| My little app to monitor and assess the growth and health of trees I just planted in my backyard is a hobby app. It's just for fun. I did it for me. If you want to use it for your hobby, go ahead. When the extension office down the road wanted to use it for their cactus farm, that was fine by me. I added some stuff specific to cactii that they wanted. They added some more stuff. No big deal. It works for them, I guess. When the U.S. Forest Service expressed interest, I was surprised, but, hey, whatever. They added some features, but needed some small architectural changes for those changes to fit in. They were reasonable and easy, so it was ok. I have no idea where they use it or what they use it for, really. But if it works for them, great. This latest contact out of Brazil, though, is different. They want me to fly down there for two months and completely re-work the app to monitor the entire Amazon forest. Thousands of species and tens of thousands of monitoring stations in a giant mesh network across much of a continent. Should I ask them for a donation? OSS can be a hobby. It can be a passion consuming a lot of time and energy. And it can be a job. If it is a job, you get paid. |