On the "co-op" thought, of course, this is not something everyone feels
comfortable to talk about in public. Please contact me in private and
we will see what may (or more likely, may not) happen.
I want to briefly mention a small experience of mine. A few years ago,
during the peak of the Linux bubble, I put a small seed money in a
start-up company. The business objective was to develop an easy to use
(Debian-based) Linux distro. It was an excellent product. But we have
to realize this cruel reality that, how can anyone survive trying to
sell something that is free and which you won't hold any intellectual
property?
With zero revenue, the two entrepreneuers quickly turned their talents
to something else. With their Linux kernel hacking experience, they
developed a thin Linux client to work with Win2K server. Having been in
the computer business for quite sometime, I told them this idea will not
go anywhere. (Microsoft's licensing scheme was based on the number of
clients that may be connected to your server; no one could legally
afford that kind of licensing fees.) Of course, they won't listen to my
advice. But what saved their butt was that Microsoft demanded $100K for
us to look at their NDA b/4 we could proceed to get Microsoft to certify
our Linux clients as Win2K compatible. This was some kind of money we
simply didn't have.
After a few more bumps, finally, they were able to design a database
package by combining PHP with PostgreSQL. The reason they chose PSQL
was that it is based on the BSD license. They have now finally found a
niche. As I mentioned previously, some of their packages are selling
for 6-figure numbers. Now Linux desktops are becoming more mature and
feature-rich, they are getting back to the Linux thin client business.
While the company is no longer in the Linux distro business, I recently
came across a very interesting product, a very compact Linux system,
that they designed for a motherboard maker. I have mentioned this to
Warren. Because of trade secret as well fiduciary duty concerns, I
never directly ask them what they are doing. But I would be very
interested in taking a look at that product when I can get a hand on it
(from the public domain, that is).
Wayne
