[vtkusers] How BIG is VTK ?

[Will Schroeder]

Interesting analysis and response. I'd like to add my 2 cents x 2.4 
overhead factor...

+ Kitware hosts vtk, but it's a community effort. A lot of folks from 
around the world have contributed (including you Tim :-) and that effort 
should not be minimized.

+ A lot of companies have contributed besides Kitware...GE has contributed 
code to the public and does the testing; and national labs like Los Alamos, 
and a whole bunch of other companies have contributed, either by paying 
Kitware for work or sending us code.

+ It constantly surprises me that people are amazed that "VTK is free." It 
turns out that there are real benefits to this approach (so our customers 
have told us) because they can build on a solid, uniform base, and then 
build proprietary extensions if necessary. (In a sense this is what Kitware 
does with it's products.) Then they don't have to worry about maintaining 
all the code, just their extensions. Also, we get resumes from some amazing 
people who are already fluent in vtk, so they can work for Kitware (or 
other companies) with little training costs. And don't forget the marketing 
exposure...the fact that applications have greater market potential than 
toolkits...So, IMHO,  the "giving it away" part actually has significant 
business benefits.

+ The average salary is too low. I think one of the interesting things 
about VTK is that some pretty senior people (not in the sense of old, but 
in the sense of experience :-) have helped create this monster. I think 
that this shows up in the overall quality of the system.

+ I'm amazed it's not more lines of code.

Will

At 07:28 PM 6/22/2001 +0100, Tim Hutton wrote:
>At 18:39 22/06/01 +0200, you wrote:
> >Total Estimated Cost to Develop                              = $ 13669078
> >  (average salary = $56286/year, overhead = 2.4).
>
>Laughing out loud at that one, VTK might cost 13 million dollars to develop
>but those nice guys at Kitware are giving it away for free. Aw...thanks
>guys. :)
>
>Great stats.
>
>Tim.
>
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