Debian Linux.
Hourly rates are based on the type of work to be performed. In some cases, where the project offers an opportunity to develop new skills or to significantly improve existing skills, we may offer you a discounted rate. As the market can change more quickly than this web page does, you will need to contact us to discuss your project and determine our current hourly rate for the type of work involved
For hourly rate projects, all charges are flat rate regardless of the number of hours worked in any given week (there is no overtime premium). This is of course irrelevant for fixed price projects.
For hourly rate projects, our rate at the start of the project will not be increased for the first 15 months of the job, then it will be adjusted to our current rate for new projects, but it will not be increased by more than 10% regardless of current market rates. After the initial 15 month period, rates will be reviewed and adjusted annually, but never by more than 10%, and you will always be notified of the new rate at least 30 days in advance of the increase. Should you wish to reject the rate increase, we will provide (at the old hourly rate) all support necessary to turn the project over to a new engineer for a period of up to three months. This policy is intended to be a reasonable compromise between your needs and ours. It guarantees that we won't wait until we have you over a barrel and then jack up our rates to some exorbinant level (as some of the more disreputable consultants have been known to do), but it also allows us to keep our rates from getting to far out of sync with the market place while working on a prolonged contract. Since most projects are less than 15 months, there usually will not be any increases during a project.
We also offer fixed price bids on projects. In order to perform fixed price work, we do require a formal specification be written for the project, which we can do for you at our current hourly rate. Once the formal specification has been written, we can provide you with a fixed price bid, and you can submit the specification to other companies for their bids as well. All fixed price work performed by DeaTech Research Inc. includes a one year warranty during which all design and coding errors will be corrected free of charge.
We offer discounted rates on work for non-profit organizations, depending on the nature of the work, the organization's goals and ability to pay, and our current availability to take on the project (all web pages hosted on this site for Natural Building Companies were created and hosted free of charge as part of this policy)
We will not do work for competing companies on similar products unless one of the companies is no longer in business or the work is not product specific (we will however perform work on unrelated products). If we have any doubts about possible conflicts, we will refuse the job because we would prefer to err in favor of protecting the intellectual property of our previous customers.
The initial meeting/interview is your opportunity to evaluate our ability to meet your needs. The best way for you to make this evaluation is to provide us with detailed information and any existing source code for your project in advance of the meeting. This will give us time to review your project in detail, and allow us to have in depth discussions with you regarding the project, make recommendations, and point out potential problems or other issues. There is no charge for the evaluation or the initial meeting, and we will be happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect the confidentiality of any information you may wish to provide us with.
Once your project has been completed, if we have done our job right, it should require very little ongoing support from us. In the event you do need assistance, we will be happy to answer questions and help you to resolve any problems that may occur. For hourly rate projects, follow up support requiring less than two hours per month is free, anything over two hours will be billed at our current hourly rate. For fixed price projects, all support is free for the first year after completion of the project, after the first year support is the same as for hourly rate projects.
We generally only take on one major project at a time, this way we always have some time available to provide customer support or handle follow-up projects for established customers.
For all projects, we generally provide any necessary software development tools and computer equipment, though you will need to provide any custom hardware or software you have developed, and possibly any specialized third party hardware or software required for the project as well (this is negotiable depending on the type and cost of the particular hardware/software required).
While we generally perform the majority of software development work in our office, we will be happy to come to your site when needed and for as long as is necessary for requirements gathering, project planning, design meetings, system integration, etc.. Of course, while we usually prefer to do most of the actual development work from our office, on site development at your location is certainly an option. The decision to work on site is based primarily on considerations such as: the needs of your particular project, fluctuations in the software market place, our desire to learn new skills and work on interesting projects, prior commitments to other customers, and even our desire to spend time in new and interesting places.
Some project managers have from time to time expressed concern about off site development, but it is in fact a tremendous advantage for you to have us develop your software off site. Off site development can easily shorten the project length by 25%, and save you many thousands of dollars in setup and related overhead costs. For an in depth discussion of this, we have a separate web page on the Advantages of Off Site Development.
Historically, we have generally spent one or more days on site at the commencement of a project, visit once every two to eight weeks during the project, and then make a final visit lasting from one to six weeks at the end of the project for integration and final checkout of the software. In between these trips to a customer's site, we provide regular updates by phone, and email, including archival copies of our current development working directories.
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Solar powered hosting (from our cob office building)
provided by:
DeaTech Research Inc.
using
Debian Linux based servers.
We highly recommend, use, and provide support services for
Debian Linux.
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Last Modified: April 12, 2007
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