I'm a bit hesitant about this. If we hire some of the existing
volunteers, we would partly be paying for what we now get in volunteer
time. And if we hire people from outside, will not lead that to
problems with people who do the same thing for free?
If we lose volunteer work for what we get in paid work, the price of
paid work might well be a lot higher than what it is at first sight.
Andre Engels
The issue as I see it, is that we are now asking too
much of too few volunteer
developers and none of them can be on-site at the colo. Thus I think it is the
time to consider hiring one full time or two of them part time to perform
server maintenance tasks for us that currently are not done in a timely manor
(esp the on-site stuff). Our budget is now so big ($US80,000 last quarter) that
the addition of one or two employees under contract would not be too much of a
burden. Neither would some up-front relocation money.