<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Feb 8, 2006, at 9:45 PM, Greg Knaddison wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">On 2/8/06, Zack Rosen <<A href="mailto:zack@civicspacelabs.org">zack@civicspacelabs.org</A>> wrote:</DIV> <BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">development back to the Drupal community. The general assumption is</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">that most clients are oblivious to the mechanics of open-source</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">communities and assume that they are paying simply for an engineer to</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">develop new functionality and ignore all the time required to work</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">with the Drupal community to make sure contributions and patches are</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">accepted and merged back.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">How much time and effort is this?</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I do agree that whatever amount is spent people should consider it</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">when making a quote.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Similarly, I consider my time of sales/wrapup</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">etc. type of work that I have to do and try to roll that into the</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">price that I quote customers.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Certainly a "roll patches back into</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">core" should be included, but I imagine that as a much smaller amount</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">than the sales part of my work - is that flawed?<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>How much time is</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">really spent on this?</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>Good question. We need to figure out accurate ways of estimating this work so customers can be given accurate estimates up front. My sense is that the costs associated with getting core patches committed vs. contrib patches is going to be very different. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>My very rough guesses are...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>core patches: 20 hours community involvement X $100 an hour = $2,000 per patch</DIV><DIV>contrib patches: 10 hours community involvement X $100 an hour = $1,000 per patch</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Anyone else with more experience have more accurate guesses? </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-Zack</DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"></FONT></BODY></HTML>