*MAJOR* sponsor

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cds and I have met a major company this week which intends to
use the runtime and System.Windows.Forms of DotGNU Portable.NET
on their embedded systems.  Obviously there are still some gaps
in functionality; these need to be filled over the next few
months.

I'm not mentioning the name of this customer yet, because it is
probably best from a business perspective if the information
about their migration to GNU/Linux does not leak out until they're
ready to start marketing the next generation of their products.
This is a very good company.  They have agreed to my request that
they will provide us the necessary specifications and sample
programs that they need working on the DotGNU Portable.NET in a
form that does not involve any business secrets, so that there
will not be any need for the DotGNU'ers who work on this to sign
a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement).  (Many Free Software developers
refuse to sign NDAs as a matter of principle, either for reasons
of Free Software ethics principles or as part of a risk management
strategy - remember how SCO sued IBM for two billion dollars over
an alleged NDA violation.)  

We will get these sample programs that we need to get working in
week 18 (that is the week after next, for a web-based calendar
calculator that can calculate ISO week numbers see
http://www.personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/isowdcal.html ) and after
that I'll have two weeks to discuss these requirements with
potential development contractors.  Those who want to get paid by
this customer for pnetlib development work will need to make
commitments of the form "I will get this and this class implemented
and working by this date, and I will charge this much for that work."
(Make it a fair price.)

Also, if you want to get one of these pnetlib development contracts,
your copyright assignment paperwork needs to have been filed either
with the FSF or with Southern Storm, and it needs to have been
processed by the time that I present my proposal for the
implementation plan to the customer.  Otherwise your name will not be
on that proposal.

As an additional incentive, the responsible manager for this project
has promised me that if they're happy with how this works out, they'll 
give us a kind of bonus by also sponsoring some amout of DotGNU
development work that they don't need themselves but which will be
good for the project.  In addition, when they're ready to talk openly
about this new line of products, they'll help us with marketing DotGNU
to other industry customers.

This is a huge opportunity for the DotGNU project, everyone please help
me to make this customer very happy.  (The best way to make them happy
is to have it all working properly well before the deadline.)

More information will be available from me at the DotGNU irc meeting
(Saturday 10.00 UTC at #dotgnu on irc.freenode.net ).

Greetings, Norbert.

- --
Founder & Steering Committee member of DotGNU, see http://dotgnu.org/
Free Software Business Strategy Guide   --->  http://FreeStrategy.info
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch
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