🚀 go-pugleaf

Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:

>Cygnus was
>making a big push to improve gdb to be so good that a lot of people
>would come to them for customization and support contracts for gdb
>itself, rather than only coming with a primary interest in gcc. They
>seem to think that making their open source software mcuh better at
>their own expense will be a net business win for them. Given their
>business record, I can't argue with them.

I am myself pursuing a free software project that can be turned into money
because it is connected to service. It is a system for programming
multilingual multi-format documentation in Emacs-Lisp. This (or a similar)
system could revolutionize the documentation industry, because it allows the
separation of translation from document formatting and eliminates
redundancy, thus cutting translation and maintenance costs. But this system
requires a skilled documentation programmer to apply it.  Thus, I hope, a network of
technicians who are able to apply and develop this system could develop and
finance itself by the services which their expertise allows them to render.
(see http://www.lrz.de/~phm/mlht/ for more details).

I can see that some ventures of this sort can produce business, but the key
prerequisite here is that the software creates a role for a guru to provide
services.  Most software doesn't do that.  E.g. although I made very
in-depth use of Emacs, I never had any reasons to hire an Emacs consultant.
So I still wonder how Cygnus manages and how much room for more Cygnus-like
enterprises there is on the market.

--
Hartmut Pilch
http://www.a2e.de/phm/