Schulteis" <deej@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> We've done the "raise money for hardware" thing - and that got us not 
> very far at all - all of the devs disappeared with the focus shift - 
> some with the hardware.  I very recently offered another developer 
> hardware under conditions that would protect beunited from "wasting" 
> money like that, protecting other's donated money, and he declined 
> stating that it was "unreasonable" for beunited to ask of that (rights 
> to distribute, and the right to ask that the hardware be returned if 
> work was not accomplished) unless we paid him $20K for the work.  :/

I think I have to rectify this, as I was the developer that declined to offer.

First, the conditions were different from those you list here, most of them 
didn't make it appear as worthwhile to help with development of this driver.
Example:
>| It can be legally expected to be returned at request (ie, you no 
>| longer support/develop drivers on it - give up bug fixing and the like)
Development is a lot of work, and at some place you want stop,
although not all features are implemented/bugs fixed. 
I think spending perhaps hundreds of unpaid hours on developing, and then 
returning the hardware is a bad deal.

Other conditions, like giving beunited full access to source code
might have lead to further trouble (because we would have most
probalby needed an NDA with Creative Labs) and/or work to resolve
them. I didn't want to spent too many time on a thing I personally 
don't desperately need.

And I didn't want to be payed $20K. What I really answered was this:

| This is not acceptable. The conditions you have would perhaps
| be acceptable for development under a 20000$ contract.
| I'm no longer interested in developing a Soundblaster Audigy driver. 
| I don't need a card.

My decision consists. Thank you for thought-provoking.

Marcus



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