[Freegis-list] Funding for free projects (was: ArcInfo to Free conversion)

[Adrian Custer]

On 09 Jan 2001 18:54:17 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote:

> Perhaps an idea: Why not spending the "proprietary maintenance tax" into
> such a project like GRASS? That will speed up its development - of course it
> remains free. Such GRASS-related funded projects are already running, but it
> could be more.
> 
> And keep in mind: An open source project is what people make of it. So the
> GRASS Development Team is open to interested programmers and open to new
> ideas! Many new features are on the way (like a new GUI, integral database
> management for vectors etc), but more "staff" is required to finish them.
> 
> Cheers
> 
>  Markus


Do you have an explicit policy whereby a group of counties could make an
investement in GRASS for functionality it may lack or for modifying the
development priorities of the project? I suspect it is much easier for a
group to cough up a few thousand dollars than find an employee who could
do the work. You would never get them to spend all of the proprietary
maintenance tax"  on GRASS but perhaps  they would give you a
contribution if they could show the higher authorities that it was
generating software for their specific needs.

--adrian