> but I'm really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product that hasn't been market tested or validated Um, you mean software cons

> but I'm really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product that hasn't been market tested or validated Um, you mean software consulting? This model is beautiful. It's a bunch of email privacy advocates hiring a couple of skilled guys for a year to write the open source software we all wish existed. Seems fair to me. I'm not so entitled as to demand someone altruistically create this for me. And I explicitly _don't_ want them to make a business of it, because that changes the incentives completely.