[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

[IC-Admin]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001 mheins@redhat.com wrote:
[snip]

> 
> If everyone who was on the mail list was spending money with Red Hat, using
> our support services, instead of downloading the program for free
> and then using the mail list, we would, I guarantee, devote more resources
> to improving the program. We don't expect that, of course, but the fact
> remains that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
> 
> The only way we will get more resources is for people to spend money
> with us. There are some ways to do this. You can purchase the E-commerce
> suite and get a year's worth of support with people to answer your
> questions as they come up. Or, you can retain us for a few hours of
> technical support so we can answer your questions and provide guidance.
> 
> The predecessor to Interchange, Minivend, was largely supported by
> the clients who engaged me to do work for them based on Minivend.
> Most of them have never inhabited the mail list, so you wouldn't
> know them. But they had as much, no more, to do with the longevity
> of Interchange than anyone. If I hadn't been able to eat, then
> I would have done something else.
> 
> It can come in the form of small self-contained contributions
> to the documentation or utilities -- the work of various people on
> payment systems is an example. Or it can come in the form of
> money. All help.
> 

Dear Mike and all other contributing IC developers,

as someone who discovered in a long process of questioning myself, that 
the only way, I could help, would be with money, I like to add something
with regards to monetary donations.

There might be enough people among us, who really have no current need
to develop a site for themselves or are not that experienced to do such
work for others, but who know enough about the history of Interchange
and understand, that, may be in the future, they might use IC as paying
customer of Red Hat, but currently don't and can't. Nevertheless those
among us still follow up on IC and read regularly this list and save
the "goodies" for future use.

I often felt that the technical help given on this (as well as other
technical support mailing lists of OSS applications) is the most valuable
thing given away for free, aside from the open source code  itself. 

Therefore I really think, that this list should get a "price",
which reflects the support IC users should give to say thanks for a free
software package and to affirm, that we are willing to acknowledge the
volunteer service on this list by the ones, who are IC knowledgable.

I made once a general suggestion like that on a familiar and often used
forum of the Open/Free Source community in this regard and got (at least
to me) a devastating answer. Noone wanted to consider this option of
supporting an OSS project. I wondered why the response was so negative.
But, that shouldn't deter me from trying it here again.

I know that asking for some registration fees for this mailing lists
might only make a relative small amount of money compared to hiring you
folks for a project or buying the commercial package. But on the other
hand there might just be enough "very small" businesses or "poor
individuals", who would be willing to pay a registration fee to this list,
to make a small difference.

I propose a monthly registration fee to this mailing list to collect
money for development and documentation support. I like to know, who would
support this idea and what you consider a price, which would reflect the
value of help you are getting here.

Birgitt Funk

> Mike
>