[sdiy] Secrets [Was: Discrete OTA]

[Paul Maddox]

> On 11 April 2014 01:36, Neil Johnson <neil.johnson71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Even if, as I have done above, we assume that human time is free,
>> hardware development costs real money out of your pocket.  Software
>> development doesn't.
> It doesn't _now_.
sorry, I disagree with both of you.
Software development *does* cost money
lets look at the cost of a compiler, a good one can be £2000 per seat.
So say you have two developers, there's £4K.
Next you'll need a couple of development platforms, say £1K a piece.
Now it's going to take time for the software developers to get up to 
speed on your platform and the task at hand, good programmers say two weeks.
based on £10 an hour, two developers, 40 hours a week, there's another 
£1600.

Say the work takes 3 months, including integration and test, that's £9600.

so, cost of your software development - £17200.

remind me of how this is "zero cost" for software development.

Software isn't zero cost, but it has a much lower "direct" cost.
Where software does score is that to reproduce it requires almost zero cost.

Paul