Which I hope will not be for a long time, but still-

I am a one person shop.  I have no backup, no other programmers.  How
can I plan ahead to help out my user group if I were to croak or become
incapacitated in some way?

I have provided users with the source code, but I wonder how useful that
would be.  They dont have programming skills and dont have the tools
that would be needed.

TIA- I have always found this community helpful.
Jerry Blumenthal

Hi Jerry

> I am a one person shop.  I have no backup, no other programmers.  How can
> I plan ahead to help out my user group if I were to croak or become
> incapacitated in some way?
>
> I have provided users with the source code, but I wonder how useful that
> would be.  They dont have programming skills and dont have the tools that
> would be needed.
>
> TIA- I have always found this community helpful.
> Jerry Blumenthal

I know what you're going through - I operated the same way for nearly 10
years!

When I first started out, I worked along side another developer. We each had
our own business but operated very closely with each other. (Sharing source,
and even sharing the development of the same project), and this worked
well - as when one went on holidays, the other could cover.

Then a couple of years later - he left! The joys started. Since then, I
averaged 1 week holiday a year, and have recently learnt that's not the way
to go.

One of the things that did help me though (I'm in a small rural town with
about a population of 15,000) is that I could cross over *some* of my stuff
with another computer company in town. Since I didn't sell PC's and do much
tech maintenance I was able to form a mutually benefitial and non
threatening relationship with another business in town.

Needless to say they didn't do any coding, but since they did look after the
clients I had - they knew a bit about the applications and were able to do
basic support for the applications when I was unavailable.

In the event of being incapacitated, I've made my source code available and
those close to me know of other Delphi programmers (including the one that
left town) that could be used to get my clients through a jam.

I don't think there's a "perfect solution" for solo operators like
ourselves. In my case, it's what the clients pay for. I can do a project for
say $20k, whereas quotes from other larger organisations with multiple
developers, etc cost them ten times as much. (And in this day and age,
there's probably no guarantee that these large companies won't go belly up -
or be around forever too!) With the savings they make, my clients believe
they're better off 'limping' through in the unlikely event if something
happens until they can get another project written, or find a Delphi
programmer to take over the project full time rather than pay the extra
amount (which would be prohibitive to most of my clients anyway).

My suggestion would be to try and find some other Delphi programmer(s)
relatively locally to yourself, and see if they'd be prepared to take over
in this situation. (Maybe you can do likewise for them). Keep your source
code safe, but in a location that's available if something bad occurs (or
like you've done - leave it onsite with your clients).

I don't know if any of this is any help - but I'll be watching this thread
to see what others have to say.

Cheers

Adam.

Hi Jerry,

It's a question that I have also pondered for some time (I'm
well into the senior citizen category).

My major app (A Church Database program) is relatively stable
and would certainly continuing working without me and
there are enough churches using it that they could form a self-help
group.

However, there are always issues that need to be addressed (federal tax
laws etc) with coding.

I'm essentially a non-profit operation (now) so I'm wondering about
open sourcing but have no idea how that would work.

In my case, I think I just have to find some Delphi savvy
folks that would pick up the code etc.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just stick around indefinitely

Jon

Jerry Blumenthal wrote:
> Which I hope will not be for a long time, but still-
>
> I am a one person shop.  I have no backup, no other programmers.  How
> can I plan ahead to help out my user group if I were to croak or become
> incapacitated in some way?
>
> I have provided users with the source code, but I wonder how useful that
> would be.  They dont have programming skills and dont have the tools
> that would be needed.
>
> TIA- I have always found this community helpful.
> Jerry Blumenthal