Re: [vox] Lugod and public schools

[Don Werve <donw@exameMAPSn.com>]

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 04:08:03PM -0700, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> YOu know, it almost sounds like a business niche just waiting to 
> be exploited... providing free Linux installs and relatively cheap 
> ongoing support on a subscription basis to non-profits and 
> not-for-profits.  Now, if only someone could figure out how to 
> make money doing it.
> 
> The support issue is the main reason why I've never sought out 
> such a project to get involved with.  

That's actually one of the goals for the business I'm starting; I'm
in the process of writing a few much-needed cross-platform desktop 
apps (in Java), some of them geared primarily at schools; the software
is to be cross-platform (runs on almost anything), and *dirt cheap*,
but with an inexpensive yearly maintenance cost.

It's not quite a "subscription" model; e.g., you can run whatever 
you want, with as many clients/installations per site as you want -- 
you just pay a few hundred bucks a year for us to keep writing patches
and adding in new non-bloaty features.  Support costs extra, and I'm
eventually going to try to get to the point where we can do on-site 
installation and training, where the end-user pays for us to come out 
and spend a few weeks training people to set the thing up and use it.

Even at $5K a week, it's *still* cheaper than an MS kit; look at the 
five-year cost of outfitting workstations with Windows, Office, 
Exchange; each workstation has a yearly software cost of about $300 
(with discounts), plus server costs (about another $200 per user per 
year), endless hardware upgrades to cope with load, and the need to 
have a horde of NT admins.  Comes to something like $140K a year 
more than a comprable Linux solution.

Which is why I'm spending my free time coding. ;)

-- 
Don Werve <donw@examen.com> (Unix System Administrator)

Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue,
Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork!
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