[consulting] Costs of forking

[Javier Linares]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 11:21:07PM -0800, Boris Mann wrote:
> I just don't get it....structure your contracts so you include this as
> part of your pricing, but make it invisible to the customer. ie. -- your
> internal estimate is 50 hours for a module, add 20% for patch/community
> interaction time, and show external estimate of 60 hours.
> You *could* make it very transparent as Zack has suggested, but I suspect
> that this would increase the sales cycle and lead down the road of lots
> more questions.

I agree Boris. I suppose most of us charge our customers things they assume
they're paying but they don't want to know. :) Creating and sending the
invoice, time to go and pay taxes or the hardware you change every few
years.

I think contributing back to the comunity is similar to R+D. It is
something all customers want you to do, and do well, but no one wants to
pay that or know they're paying that.

Same applies to the time you need to learn PHP or to learn how Drupal makes
one thing or another. Sooner or later, I think when you sell solutions
based on Drupal that go behind a standard site with a contact form, you
need time to learn more about Drupal.

-- 
Javier Linares