[cvsnt] Help the CVSNT project

Arthur Barrett arthur.barrett at march-hare.com
Thu Oct 9 18:15:17 BST 2008


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Luigi,

A part of my job is to ensure that our loyal FOSS community are
advocating on the projects behalf in their organisation - hence my
e-mail.

> The problem is that some companies may be induced to buy a cvs client 
> instead of a cvsnt suite package -  especially Windows 
> developers - because 
> the os server works well, 

Tony has offered to start writing serious bugs into every new release,
with automatic expiration timers on them so they all 'begin' after
you've finished your testing/deployment.  Yes this is a joke and not
serious - I'm illustrating the problem with your argument.  If people
reward well written FOSS software projects then it will lead to more
well written FOSS software, if people reward poorly written,
closed-source buggy software they will get more poorly written
closed-source buggy software.

> IMHO cvsnt suite would be much more interesting if it could 
> offer a good 
> client (not custom version of os packages) bundled, especially if it 
> integrated the administrative features of Workspace Manager.

It does have one - it's called Workspace manager (actually it's changed
its name to CVS Suite Studio).  You can checkout, import (just drag and
drop), set permissions, commit, revision graph etc etc.

But I think you are missing the point - if you earn a wage for your
activities using CVSNT then there are enormous benefits to your employer
supporting the project financially - they are already receiving the
benefits and I am encouraging those on the frontline to advocate for the
project and make the case.  Much other software you have to pay for well
before you learn the limitations/problems - with FOSS of course it's the
other way around - but if people do not support the companies that make
the software available it means that in future there will be much less
FOSS software and much less innovation (look at MySQL for what happens -
a great FOSS product is now not FOSS).

Another way of expressing what you are saying is: we'll spend money on
tool xyz because the company that paid for the programmer to write it
don't offer it for free.  Or put another way: if you take away the free
downloads of CVSNT and only offer each new bug fix in compiled form for
$5 or $25 or $250 then we'll pay it - but only if you give us no other
option.  

My preference is to let those who like CVSNT, and use it in a paying job
to contribute/pay for it.  If only 1% of people downloading CVSNT from
our own web site in 1 year bought 1 copy of CVS Suite we could quadruple
our staff and provide much more innovation.  

If I've made a few readers stop thinking 'someone else can pay for it'
and start thinking 'maybe the company I work for can buy a copy or
three' then I've done what I wanted to do.

Regards,


Arthur Barrett


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