Open source dmd on Reddit!

[Sean Kelly]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> Seems kind of silly to me.  The big deal with the full source for DMD 
>> being available is that if DigitalMars disappears in a puff of smoke 
>> tomorrow, customers have a means of preserving their investment in the 
>> language.  This can be a big deal for corporate users.
> 
> Back in the 80's when I started out in the compiler business, we'd often 
> get companies calling us up with:
> 
> "we really like your compiler, but there's one little issue, it needs to 
> be modified to do X. If it does X, we'd buy 1000/5000/10000 copies!"
> 
> So I'd modify it to do X, and breathlessly contact them:
> 
> "it does X now! where's the P.O? We're ready to ship!"
> 
> Then they'd hem and haw a bit, and say:
> 
> "X is cool, great, yeah, but we really also need Y!"
> 
> It became clear after a while that they never had any intention of 
> buying any copies. There are a lot of possible reasons why they were 
> jerking our chain, but the strategy we came up with was:
> 
> "sure, we'd love to do X for you, our consulting rates are $$$ and we 
> estimate xxx hours to do the job. We need a down payment to start work."
> 
> If they were serious, no problem, we did good business with them. The 
> ones who were jerking us around for whatever reason went away.

Funny.  When I was in R&D at a telco we regularly got requests from 
another department for new features in the system... requests which 
changed multiple times and occasionally weren't ultimately needed.  We 
finally decided to start billing them for our time at an outrageous 
rate, and stated that any change, no matter how small, would take at 
least one full day to complete.  It was amazing how quickly they began 
thinking about their requests before making them.  I think you're right 
that there's simply no point in listening to people who have no 
investment in what you're working on.