Vendor Pays OSS Developers for Enterprise Support

Anonymous Coward writes "eWeek is reporting that a company called OpenLogic is paying qualified experts in the open-source community to provide enterprise support for projects they are intimately familiar with. OpenLogic calls its new initiative its Expert Community program."

Comments

Earn Points...Claim Valuable Prizes

[Slightly Askew]

From their website:

Be a Part of the Expert Community
OpenLogic is looking for the best and brightest open source developers to join the OpenLogic Expert Community. As a thank you for their time, Open Logic Expert Community members can earn points redeemable for rewards in the OpenLogic Rewards program. Learn more about the OpenLogic Expert Community and the OpenLogic Rewards program.

In other words, no, you're not going to get paid for helping. You will receive 10 Bazooka Joe comics for each Apache installation, and 5 Chuck E. Cheese tickets per debugged line of code.

Re:Are you sure?

[AuMatar]

They get paid in points which, supposedly, can be cashed in for cash and prizes. So can tickets I win at the local skee-ball arcade, but I don't expect to make a living there either. I couldn't find a public list of how much various items cost in points, what the turn around time for cashing in points is, or even what items are available (other than the Xbox 360). Also, it looks like they get a fixed amount of points by severity, rather than based on the difficulty of the problem. This means the more difficult problems will be actively avoided, as the pay/hr is not worth it. I'd be seriously concerned about all of that if I was considering signing up. Of course, I rather doubt I have committer access on any of the projects they're looking for anyway.

On a side note- anyone else find it amusing that the big reward they're pimping out is an MS product?

Bollocks

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Horsecrap - I can't see that quote anywhere in TFA or openlogic's press release

The press release says in fact:

Through the OpenLogic Expert Community, OpenLogic will pay qualified experts within the open source development community to provide in-depth support for open source products.

and:

In addition to paying members of the OpenLogic Expert Community to resolve enterprise issues, OpenLogic will also contribute money for each issue resolved to a fund that will be used to help further open source efforts.

And (slightly offtopic, but put more elequontly & humorously then the usual 'blah blah, oss has noone to sue'):

"We have heard loud and clear from our larger enterprise customers, some of whom are using more than 400 open source products, that they want one throat to choke for open source support," said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic.

You sir, are a shill from one of the proprietary companies, trembling in their boots about new business models.

Re:Bollocks

[GigsVT]

1 point is $1. You get $100 for resolving an "incident" that they claim will generally take less than 4 hours.

So $25 an hour or more. Not exactly inspiring, but not bad either, especially if it was shit you were going to fix in the next release anyway.

Wow, redundant *and* wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look a bit further through their website. You'll also find the FAQ which states that these "points" can be redeemed for cash. 100+ points/incident, 1 point = $1. So if you want the cash, that's $100/incident.

Legal Agreement

[ArikTheRed]

3. Compensation. Unless otherwise covered in a separate written Addendum to this Agreement, your compensation for completing an assignment will be listed on the Committed Community website when you apply for the assignment. Compensation is subject to change by OpenLogic and any changes shall be effective when posted to the Committed Community website or provided to you via email. You are responsible for any and all taxes due on any compensation received from OpenLogic.

Wow, why didn't anyone think of this before? A compensation program that is subject to change at will... I only need to usually make my house payment anyway.

Re:Rebutting the myths

[spun]

Also does it not rebutt the myth that if you have the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself?

It proves the truth that if you have access to the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself by paying someone to do it for you. Or did you think that simply having the code automatically makes everyone a programmer? Or (more likely) are you deliberately misinterpreting this "myth" to make some snarky straw-man point? In any case, your comment made me laugh my ass off and now I need to "rebutt" myself.