Re: [ide-dev] How to encourage contributions and what kind of contributi

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Michael Scharf <eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>
> So, what would be YOUR message if you are asked
to motivate
> a company to contribute to eclipse? What other ways than
> "personal commitment" can help eclipse?

I would say from a business perspective, they have
a dependency on this stack of technology but have no capacity to make changes
in it. So if an urgent customer problem comes up, or an important request
for enhancement, they have very limited options for addressing them. This
introduces business risk that can be mitigated by either contracting for
support or directly funding a developer to engage with the open source
community. 

One common concern with this, is that with a large
pool of open source technology they are using, where to direct that investment.
A committer tends to be highly specialized on a narrow area, but what if
they need changes in another area? What they may not realize is that there's
a sort of internal economy of good will within the committer community.
A committer is often much more willing to help out someone who is an active
committer on another project - they never know when they might need that
favor returned :) So by even investing in a single committer, it gives
leverage over a wider technology area where they can now effect change.
As a free bonus, through active engagement with the open source community,
they will gain exposure to other great open source technologies that they
might not have discovered otherwise. Discovering a new O/S technology that
solves a business problem can result in huge savings in the long term.

That's my attempt at a "German Accountant"
answer to your question ;)

John