[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenIndiana roadmap

[DormitionSkete@hotmail.com]

On Feb 19, 2013, at 10:26 AM, James Relph wrote:

>> If you want security updates, there's no reason why some of you can't get together and start your own business offering these updates for a fee.  OI is open source.  You wouldn't necessarily have to start your own distribution, although you could do that, too.  But the code base is out there.  You can charge a fee for these services.  And if you want to be real nice, contribute the security fixes back to OI for inclusion in later releases.
>> 
>> That'd be do-able, and probably the closest to a win-win situation that you're likely to find.
>> 
>> I, personally, doubt if you could make enough money on it to make it worth your while; but perhaps you could.  
> 
> You actually wouldn't need to make enough money on it in and of itself to make it worthwhile.  If we could find developers interested then we'd actually be happy to pay a few for some work as it would help in other areas of our business.  I think there's probably a few businesses like that.  If we're making money with boxes using Oi (which we are) it makes sense for us to make Oi better.  We've not got the budget of Nexenta, Joyent etc., but we've got a bit.
> 
> The problem is finding appropriate developers, we've advertised, asked around online and at two Universities near us, and not had anyone either with any Solaris/Illumos experience, or interested in learning.  We may have found one person now interested in some contract work on specific features, but that's it!

When I said that I doubt if you could make enough money on it to make it worth your while, I probably should have elaborated.

I think there is certainly a market out there.  My concern was, and is, how much work would be involved in making it happen.  And that goes hand-in-hand with what Mr. Relph just said.  Finding people with the expertise / abilities, or willingness to learn it.  

Plus, building the infrastructure, and coming up with organizational and pricing structures that those working on it could agree on.

I was a business major in college back in the 80's.  Entrepreneurship was the big buzz-word back then.  But they also pointed out that most new businesses fail because people start businesses doing things they don't know anything about.  

I don't know the first thing about making security updates, so I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.  Somebody who knows about this already needs to be in the mix.

My niece is a guidance counselor for all of the computer science students at a midwest university.  I could get some advertisements there -- and we could certainly contact other universities -- looking for people interested in this kind of work IF we had somebody we could list for them to contact.