Subject: Re: [vserver] Sponsoring VServer getting up to date with mainline
From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 03:15:38 +0200

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 11:33:04AM +0100, Ed W wrote:
> 
> >Ed W wrote:
> >>Wilhelm Meier wrote:
> >>>Hi,
> >>>
> >>>is there any timeline to get the vserver patches ready for newer 
> >>>kernels than 2.6.22?   
> >>
> >>There are some development patches in the experimental dir on the ftp 
> >>site - however, the key developers would work harder if there was 
> >>sufficient sponsorship to purchase a month or so's full time 
> >>consultancy to pay for some substantial development
> >>
> >>I would be happy to foot a reasonable fraction of that bill, but I 
> >>would like to canvas to see if some others will split the cost?
> >>
> >>Anyone up for that?
> >>
> >>Ed W
> >Hi Ed
> >
> >How much are we talking about ?
> 
> OK, I wrote to Herbert a month ago to discuss the above and I will quote 
> part of his answer (without his permission - hope this is OK)
> 
> > - 5000+ EUR you have my full attention and at
> >   least a month worth of Linux-VServer development
> >   (and trust me, that's some progress  :) 

a little out of context, but no problem :)

> I am just a small business (1 person), but I would be happy to fund a 
> fraction of this.  My budget doesn't really extend to the whole price, 
> but I could tip 1-2,000 Euros into the pot (I hope that other businesses 
> might offer something similar?)
> 
> I have copied this to Herbert - I would personally be happy for him to 
> coordinate funds this if there are a few others who will contribute. 
> I don't want to get bogged down in speccing the work, but I would leave 
> the spec as "development and release of code which can be called the 
> next stable release of vserver to run on a more recent 2.6 linux kernel"

realistically thinking, we can call it vs2.4

> As an aside - I have no idea how others will look at these numbers, but 
> just as a thought: yesterday I had to buy one new licence for MS Office 
> which cost a nice £350 GBP.  Whilst there I noticed that "Office 
> Ultimate" (whatever the hell that is) is > £500 !  The Vista ultimate 
> licence which actually allows you to re-install it (non OEM) is around 
> £350 ish...  Now my point is not about MS licencing prices, or whether I 
> could get them cheaper elsewhere, but the point that really we can hire 
> developer for a significant period of time to advance this project for 
> about the price of 4-5 desktops with a fully loaded retail copy of Vista 
> and MS Office - I don't know about you, but I have a lot more than 4 
> servers running vserver  code...

but for that money you get first class support around
the clock and ... hmm, wait a minute :)

best,
Herbert

> Ed W