Custom fields

[J. Paul Reed]

On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, Gervase Markham wrote:

> He has paying customers, and he still does this. How much more freedom,
> then, do we have as an open source project, to give people the benefits
> of our wisdom and tell them how they should do things? If they walk away,
> we don't lose nearly as much as Joel does.

Not necessarily.

One thing we have to think about that he doesn't is the cost and
probability of forking; it could be that some customer (Zippy, or ZippyII,
whomever that may be) *wants* custom fields, and are willing to fork the
project over that.

Are we willing to allow that to happen over this feature?

It's a rhetorical question to which I don't have the answer, but I ask it
to illustrate the point that our analysis isn't that simple
(unfortunately) just because we're not a commercial project.

In some ways, Joel has it easier, because he can say "We're not supporting
that," deal with the loss in sales, but keep the product clean and unified.

> > I'll even volunteer now to write it up. ;-)
>
> Easy, tiger :-)

"Tiger?"

Need I remind you that you're a mere 2 years older than I am?

Now Dave and Tara... *they* can call me 'tiger' (or Wesley, as the case
was... ;-)

Later,
Paul
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  J. Paul Reed                 preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
  Wait, stop!  We can outsmart those dolphins.  Don't forget: we invented
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