> But what about the carrot? Do we need an X PRIZE (see
> http://www.xprize.org/) as a carrot for a next generation catalog?
> Don't get me wrong - Evergreen is great, Koha is great, other open
> source library catalogs are great, commercial products are great. We
> have competition, but we need more of it. People don't work for free,
> they need to pay the bill while they work and have something to strive
> for besides the brief notoriety of some original, creative work - like
> prestige, the fun of competition and yes, money.
I think the "X Prize" will in real life translate to key seed money from
major grant sources. Thus, which product "wins" will depend on the ability
of that project to win the hearts and minds of key grant awarders... which
in turn relies at least in part in how well they have caught the imagination
of the profession.
I'm not trying to be cynical... it's just that in terms of realistic amounts
of money to support this kind of development, we're not talking what we
could gin up with PayPal of an afternoon.
K.G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.com
Received on Thu Apr 26 2007 - 10:14:39 EDT