Re: [squid-users] Sponsors

Its a difficult question to answer. Let me try :)

None of the currently active Squid developers work on Squid as their
day job and contribute stuff back to the project. Besides the occasional
bit of contracting/project work, we do this for love. Honest.
(I've been doing it to avoid exam studies recently, for example.)

This hasn't always been the case - Henrik and I once worked for
companies that used Squid and liked (in my case) pushing stuff back.
Duane and Alex were once funded by a research grant. None of this
is true anymore.

Squid also performs relatively poorly compared to whats available in
the commercial world today but there's been no real push until recently
in fixing that. Some other projects have spawned to be a proxy/cache
in very specific environments/very specific workloads, but Squid is
still the best at "general" workloads.

The unfortunate truth is this - its cheaper now to buy $COMMERCIAL_BOX
in small quantities than invest in a Squid developer. Larger projects
just buy more boxes as its less risky than investing in a Squid developer.
For those whom Squid "just works", it "just works" enough to setup and
leave; I think we're a victim of Henrik's crazy ability to fix bugs
as a substitute for sleep. :)

Because we've got to eat, and most of the other developers have families
etc to worry about, not a lot of time can be devoted just to doing "stuff"
for "stuffs" sake.

I think thats a good start. There are other issues but I've promised
not to talk about them all.

Personally, I'm trying to change that somewhat. I'll announce some of
what I'm doing in a few days. I'm fed up being broke and working on Squid -
something has to be done which can allow me to work on Squid, finish
university finally -and- eat. :)

Adrian

On Tue, Dec 11, 2007, Solomon Asare wrote:
> Hi,
> I realise that anytime a user request for a feature,
> the issue of someone sponsoring its development is
> brought up. Is it that squid has now lost or run out
> of developers? Or is this how open source projects
> have mainly been developed?
>
> Is it that there should be a drive for developers? Or
> a formal online donation system? Has squid lost its
> position in open source proxy/cache to some other and
> hence the developers? Or is it the drop in bandwidth
> prices?
>
> May be someone can enlighten us and suggest a way
> forward. Not all of us users are developers, but
> considering how useful squid is, we have to think of
> how to bring many more active developers to help.
>
> How easy is it to read and understand the existing
> code so that a newbie can get involved? Where does one
> start from?
>
> Thanks and Best Regards,
> solomon.

-- 
- Xenion - http://www.xenion.com.au/ - VPS Hosting - Commercial Squid Support -
- $25/pm entry-level VPSes w/ capped bandwidth charges available in WA -