Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Open Source Consulting

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:8/24/2000; 3:01:52 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20125 (In response to 20119)
Prev/Next:20124 / 20126

Imagine that -- you get paid to implement cool solutions, and the world works on giving you better tools.

Life as a open source consultant isn't entirely a garden of roses. ;-)

As with any sort of consulting, you have to be pretty chosy with your clients. Many organizations are too disfunctional to build custom software, and there's more than a few jerks out there.

My Mission Statement

My company does Internet software consulting, with a strong emphasis on open source. Here's my official mission statement (no kidding):

Along the way, I try to write lots of open source software. Once, I even paid somebody to write open source software, which feels great.

Consulting and Open Source

Consultants get paid for their expertise. In most industries, consultants demonstrate their expertise through good references and word of mouth.

But if you're a software consultant, you can do even better than this.

If you write some excellent software and release it as open source, you get free advertising. And if your program is customizable, modular and useful to businesses, you've just gained a valuable area of expertise.

An Example

Here's an example: Perl is useful. Perl is cool. And Perl is everywhere.

If Larry Wall enjoyed solving problems for nice people, he could spend two or three months a year doing just that. The nice people would give him plenty of money, and then he could then spend the rest of his time working on Perl.

A Good Application

Of course, if you want to make this work, you need to release a good application. Ideally, your application should be widely used, which means it should be easy to install, and easy to understand.

(Some less-than-ethical folks delibrately write horrible software, and then charge for support. This might be profitable, but it's an insult to their profession.)

If you want to attract new clients, your application should be an extensible toolkit for building new solutions. Ars Digita understands this perfectly. They have a powerful, well-documented toolkit.

...Or so goes my theory. Ask me in twelve months if you want to know how things are working out. ;-)

Cheers,
Eric



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