Re: Fw: Question about how to make a living from open source
Hi Shlomi, As always, thanks for the comprehensive tips. A big question that troubles me is if you have to always incorporate for a cloud/on premise business. The last incorporation (i am now closing) was costly but the lawyers keep pushing you to incorporate (hopefully not from a self serving interest). On one hand, I am currently an independent and I would prefer to stay this way until the cash justifies an incorporation. OTOH, I want to keep my bank account safe from law-suites as much as possible. Would love to hear comments about this... Thanks! On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:50 AM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@gmail.com wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Shlomi Fish shlo...@shlomifish.org Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:49 AM Subject: Fw: Question about how to make a living from open source To: shlo...@gmail.com Begin forwarded message: Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:48:01 +0300 From: Shlomi Fish shlo...@shlomifish.org Cc: linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il Subject: Re: Question about how to make a living from open source Hi Tzahi, On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:15:40 +0300 tzahi ml tzahi...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I am in need of assistance. I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company. However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and promotion is out of the question :) ). Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale. I've written about some business models for web-based publishing here: https://plus.google.com/+ShlomiFish/posts/MRLntf3xu5Y Some of them have correspondence to open source. See: Alternative profitable business models for Web-based commerce. This is a list of 5 business models for web-based commerce that do not require depending on advertising: 1. Collect donations or ask for money for public appearances in advance - see https://plus.google.com/+ShlomiFish/posts/GUpTuA6641x . 2. The Flickr model - charge people for a premium model. 3. The Bandcamp/Humble-Bundle model - pay what you want (people can be very generous). 4. The cloud model - pay for hosting or a MMORPG account (World-of-Warcraft/etc.) or whatever. 5. Pay to liberate - collect money to make a CC-by-nc-sa work CC-by/etc. 6. Sell merchandise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZove4OTtI . 7. One can also set up non-intrusive ads like those provided by http://projectwonderful.com/ , but I doubt they'll be profitable. Another suggestion I can give you is to work a lot on publicity, social networking, etc. - both in real life and in Internet-based social media venues. See: http://www.reddit.com/r/Objectivism/comments/2c1fue/the_importance_of_human_networking/ A chauffeur with whom I stroke a conversation at a McDonalds restaurant close to Heathrow airport in London told me he now gets most of his customers from social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter. The newfound possibilities from real-life and electronic social networking are very much reflected in stories here: * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Buffy/A-Few-Good-Slayers/ There are plenty of online communities for various topics on the Internet. Find some of them that you are interested in and contribute to them. There are Reddit subreddits, wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia wikis, etc.), IRC channels on Freenode/etc., Facebook groups and pages, Twitter feeds, mailing lists, etc. and you should be able to contribute to some of them. The greatest threat for any business is obscurity. You may also wish to invest some money in buying ads, commercials, promotions or whatever - nothing wrong with that and this money may be well worth it in publicity. Finally note the Carpe Diem / He who saved one man has essentially saved the world entire principle - don't try to maximise your audience immediately. Invest time in each and every friend and recipient: * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#carpe_diem Finally, I should note that your English does not sound idiomatic (although I admit I heard much worse). You should work on improving it. See my advice for how to do that here: * https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/hackers-il/conversations/messages/5143 Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Beginners Site for the Vim text editor - http://vim.begin-site.org/ God helps them that help God help them. — http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66017.html Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ What does “Zionism” mean? - http://shlom.in/def-zionism Harry: Mr. Mumford, I hereby propose my friend, the beautiful Hermione. Hermione: Ahem… actually I kinda have a bad hair day today, so I think your assistant should be the beautiful Harry (Potter!) here. Harry
Question about how to make a living from open source
Hi All, I am in need of assistance. I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company. However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and promotion is out of the question :) ). Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale. One of the ideas that were given to me is to compile couchbase or postgres and distribute the binaries with a support license. Find 4-5 customers which pay big bucks and make a living. Though, not much scale there either, unless i start taking employees... Another idea is taking employees but people in the business are telling me i am better off staying a freelancer than taking employees. Not sure what is true here. One other idea I had is hosting complex solutions for sites. Like postgresql couchbase etc... which is difficult for the average joe and making it scale like heroku etc... Can someone give me a clue? Thanks! Tzahi Fadida. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Question about how to make a living from open source
It appears not to sound that fun when you tell it like it is. I am just closing a startup, not too keen to start a new one right away. A startup has no business sense. However, I was hoping there is a middle ground, a business sense and a certain risk. The current idea I have is to freelance until I figure this out. Perhaps mix freelancing and a making a risky business. Is there some freelance/small company names with successful models in open source in Israel? It is hard to believe there is no middle ground, either freelance, be employed or start a startup. I have no trouble with slow progress but the aim is to scale eventually... On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 4:00 PM, David Suna da...@davidsconsultants.com wrote: On 09/18/2014 02:56 PM, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2014, tzahi ml wrote: Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:15:40 +0300 From: tzahi ml tzahi...@gmail.com To: linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il Subject: Question about how to make a living from open source Hi All,I am in need of assistance. I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company. However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and promotion is out of the question :) ). Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale. A different way to say the same thing: You can choose to be an employee in which case your earning potential is limited to what the current market value of someone with your skill set is. Doesn't scale but does provide you with benefits, a guaranteed salary and a corporate culture for advancement. Or, you can choose to work for yourself. This have several variations: 1. Working as a contractor - Generally this allows you to charge a higher hourly rate. The down side is you have to provide your own benefits, accounting, etc. You also lose the stability of it being someone else's job to generate work for you. This also does not scale as you are limited to the number of hours a day you can work and the going market rate for the skill set you have. 2. Produce a product - Build a better mouse trap and sell it. This is not necessarily in line with the open source way of doing things. However, it is a common business plan. This has the potential to scale as you can develop the product once and sell it many times. You have the significant risk of startup and development costs and whether the product will be successful. 3. Provide a service - Along the lines of the idea you suggested of hosting complex solutions. This is similar to being a contractor but the focus is on marketing the service you provide rather you and your skill set. This only has the potential to scale by having other people (employees or contractors) provide the service in the name of your company. Your profit is the cost you can charge the client minus the cost of the worker actually doing the work. You also take on the responsibility of generating enough work to cover the costs of the worker(s) and yourself. With all of the joys that Yonatan described in his email. -- David Suna da...@davidsconsultants.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Question about how to make a living from open source
Hi Aviram, As it is an email, it is difficult to convey details and it can be confusing. I am not restricting anything, but since this is a linux/open source mailing list I asked it with this subject. I worked on proprietary code for the last 8 years so I have no problem with proprietary or open source. I do think there are merits to start with an open source project since it is a good starting point (otherwise you start from scratch). Also, I am not saying I am restricted to writing open source code. I would like to create a product (as i wrote earlier i just closed my 2nd or 3rd startup depends how you look at it) eventually but I am trying to be realistic. Start again more slowly. Starting again from scratch: I am currently a freelancer by choice. This is my first time I have worked this way. I am actually being payed well but I do want something which scales and sustainable in the future and that will be turned into a company (somehow), preferably self funded by effort instead of investments. I am not looking to make big bucks but to have more control of the direction it takes. I worked for huge companies which wasted my time by writing the same thing over and over for stupid reasons. I got payed well but I feel I can do more. I am looking for an advise to jumpstart. A place to start. Naturally, my first thought was ask in this mailing list since there are people with open source and business experience here. Perhaps there is a sustainable specific format with other companies examples etc... Everyone says, don't take employees, don't start a startup, don't be independent, don't do that, don't do this. But what can I do?... :) I guess this is too general and I should be more specific but this is my current state so I am telling it as it is. I can write about my attempts but I don't have any definite direction at this time so I am not sure they are relevant. On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Aviram Jenik avi...@jenik.com wrote: It's not clear (at least, not to me) what you're asking. You want something that has no risk, does not require too much hard work, but pays well. And then you want to further restrict the search space of this invisible universe to open source only. How is that middle ground? Decide which of these constraints you're willing to free, and perhaps people can help you with some experience. If there was an open source way to make money easily with no risk and little work I promise you we wouldn't be telling you about it since we would be too busy drinking cocktails in our in our own private island in the Caribbeans. On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 10:27 PM, tzahi ml tzahi...@gmail.com wrote: It appears not to sound that fun when you tell it like it is. I am just closing a startup, not too keen to start a new one right away. A startup has no business sense. However, I was hoping there is a middle ground, a business sense and a certain risk. The current idea I have is to freelance until I figure this out. Perhaps mix freelancing and a making a risky business. Is there some freelance/small company names with successful models in open source in Israel? It is hard to believe there is no middle ground, either freelance, be employed or start a startup. I have no trouble with slow progress but the aim is to scale eventually... On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 4:00 PM, David Suna da...@davidsconsultants.com wrote: On 09/18/2014 02:56 PM, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2014, tzahi ml wrote: Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:15:40 +0300 From: tzahi ml tzahi...@gmail.com To: linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il Subject: Question about how to make a living from open source Hi All,I am in need of assistance. I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company. However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and promotion is out of the question :) ). Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale. A different way to say the same thing: You can choose to be an employee in which case your earning potential is limited to what the current market value of someone with your skill set is. Doesn't scale but does provide you with benefits, a guaranteed salary and a corporate culture for advancement. Or, you can choose to work for yourself. This have several variations: 1. Working as a contractor - Generally this allows you to charge a higher hourly rate. The down side is you have to provide your own benefits, accounting, etc. You also lose the stability of it being someone else's job to generate work for you. This also does not scale as you are limited to the number of hours a day you can work and the going market rate for the skill set you have. 2. Produce a product - Build a better mouse trap and sell it. This is not necessarily in line with the open source way of doing things. However, it is a common business plan. This has the potential to scale as you can develop the product once and sell it many times
Re: Email To SMS
In the past i wrote a script called pop2sms that used ICQ to send sms messages when i got an email. ICQ has limitations like 20 if you do not reply by sms etc... you'll have to investigate what are these limitations. If you want the script contact me in private to tzahi28 at gmail dot com. 2011/6/17 jonah wolf jo...@voolf.com In the US, many cell providers provide you with an email address that sends messages to your cell phone via SMS. In Israel this doesn't seem to be the norm. Can anyone recommend a solution that will either provide me with an email address that goes to SMS or alternatively an email to SMS gateway that works with an Israel mobile #. Thanks ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
[OT] - JOB OFFER - JAVA Enterprise - Senior and Prinicipal
Hi All, I haven't posted to this list for a long time so I hope i am not breaking any list rules. At my company (CA) we are looking for 2 positions of a java enterprise developer, Senior level and Principal developers. The location is Herzeliya. If you are looking for a job, please contact me in private to my private mail tzahi28 at gmail.com Thank you for your patience. Here is the description for the senior. For the principal i will give in private. Sr Software Engineer • Experience - at least 4 years of JAVA/J2EE development. • JSP,JSF, Hibernate • Knowledge in Oracle, MS-SQL • B.Sc in computer science or similar. • Familiar with at least one of WebSphere, JBOSS,WebLogic o Personal qualities • Self starter and fast learner ( a person who could study a new application fast) • Creative person • Good English • A person who could differentiate between the main and the subsidiary. • Independent but able to work in a team • Hard worker - a person with energy who works fast ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
