[CS-FSLUG] Just got hit with a cluestick

[Tim Young]

Norbert,
Ok, I had a few more questions for you then.  :)

You come with a bit of an idea of what business you are interested in, you have
a skillset and focus, but no particular project?  DotGnu and new standards for
XML/SOAP could certainly be incorporated into a ton of projects...

Of the various Free Software business opportunities that I know of, you have
eliminated most of them as things that would suit your fancy.  Not that I am
trying to sell you on anything, but it helps me understand what you are
thinking of if I use an example that I am familiar with.  Part of
troubleshooting for me is to come up with "examples" that let me find processes
or areas needing work, etc.  It is how I think.

Ok, so let me throw out a possibility, and we will see if I read what you were
saying, or if I am totally off.

There is a project out there, centrallix.org, that was developed by mission
organizations but the long-term goal is that someone else will take centrallix
and turn it into a Free Software business.  Missions do not care about
centrallix except that it provides a technology that they need.  Missions want
to use centrallix as a platform to run things with, and do not want to spend
time keeping centrallix up.

Centrallix is a primarily an application deployment platform that allows one to
easily create applications that can be deployed in a single-user environment up
to a massively multi-user environment.  It has all sorts of things built into
it, like database aggregation, data abstraction layers, item inheritance (you
can have interfaces inherit a similar look and feel, but you can also apply
inheritance to data and other things), and all sorts of communication stuff.
It does have an XML engine in it, so I am sure your standards would fit right
in.  ;)  It can be interface independent, so you can develop one application
for the web and deploy it with a gtk interface, etc.

The main interface to centrallix currently, however, is the web interface.  But
the web interface has the look and feel of a normal windows application.  It
has regular tab-controls, the ability to fill in one field and automatically
have another field update without reloading the entire page, and a lot of other
things.  It allows you to deploy a web application without the clunky web
interface without using any java (the Java VM is actually too heavy for a lot
of clients internationally and causes a lot of time issues when using it over
something that is not broadband).

The primary use which missions developed centrallix was to develop an
application named Kardia (kardia.net).  Kardia is developed off a currently
existing project that is deployed in over 35 countries, using multiple
languages and currencies.  The original project ran into a whole bunch of
technological hurdles that kept it from being used remotely, serving data to
the Internet (via web or email) and some of which caused difficulties in
multi-office sharing of data.

Anyway, the quick way I describe it is as a free replacement for what people do
with Microsoft Access, without the limitations.  It has the potential to
revolutionize the way small business work.  But missions really are not
interested in keeping it up.  The hope is that some other people will take the
project and run with it, leaving missions to focus on the applications they
write in Centrallix.  (The neat thing about this particular project is that
many of the developers of it are non missionaries, and so if someone did start
a business around it, there would probably be 3 or 4 developers willing to jump
on board immediately.)  Centrallix is about 98% of the way to the first
development release.  It has one organization that is currently using it
in-house.

I am not expecting you to jump at Centrallix.  Rather I am throwing it out as a
real opportunity that will probably get a response that will help me understand
more about your thoughts as to what your Free Software business will entail.
But, of course, if you wanted to run off with Centrallix I am sure we would be
happy!

    - Tim Young

Norbert Bollow wrote:

> (snip)

> The reasons why I don't jump on this as a business opportunity are
> that (1) writing application programs is not what I want to be doing
> with my working hours, and (2) there are other areas where I expect it
> to be much easier to create a profitable Free Software business, and
> since I don't consider myself as being particular good at business
> stuff I don't want to make things more difficult for myself than I
> have to. :-)
>