Re: NAND review

[Daniel Morris <danielm@eCosCentric.com>]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 10:07:47AM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> This should help avoid reinventing the wheel and hopefully make it
> cornerles and symmetric. So long as you follow the Linux development
> process, post often and early, and don't get flamed to a crisp it
> could be good advertising for eCosCentric.
> 

Did you miss the smiley off? ;-) I know that we've been too bashful and
consistently self-deprecating to raise this issue, but is interesting
that you've thought of what advertising benefit contributions make. From
a business perspective, I can see the harm that the lack of credit and
acknowledgement of contributions to eCos has made, limiting the
incentive for donations. 

Take a look at the 3.0 release announcement and pick just one example.
Now I am acutely aware of how many man-months/years eCosCentric put into
producing a coherent toolchain across the multiple host and target
architectures to help the community, to the point of turning away
business whilst we had engineers and resources working on this - but one
struggles to find reference to this effort without trawling 534
ChangeLogs or dredging threads in disparate mail-lists or examining each
commit.

eCosCentric's view has been to shrug our shoulders, ignore the trolls,
hesitate to criticise and pretty much carry on regardless, making well
reasoned contributions and at the same time building a sustainable
business so that we can lather, rinse and repeat. There's lots of stuff
that we just get on with, in the background, that is unlikely ever to
bring in any publicity, but is pivotal to the ongoing success of eCos.
However, I know from talking with engineers, managers and cohorts of
lawyers that the perceived value (and even risk) of a contribution is
often measured according to the more accessible headlines and
soundbites, rather than unrecognised deep and broad engineering. 

Perhaps making our own improvements would have greater, more immediate
and measurable benefits to the eCos community than hoping to piggy-back
on Linux's shirt-tails through guerilla marketing? ;-)

 Daniel


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  Daniel Morris - Sales & Marketing Director
  eCosCentric - The eCos and RedBoot experts
  Tel: +44 1223 245 571 - info@eCosCentric.com
  DDI: +44 1269 591 171 - danielm@eCosCentric.com