[Opensim-dev] OpenSim - What's Taking so long

[Dahlia Trimble]

I have a couple concerns about this proposal.

OpenSimulator has been largely developed through volunteer contributions. If
money is brought in to help speed up development, it should be spread around
to active contributors so as to not negatively influence morale among
volunteer developers. Further, asking volunteer developers to train paid
developers could further destroy morale.

Adding more developers who are not familiar with the existing code base
usually has a negative impact on development time. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month>

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Drew Hart <drewehart at gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay, that was my catchy title that in no way means any disrespect.  I love
> OpenSim, have used it for years, tell everyone I meet about it and am a huge
> fan and supporter.  Recently a question was asked about a roadmap and
> progress.  I would like to expand on that.  OpenSim has now been around for
> a while - like years.  Yet I can't really use it for clients.  So here is my
> question.  As a non-coder, how can others help.  For example, I would gladly
> donate some decent money if there were a coordinated fundraising event and a
> plan to hire a couple of full-time, very qualified developers to really move
> this along.
>
> Please, please, please don't take this the wrong way.  This is NOT a
> criticism.  I know this is done by volunteers and I know that this is more
> ambitious than Second Life, but have we looked at other solutions to move
> the process along.  I think there are a lot of people like me who would
> contribute.  But, and I stress this.  Me donating say $1,000 by myself isn't
> going to do anything.  We would need a serious fundraising drive, and
> specific and talented people that we could hire full-time as
> consultants/coders to really move this along.
>
> I would imagine I am not the first to suggest this.  But every day I see
> this awesome product I want to use, yet it seems months or years away from
> stable wide-spread use.
>
> There are now several web sites that help in fundraising.  I am sure many
> of you read about the NYU students that raised several hundred thousand
> dollars in a short time so they could spend their summer coding a Facebook
> clone (sort of).  Now if 4 undergrads can get that kind of money for a
> Facebook clone, why hasn't OpenSim tried something similar.  These
> fundraising sites are hot right now - let's take advantage of them!
>
> Please read:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
>
> The article was written before they raised much more money.
> <http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?scp=3&sq=nyu%20programmers&st=cse>
>
>
> Drew
>
>
>
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>
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