---
author: ''
category: ''
date: 2010/02/22 00:54
description: ''
link: ''
priority: ''
slug: BB875
tags: marave, open source, programming, pyqt, python, qt
title: Are we really this clueless about software costs?
type: text
updated: 2010/02/22 00:54
url_type: ''
---
Here's what `Ohloh <http://www.ohloh.net/p/marave>`_ has to say about the cost of developing `Marave <http://marave.googlecode.com>`_

.. raw:: html

   <img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4376760071_4e79608a50_o.png">

Really, Marave is *maybe* a month of part-time programming. How could that possible be U$S71355, or "1 Person Years"?

Is this garbage the best we have to estimate costs? If that's the case, then whenever you see something about "Open source program X would take Y years and cost Z dollars to write", cut it down by a factor of 10 or more.

Here's what Marave really costed to develop:

* Nothing.

Ok, here's what it would have costed if I had charged for it:

I am guessing about 100 hours of my time. At my "I hope they pay me this much" rate of U$S 40/hour , that's U$S 4000, which means Ohloh is off by 1600%.

OTOH, for that much freelance work I would not charge you the full rate, I would probably end charging you more like U$S20/hour which would make Ohloh's guess over 3000% too high.

In conclusion: if you like my code (and hey, you can `see it for yourself <http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/ralsina>`_), hire me, I am incredibly cheap, or amazingly fast!