Re: economic efficiency of free software
Taran Rampersad <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.misc.free-software-business |
|---|---|
| Organization | KnowProSE.com |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: >>>>>>"Taran" == Taran Rampersad <[email protected]> writes: >>>>>> >>>>>> > > Taran> But if you need something, you can get it [as free software]. > >Not always. > >Eg, OCR. For Japanese. rms told me to wait for the free version 4 >or 5 years ago, when I presented that example. Where is it? > > I can't talk about what RMS told you, that would be good for you to take up with RMS. http://www.claraocr.org/ seems like something you might be interested in. When something doesn't exist, I'll toss something out to everyone. Start a Sourceforge project. You do not have to be a developer to do this. You can post your preliminary requirements. You may find other people who want the same code done. You may even find developers who are willing to do it for bFree ('Free as in Beer'). But if you don't, there are developers out there who need to handle their basic needs - food, shelter, clothing, internet access, computer hardware, coffee/Mountain Dew/whatever... pay those bills, and you'll be surprised how fast code will churn out. And you don't have to outsource to another company to do that. It was only last year that a Free Software Developer was on this list asking for help to pay the rent. Many developers simply do other things to support their coding, but developers tend to be attracted to challenging things which take up a lot of their time and leave them little time for coding. The good news is that this could singlehandedly employ a lot of unemployed people as well. I personally (i.e., in an un-Orkut sense) know 3 unemployed software developers right now in the U.S. - all talented. One, sadly, is delivering pizza. The opportunity to write some code might balance well for them if they can meet their needs. And decrease concerns about proprietary outsourcing. Just a thought. They will make their own decisions, just as the people who need software need to decide how badly they need software. And if they need it badly enough, they need to put their money where their mouth is. -- Taran Rampersad [email protected] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.fsc.cc/ http://www.uwi.edu/scs/ http://www.a42.com http://www.xeebra.com Coming Soon: eAsylum.net