[consulting] Supporting core Drupal development

[Jason Flatt]

On Wednesday 08 February 2006 04:01 pm, Zack Rosen wrote:
>
> In the next year I am expecting the economy around Drupal to continue
> on it's fantastic pace. I would not be surprised if by 2007 the
> economy was well over $20M annually. My big question here in
> Vancouver is: What can we do now to make sure that some of the money
> coming into the community over the next year is put back in to
> supporting the core work that we as a community are relying on?

Maybe I'm being naive here, but I would think that as a consultant focusing on 
providing solutions using Drupal, it would be in my best interest to help 
maintain and improve Drupal, even if I were doing it in my spare time without 
any compensation.  I fully expect to be doing more for Drupal and the 
community as time goes on and as I get more familiar with Drupal, my skills 
improve and my own business takes off.

I am sure that I will have opportunities where a client will want something 
and be unwilling to return it to the community, but I believe it will be more 
likely that lots of what I create for a client could be turned back to the 
community, even if it's simply fixing bugs to get desired functionality.

I think it's great when there are companies that sponsor special projects, but 
I don't believe that those monies will actually be going toward core and 
stabilizing or improving it.  I think they will be more likely to go toward 
the contrib area of Drupal.

Again, maybe that's just me being naive, and I certainly haven't been doing 
this for the past year or two like a lot of you, but that's the way I see it.

-- 
Jason Flatt
http://www.oadae.net/
Father of Six:  http://www.flattfamily.com/ (Joseph, 13; Cramer, 11; Travis, 
9; Angela; Harry, 5; and William, 12:04 am, 12-29-2005)
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