Re: FYI: _OpenSource_ Commercial development

[Pascal Bourguignon]

> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:09:58 +0100
> From: Dennis Leeuw <dleeuw@made-it.com>
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> A couple of weeks ago there was a note about paying developers, and the
> ideas behind Open Source, which was something that sticked with me.
> 
> Since then a lot has changed for me. The company I worked for went
> broke, and in about a month or so I have a lot of free time to spend. So
> I had the idea of setting up my own company and continue the work I was
> already doing.
> 
> As a starting company one doesn't have much money to spend, and looking
> and the available Free and Open Source software, I saw a lot of the
> starters tools are missing. In fact a lot of essential business software
> is missing.
> 
> Then I remembered that there are a lot of companies on this list. And I
> have no idea about the size of them, but there are probably companies
> out there that have the same problem as I do, not enough programmers,
> not enough money and a whish-list of software they "need" to get there
> business done.
> 
> So now the solution: If we all join forces, we might be able to pay
> programmers to get certain pieces of software made. This also solves the
> food for code problem.
> 
> To see if his is a viable solution, I would like you all to ask you're
> bosses to see what kind of software they want. Do they have specific
> programs, or do they just want the GNUstep project to get to it's 1.0.0
> release?
> How much money are they willing to spend, etc.
> 
> Then I can build a list of projects and see how much money is available
> per project, and look for (a) developer(s) who want to pick up that
> project.

Effectively. For some times  I've been looking for business opensource
software that could  be used by customers in  replacement of the usual
proprietary MS-Window application.

The  problem  is  well  known.  They've  bough  a  couple  of  generic
applications for  their business  domain, and then  they ask us  to do
some adaptation or some  lumbing between their applications, but their
providers won't do it for only a couple of customers and won't provide
us with the sources to let us do the job.

Eventually, we would need the whole range of applications for small to
medium  business.   Invoices,  Accounting,  Pay Roll,  Cash  Register,
Stocks, and then applications for specific businesses.

I've had a look at  business applications available on SourceForge and
GNU,  but  there's   one  a  couple  of  them   (and  not  GNUstep  of
course). I've not looked close enought to know if we could use them as
a starting point for GNUstep applications.

One  of the  main  problems is  to  get the  collaboration of  persons
knowledgeable  in  each specific  domains.   Well,  at  least when  an
opensource  application  already exist,  it  encapsulates this  domain
knowledge and this could be used.


> Let me know what you think of it. And tell me what kind of license is
> digestable for your company to be used (BTW don't start a flame war over
> this, this is just gathering information).

LGPL, GPL or BSD.


The objective would be to  get a whole range of business applications,
that  we could integrate  into a  completely opensource  system, which
could  be proposed  convincingly to  switch from  their uncustomizable
MS-Windows applications.


Note that these users usually don't mind what the underling system and
applications are,  while they  do the job.  MS-Word is not  their main
application, and  switching to an  opensource system with  the promize
that it'll be possible to  implement any specific adaptation they need
should be easy.


-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__              (o_ Software patents are endangering
()  ASCII ribbon against html email //\ the computer industry all around
/\  and Microsoft attachments.      V_/ the world http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/
1962:DO20I=1.100  2001:my($f)=`fortune`;  http://petition.eurolinux.org/

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