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Selling FOSS – most customers don’t care if its FOSS or proprietary – they just want to get the job done. So its easy to pitch to small/medium scale business. The low-up front costs is useful, and think about the insurance aspect (i.e. Others can work on it, even if you exit the industry).
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So, today was the OSIA Melbourne meeting. It was most fun. Met lots of people, had interesting conversations. Kudos to Donna for organising it, and all those who came to dinner and drinks, much fun was had. I wrote notes down from the talk, but it looks like Paul Fenwick and Jacinta Richardson had already written a paper on Starting an Open Source Business. They both run Perl Training Australia. Not one to throw away notes, the following are my random scraps from the talk. Also to note, Paul is a most interesting speaker!
Paul’s elevator pitch? All his course notes (and talks) are available online. I did this for my OpenOffice.org stuff, so this kind of thing, greatly interests me. Kudos to Perl Training Australia, for having such foresight.
Let the notes begin…
Paul isn’t covering moonlighting, big business (where you have VC money). The focus is an open source consultancy (small business, easy to start up).
Systems administration is covered. You don’t even need to write open source software. Training? Support?
Selling FOSS – most customers don’t care if its FOSS or proprietary – they just want to get the job done. So its easy to pitch to small/medium scale business. The low-up front costs is useful, and think about the insurance aspect (i.e. Others can work on it, even if you exit the industry).
His first business, at university, was there to support his hobbies. Just odd jobs for IT buddies, some Html, and C under Linux. Then he learned Perl for Web/CGI, and before he knew it, he started his own business. As a sole trader, he was also a university tutor, and enjoyed tutoring, and the pay was peanuts in general. Eventually he got a real job, and he realised that having a real job sucks! (long hours, commute times, boring work, deadlines, not learning new things)
He then looked at consulting friends, and they earned $100/hour. He then thought, to earn $50,000 a year, he’d only need to work 2 hours per day (!). So, he started a second business… Full Story |
