Re: memberships

[Marcus G. Daniels]

I got this bounce, in spite of the headers, I think the intent must
have been that this was to go to the list (otherwise I shouldn't have seen
delivery problems).  I think this is a problem on the Ford end, as I've
seen similiar problems before with's Cody's outgoing mail...

> 
> The opinions about to be expressed are purely the author's, and should
in no
> way be construed as even tangentially approximate to Ford Motor
Company's.
> --
> In one of those freaks of complex dynamics we all love so much, I
believe
> the money people here did not want to join until the future of Swarm
was
> clearer.  The fact that the future of Swarm depends on donations is
not lost
> to them, but an SDG survivability threshold needs to be passed I
guess.

SR> Nobody else has, so let me be the rude one that asks the obvious
SR> question: 
SR> 
SR> Does this management approach (do the cheapest possible thing, then wait
SR> to see if an expensive failure results) emerge from the way Ford builds
SR> cars, or vice versa??
SR>
SR>(Or would there be a failure to convince the management of the value of
SR> Swarm and its support group?)


There is a definite "free beer" slant toward the use of free software at
Ford, but at least we are now willing to use free software at all.  In the
past, this was not the case.  I think once Microsoft's market cap became 10x
Ford's we realized we might not be able to sue them either, and gave up on
the whole idea of quality through litigation.  Quality through peer review
is easy to understand at the research lab, so we are an even easier case for
the use of free software, but I don't think the RMS view of free software
community is about to take hold here.


I just gave a seminar here on Swarm this week, and two of us now have
approval to devote significant time to it this year.  Nothing at Ford yet
depends on Swarm, or ABM, so SDG's failure would not be expensive today.
Maybe a year from now the case will be different.  

Since 99% of Swarm users have decided not to contribute monetarily, I would
say not that Ford is extremely cheap and shortsighted, but rather that SDG
is not offering something sufficiently valuable at this point.  

I don't think I have any special value to add to the discussion of "what
should SDG be doing that would be so valuable, you would feel like giving
them money?" except as one voice in the thousand or so Swarm users.  That
might be a fruitful topic for discussion.

Cody


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