I could also explain in a few paragraphs why and how your ultimate concept, the monetary evaluation gives fundamentally wrong motivations, and as side effect, makes us destroy our own habitat if we don't change it, I would say THIS year. That would be philosophy, but also useless, because it is too far out of your comfort zone to follow. So forget that.
(No offense, this is my experience in long years, the simple explanation is in the lecture - but if you also realized that the Hitchhikers' Guide is a fundamental book on philosophy, accept my apologies.)
I seem to be the one here who talks about actual technologies and lessons in IT stories, not merely repeating the "money makes the world go round" mantra (because that applies to your world, while in mine it is the laws of physics, by the way). I have spent most of the past 20 years, I go to work every day now to design and build a well-architected framework myself, not to sell or evaluate it. I don't want to be offensive with this, but I would like to draw the clear line between our roles, because that defines our experience, and therefore the concepts that we accept without arguments.
When I talk about ROI, I don't mean a system that SELLS well, but the one that SERVES well. When I talk about modularity, I mean how much we must refactor the original requirements, how much we must forget the features and focus on the architecture to make a system that survives, or better: prevents some of the change requests after release, or even in the test period ("I did not mean that!"). _I_don't_care_ that with signed specs in the contract we can make the customer pay for that garbage, and pay again for the new version because that gives our PROFIT, and that is we work for... that is what you suggest I should work for!
When I talk about platform independence, I don't mean multi-platform toolkits by giant companies or a global bunch of script kiddies, but portable concepts that I alone could implement in months, and which payed back the effort in that project alone (but could be used anywhere). When I talk about separating the concepts from sources, I don't mean UML dinosaurs and multi-language code generation but a runtime that allows me setting up the type system and the application itself in configuration files (partly typed in C#, Objective C and Java so far, the planned final version to be done in plain C). Sorry, nobody spent enough time on thinking, so I had to write it :-) Can I sell this to any consultant, get a sponsor? No way. There is no business in doing a job really well in IT (ask Microsoft about Windows XP).
Personally, I understand your change, and I understand the "product must be sold" requirement - but still I chose the harder way, because I realized that no ROI-focused projects can answer the questions I ask. This is called basic research which I do behind all actual tasks that I do. Today I can answer questions that others can't even see. Unfortunately, that makes them unable to understand it either - but now I gradually can show working elements, and that changes the situation. Sorry, I can't do the same here even if anyone would spend the time, because this is closed source. I was not good enough for universities, when I asked... and it is better in this way: the ROI and time pressure to play my games behind an actual and tough task is my dearest enemy :-D
@Edward - First of all: you always compare the "unquestionable" monetary ROI with "opinions", with slight sarcasm on the second. You seem to forget that the mere definition of real innovation is to break some rules and habits, so they are fundamentally against "common experience", and there you have nothing else but opinions. To me, your ROI concept is a fundamentally wrong opinion, but because it is globally accepted, it affects the whole world and myself. I must adapt to it to survive, but I don't let it go above this layer.
Opinions to you seem to be equally gray in the shadow of "responsible thinking" and monetary ROI, following them merely a trial-and-error story. In most cases, you are right - but true innovators are those who can find new paths, evaluate opinions, make sensible mistakes, "waste money" to get experience in the good directions. And finally, perhaps after reusing long list of previous "failures", bring up something that is marketable, and has financial ROI. This used to be called "science" - but today you don't find a university that is not fighting for money, and lost the best brains who (in their personal quest for money and holiday on Hawaii) first do their startups, and after some failures go work for "innovative companies" like Google.
In your career with giant, stable companies, it is not likely that you have ever met with true innovators, and among startups, you should check a thousand to see one. You are statistically absolutely right, this makes the world go ROUND. But please accept that I talk about the exceptions that move the world AHEAD!
