On Feb 19, 2013, at 10:26 AM, James Relph wrote: >> If you want security updates, there's no reason why some of you can't get >> together and start your own business offering these updates for a fee. OI >> is open source. You wouldn't necessarily have to start your own >> distribution, although you could do that, too. But the code base is out >> there. You can charge a fee for these services. And if you want to be real >> nice, contribute the security fixes back to OI for inclusion in later >> releases. >> >> That'd be do-able, and probably the closest to a win-win situation that >> you're likely to find. >> >> I, personally, doubt if you could make enough money on it to make it worth >> your while; but perhaps you could. > > You actually wouldn't need to make enough money on it in and of itself to > make it worthwhile. If we could find developers interested then we'd > actually be happy to pay a few for some work as it would help in other areas > of our business. I think there's probably a few businesses like that. If > we're making money with boxes using Oi (which we are) it makes sense for us > to make Oi better. We've not got the budget of Nexenta, Joyent etc., but > we've got a bit. > > The problem is finding appropriate developers, we've advertised, asked around > online and at two Universities near us, and not had anyone either with any > Solaris/Illumos experience, or interested in learning. We may have found one > person now interested in some contract work on specific features, but that's > it!
When I said that I doubt if you could make enough money on it to make it worth your while, I probably should have elaborated. I think there is certainly a market out there. My concern was, and is, how much work would be involved in making it happen. And that goes hand-in-hand with what Mr. Relph just said. Finding people with the expertise / abilities, or willingness to learn it. Plus, building the infrastructure, and coming up with organizational and pricing structures that those working on it could agree on. I was a business major in college back in the 80's. Entrepreneurship was the big buzz-word back then. But they also pointed out that most new businesses fail because people start businesses doing things they don't know anything about. I don't know the first thing about making security updates, so I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Somebody who knows about this already needs to be in the mix. My niece is a guidance counselor for all of the computer science students at a midwest university. I could get some advertisements there -- and we could certainly contact other universities -- looking for people interested in this kind of work IF we had somebody we could list for them to contact. _______________________________________________ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list OpenIndiana-discuss@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
