[consulting] Staying Current

[Fred Jones]

> For example, a client came to me and wanted view data in a way that wasn't
> right for Views.  I just added it to my custom module and it did exactly
> what that client wanted. And it was done the Drupal way.   It took me a
> couple of hours.   I guess I could have built a new Views module -- that no
> one else would have ever used -- and charged 10 times as much.

Precisely. Alex has a good point that releasing code can lead to
others assisting to support it, but firstly that's a big MAYBE,
meaning maybe someone will and maybe someone won't.

Secondly, for modules where you can be very reasonably certain that no
one in the world will have any interest in, there is very little
reason to release the code, especially when that will involved extra
development to generalize it.

I can speak for myself that I am a relative newcomer to Drupal, as in
I never used D4. So while, Alex, you may speak harshly about people
selling "crap" (to use your word) or "misleading clients," the truth
may well be that developers embraced Drupal because it's a great
platform and simply weren't aware that support for D5 would be
dropped.

I certainly wasn't aware of it. I would not describe myself as a
person who sells "crap" nor intentionally misleads my clients either.

> In short: you are hiding costs, not lowering them, and that doesn't help non-profits any more than for-profits.

I disagree. I think you didn't understand Sam. I think he wrote a
simple SQL call and a simple loop to display data, as opposed to
writing a Views plugin module. For me at least that certainly would be
FAR easier, then learning how to write a Views plugin.

Fred