Re: economic efficiency of free software

On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 09:08:04AM -0500, Forrest J. Cavalier III ([email protected]) wrote:
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > I think there is a real opportunity here.  Figure out a way to get
> > people to pay for software indexing and review, and channel their bug
> > reports and feature requests to the developers, and generate a revenue
> > stream from that.  It would work like electronic publishing in
> > academia, except that (see below) the problem is aggregating the
> > signals of customers, not peers.
> 
> OH MY WORD!  That's it!
> 
> Maybe this email is too small to hold my proof.  :-)
> 
> Some Background:
> ----------------
> I have not done anything with rocketaware.com

Yes, it is obvious that you have not done development on your site in 
a couple of years because it lacks the features that are now expected 
in a community based site.  For example, it lacks user preferences, 
filtering, mailing lists or web-based forum, or a rating system. 
There is a site that offers most of these features and a few others, 
Freshmeat.

The bug database system you mention would be adding additional friction 
to developers.  It can be difficult to get them to accept bug reports 
when emailing them directly.  You want them to go to your site and 
check a db for bugs concerning their code?  Not likely.
-- 
I think, therefore, ken_i_m
Chief Gadgeteer, Elegant Innovations
Founder, Bozeman Linux Users Group
(406) 581-0495