Juha Kumpulainen wrote:

Hello

We are building scalable email service with web-access to IMAP-backend. Initial system is for 50k users and expandable with 50k blocks.

Roundcube looks most promising candidate as web-client, but we anticipate that RC roadmap wont match exactly with ours, so we are looking for experienced roundcube developers to make some modifications in coming months.

Terms would be roughly:

• new features/files remains under GPL and returned to community,

to be merged in official source if applicable

• compensation agreed case-by-case, either lump sum per feature or

hour compensation

One feature we are looking for is search, no specs yet, however.

If you are interested this kind of development please reply to juha.kumpulainen@gmail.com

Thanks for great product!

Juha

1.) Why would you want to "buy" a developer? Hire a free-lancer if you want implemented features. Also, the development of Roundcube is slow as it is, and you'd detract from the speed of development by having a developer work for you.

2.) If you're implementing this on such a huge level, don't you think you should wait for a non-beta software to be used? I mean, do you really expect 50k users to use it every day and not have issues? And why pre-beta software? That's one of the craziest thing I've ever heard. You're setting yourself up to fail.

3.) The search function is already implemented in the CVS versions. So that's one feature down.....

On Fri, 12 May 2006 08:52:34 -0400, Brett Patters - Roundcube Forum Admin brett@roundcubeforum.net wrote:

<SNIP> > 1.) Why would you want to "buy" a developer? Hire a free-lancer if you > want implemented features. Also, the development of Roundcube is slow > as it is, and you'd detract from the speed of development by having a > developer work for you.

The way I read the message, he *is* looking for a freelancer, anyone experienced with RC development - not necessarily one of the core developers. It's reasonable to expect that the dev list would be one of the best sources of locating such people.

This wouldn't mean slowing down anything, and in fact may speed up some areas. It was noted that the GPL will be honored and all changes made public. I don't see this as any different from a company paying one of their in house developers to do the same thing - except that the changes will be publicly available instead of kept in house.

2.) If you're implementing this on such a huge level, don't you think you should wait for a non-beta software to be used? I mean, do you really expect 50k users to use it every day and not have issues? And why pre-beta software? That's one of the craziest thing I've ever heard. You're setting yourself up to fail.

Fail or not, that's their choice I suppose. I would assume (yes I know what happens when one assumes) that they have done some kind of testing to verify RC will work for them. If not, and things break, then maybe they can incorporate some fixes to improve reliability and scalability.

3.) The search function is already implemented in the CVS versions. So that's one feature down.....

Just my own opinion, but I think that the fact this person is willing to pull from within the RC community and maybe help someone pick up a bit of extra cash is a *good* thing. This same situation is not uncommon in other projects, and more often than not has been a plus. If they are coming into this fully aware of the current state of RC, then what's the harm?