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Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 01:03:55 +0100
From: Jamie Lokier <lk@tantalophile.demon.co.uk>
To: "Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@intermeta.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: BK is *evil* corporate software [was Re: New BK License Problem?]
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References: <20021005112552.A9032@work.bitmover.com> <20021007001137.A6352@elf.ucw.cz> <5.1.0.14.2.20021007204830.00b8b460@pop.gmx.net> <20021007143134.V14596@work.bitmover.com> <ao2ee1$l0c$1@forge.intermeta.de>
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Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> bk might be interesting for larger companies with software budgets in
> the six figure range and for open source. For the vast number of three
> to five developers enterprises, it's simply unreasonably priced. For
> 25k$ I get about six man months from a really good developer to work
> on <insert your SCM here>.

Larry's point is that six man months won't get you anywhere near as
good as BK.  I'm not sure how much effort Larry and his team put in,
but a hand waving guess puts it at 200 or so man months (5 years times
3 developers, I am just guessing), minus the overhead of running a
business (need to hunt for sales, follow the market etc.) which you
wouldn't have.  Let's call that 80% overhead, another hand waving
guesstimate from my experience with working in a company.

Assuming you miraculously would have no developer overhead, not even
the cost of office space, admin, accountants etc. for employing
someone, then at your really good developer rates, the correct price
is 166k$ :-)

For a small enterprise both prices are unreasonable.  Which is
precisely why you cannot afford to develop something like BK yourself
from scratch -- and unfortunately you can't afford to buy it either.

Oh you can probably _clone_ BK in 6 months though; programming's much
less work than developing the concepts behind the program.  Good luck,
btw I'd appreciate if you GPL it, thanks :)

-- Jamie


ps. From my limited experience, the hard part in writing a program
like BK isn't quantifiable in $$.  One talented and motivated
programmer probably _could_ develop BK in 6 months given all the right
environment, input, skills, motivations and history.  But their salary
is the smallest part of that.  How likely are you to _find_ a person
who's specifically interested and skilled in developing high quality
SCM systems, and who's been refining the ideas for the last 10 years?
If it's the right person, you probably don't even need to pay them,
just keep them fed and housed for the time it takes :-)

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