Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:7720 comp.unix.wizards:9564 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!calgary!dataspan!kratz From: kratz@dataspan.UUCP (Geoff Kratz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Question about value of a source licence Summary: Should have mentioned what we do Keywords: source licence, suns, money Message-ID: <231@dataspan.UUCP> Date: 21 Jun 88 14:09:30 GMT References: <229@dataspan.UUCP> <2439@quacky.mips.COM> Distribution: na Organization: DataSpan Inc., Calgary AB Canada Lines: 40 In article <2439@quacky.mips.COM>, dce@mips.COM (David Elliott) writes: > You really haven't provided a lot of background. ... > David Elliott dce@mips.com or {ames,prls,pyramid,decwrl}!mips!dce Sorry, you're right. Our department (R&D) is primarily concerned with developing new software systems. We are currently working on a system to scan a document (maps at the moment) using a high-res scanner (Scitex laser scanner) and creating a boundary chain from the raster file. We then extract the medial axis from this file to produce the vector file. This is processed by people to add contour information (elevation and feature codes) plus any other useful info (this is the data capture departments area). The resulting file is converted to any number of formats (IGES, SIF) for a client. Included in this are a raster editor to clean the raster file and extract the parts we need, and a vector editor to manipulate the vector files. Our main goal for getting the source is to gain some insight into the system itself (the documentation enhancement you mentioned). For me specifically, that means actually see what happens in the low-level windowing (the documentation seems to be sparse or missing in places). A secondary goal is to make things easier for system admin internally (my other job around here). Our user-base (half technical, half non-technical) always wants to know "why it isn't working" when things break, and our manager is not always happy with vague answers to wierd problems. Pointing to a line of code (even though he doesn't know what it means) and saying "there!" would make things simpler for me and show them that I could (maybe) fix it, but shouldn't because that would mean re-fixing each release until Sun fixed it themselves (you also mentioned this regarding system hacks). The source isn't all that crucial for this aspect, but it sure would help. But, as I said before, our management would like to see some "revenue" created directly because of the licence (you know, money for money) and our department's arguments alone aren't sufficient. -- Geoff Kratz Dataspan Technology Inc. Ph:(403) 237-9313 400-540 5th Av SW Calgary Alberta Canada T2P 0M2 "Hey, no problem!" ...!{ubc-vision,mnetor}!alberta!calgary!dataspan!kratz