Subject: The Soul of a New Company

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 15:14:00 +0300

Howdie,

Here's a little rant I wrote about a possible business model for
companies that want to give the full rights to the software to their
customers (not neccisarily in the Stallmanish GPL sense):

http://firstpost.org/#1032335162

Feedback is apreciated.

Gilad.

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
http://benyossef.com

"Too many journalists think that C4I really stands for Inteligence,
 Communication, Control, Computers and Consiparcy."

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 15:55:05 +0300

> customers (not neccisarily in the Stallmanish GPL sense):

Interesting. I remember you bringing up this concept on linux-il (I think)
a few months ago.

One comment I have is that the "law practice" framework you describe can
only work (I'm guessing - it's not like I was ever involved in any law
practice) in a very small company, say not more than 5 or 10 people. I doubt
that there could be a law practice of 1,000 people (for a software company
this is not considered huge) where you'd still not have managers (people
devoting 100% of their time to business and 0% to law [programming])
secretaries, and the rest of the dreaded overhead you see in the typical
hitech companies.

I believe your law practice analogy has another interesting consequence.
In a law practice (at least the kind I see in the movies) you have a
relatively-large number of "partners" and the aim of the rest of the
lawyers is to become a "partner". When you become a partner, it basically
means you own a part of the company, you're no longer just a hired hand.
There is no one "above" you in the heirarchy, and noone can tell you "you
must do this, because I said so". I was rather shocked when I heard
something along these lines (using different words) from one of my current
bosses - it was almost my last at this work.

Anyway, I wonder, is this a fishing expedition for partners for your new
idea? Any chance of opening the "practice" around the Haifa area? :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Wednesday, Sep 18 2002, 12 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Live as if you were to die tomorrow,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |learn as if you were to live forever.

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 16:47:02 +0300

> bosses - it was almost my last at this work.

This is 100% absoultly the intent and it also somewhat answers your
previous question - there might be 'managers' if/when the company is big
enough, but they will work for the 'senior hackers' and not the other
way around.

> idea? Any chance of opening the "practice" around the Haifa area? :)

Yes! This idea viablity will live and die on the quality of the people
invovled. I am very much fishing for partners and geographic location is
not a problem, if the person is right. Need I grovel and say that I
consider you worthy? :-)

Gilad.

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 16:58:30 +0300 (IDT)

> customers (not neccisarily in the Stallmanish GPL sense):

i have ben thinking about this type of work for a while (when you work for 
5 years in a company that runs projects on behalf of clients - you always 
have this itch 'why do i work for them, instead of work for me?'), and i 
couldn't find good answers to the following questions:

1. the boredom factor - its very hard to get interesting projects. 
   companies mostly outsource stuff they don't want to do internally.
   the exception is the hardware-only companies (or any company not 
   dealing with software). with them - you feel you're dealing with "the 
   side show" - you never do the realy important stuff. and that often 
   shows.

2. the boredom factor - once you did a project of some kind, if your 
   client is satisfied, you begin getting more projects of this kind. it 
   becomes repetitive.

3. the 'authority' factor - you have to like working under someone else's 
   authority. the client tells you what to do directly, and sometimes on 
   almost every move. not all clients are like that - but enough are.
   this authority problem happens also in traditional companies - but is 
   more controlled, to an extent. you have too large disagreements with 
   your bosses? you can quit. you can hardly do that when you have big 
   disagreements with your client - the commitment is larger here.
   you also have a stronger ability to interview your future bosses - and 
   decline to accept a job offer if they failed your interview. much 
   harder to do that with clients (thought it is do-able).

4. the selling factor - you need to _like_ socializing with strangers and 
   dancing the 'you want me' dance. and quite often, they don't want you,
   and you have to learn to live with that. and thus you need to spend 
   quite some time on that - especially if most projects you get are 
   short. the shorter the projects are - the more time you need to spend 
   on finding new clients.

5. the financing factor - all partners in the firm have to have good 
   financing - to get over the times 'beteween projects', and to allow 
   them to build some software infrastructure that will help them deliver 
   future projects faster.

6. clients don't give much about software quality - often potential 
   clients don't understand much about software quality, or simply don't 
   give a damn, because "if it sort of works, that is good. especially if 
   its cheap. and we won't buy it if it costs a plenty". they don't 
   realy care about it being maintainable in the future ("what? we won't 
   change anything in it in the future - or we'll start from scratch if 
   we realy get clients for this") thus, you spend time to make your 
   software better, and eventually lose future contracts to software 
   houses that don't care about quality - only about a low price. and you 
   later on see those lost contracts not getting delivered, and still the 
   original bider does not return to you - they just bite their lip and 
   keep waiting for the promised software to work - after all, they have 
   their own "unexpected delays", so the deadline they set to the software 
   being delivered is found to have been artificial.

by the way, you left an open hole through which commercial software 
companies can work - new products in new fields. a new commercial company 
_can_ work on a new thing for a few years and make money out of it, and 
when it gets comodotized - disband, and go working on soemthing 
completely different. the problem is that this need to be planed in 
advance somehow - you need to still keep a core of the company in order to 
support existing clients - and need to put some money in store in order to 
finance this - or otherwize, sell the client base and support contracts to 
another company, that didn't get the clue yet ;)

-- 
guy

"For world domination - press 1,
 or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 18:52:26 +0300 (EET DST)

Gilad shared with us his thoughts and observations about how to turn a
profit by spending time on software development.

Since he gave the analogy of law firms, I couldn't help trying to
visualize a software house which corresponds to the law firm in that TV
series.

Richard Fish - the methodology gury, usually does not actually write code.
  But he does stress doing things the right way (not in PHB sense, but in
  hacker sense).
Ally McBeal - the brilliant female hacker.  Her code is mixture of
  brilliancy - both in getting the job done, and in the quality of bugs
  which go into it.
"Biscuit" - would be the type who does not think twice of embedding a
  string representing a Scheme script into an assembly language device
  driver, and invoking Guile from it.

Other participants - left as homework.

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:04:15 +0300 (EET DST)

One possible way of turning a big profit on Free Software, is to be expert
on a particular big software package.  People would then turn to you and
utilize your expertise rather than invest 2-3 years mastering the software
package by themselves.

Until some bright and mad scientist develops a method to duplicate, inside
another brain, the contents and wiring of brain neurons in one brain, the
time spent mastering a well-used software package would be an effective
barrier of entry.  Yet, because this is Free Software, the barrier is not
impenetrable.

In fact, companies used to make the source code of big packages available
to their customers (to read and integrate with, not necessarily to
modify).  Even Microsoft provided the source code of its MFC.

An example of a business using this model:  Cygnus - the experts of gcc
and of the arcane art of porting it to new processor architectures.

Another approach, which might work for a while:

Accumulate a database of test cases for testing, validating and qualifying
a software package.  Offer to test new versions of the software package
for a very nice fee.

This model exploits a loophole in GPL (which probably cannot be plugged):
if you create a test case to test GPLed software, you don't have to
release it to the customers of the GPLed software.

Then if someone needs to modify a GPLed software package (perhaps to fix a
bug), he will have to run regression tests on it to ensure that he didn't
break anything else.  Then he'll have to turn to you and pay you to run
your secret tests on the software.

Such an approach would work until someone develops a GPLed database of
test cases for the software package in question (such databases exist for
Linux, if I am not mistaken).
                                             --- Omer
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:24:01 +0300

> couldn't find good answers to the following questions:

Thanks for your insights, Guy. The difference between you and me (and perhaps
Gilad, I don't know his background) is that you actually did consulting
(a.k.a. outsourcing) for a few years as your main job; For me, consulting
never accounted for more than, say, 10% of my income, and I never had to
search for such gigs, so obviously I do not have your experience.

After reading Guy's insights, I thought of some problems in the law-practice
analogy. Gilad, care to comment on the issues below?

Here is the problem I see with the analogy: Guy said that only (or mostly)
the most boring jobs came to them, because companies usually have in-house
programmers doing the interesting stuff for them. You also get a lot of
small jobs because, again, companies tend to do the big jobs in-house.
All this does not happen with lawyers: most companies do not have in-house
lawyers, and when they need to (say) sue they contact a law firm. So
law firms get also the biggest and most interesting cases, not just the
petty cases (obviously, if you're an unknown startup firm, you will get
just the petty cases).

A related problem with the analogy is that individuals who needs law services
usually has to hire a lawyer. You cannot buy a shrink-wrapped compact-disk
of a litigator which you'll play for the judge, or some sort of software
to check your apartment contract or divorce settlement.
The situation with software is completely different: individuals *can*
buy shrink-wrapped software (or download some for free) and don't need
to hire a programmer to write one for them. In the rare cases when an
individual wants to hire someone to explain how to use some software,
little is at stake (unlike the apartment contract or divorce settlement,
or worse, a criminal prosecution) so the individual is not likely to pay
thousands of shekels like he does to a lawyer. More likely he'll want to
pay the next-door kid 50 shekels to solve the problem. This is not the
clientelle you can build a software "practice" on, if your partners expect
to make at least 100 shekels an hour...
Another relevant note that there are also laws that say that for some
purposes you *must* hire a qualified lawyer. There are no laws saying that
you must have a software engineer install your operating system for you...

So unlike law firms, a consulting company apparently is not likely to get
really big and interesting projects, nor is it likely to get the business
of individuals. I hope that leaves enough business for such a company to
be a viable idea...

Of course, in the future, what I wrote might change. Individuals might
get used to getting software for free but paying 200 shekels an hour
for support (similar to how Israelis got used to pay mechanics to fix
their car, instead of learning on how to do that yourself like many
Americans still do).  Hardware companies might get more used to hiring
software outsourcing companies for writing their software.
But how can we have any effect on this future's quick arrival?

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Wednesday, Sep 18 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |since nobody listens.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:26:29 +0300

> and of the arcane art of porting it to new processor architectures.

Right. There's a chapter in the O'Reilly "Open Sources" book (available freely
online) about Cygnus and their business model.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Wednesday, Sep 18 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Unix is simple, but it takes a genius to
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |understand its simplicity.

---

From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:34:24 +0300 (IDT)

> you must have a software engineer install your operating system for you...

Maybe try to sell an idea like software insurance (like what
http://cunterpane.com/ try to push).

This needs some financing, though.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:41:03 +0300 (EET DST)

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> thousands of shekels like he does to a lawyer.

Think about that accounting package, which you bought for your business.
It needs to be installed and customized according to the needs of your
business.  Similarly - for other packages with complex installation and
customization needs.

To customize the right way, you need to work with an expert, who knows to
ask the right kind of questions about your business situation, and who
knows the relevant configuration options of the software package in
question.

This is what lawyers really do!  They customize the law according to the
needs and circumstances of their clients.

The best analogy to development of shrinkwrap software is the gang of 120
foul-mouthed politicians, who sit in that pretty building in Jerusalem,
donated by Rotschild.  The process of specifying, implementing,
quality-control which goes there is very interesting to people, who like
this kind of ghoulish experience.

(Of course, the "software" created by them gets debugged elsewhere - in
places called "courts", especially the BAGATZ.)
                                             --- Omer
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 21:32:51 +0300

"Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]> writes:

> practice) in a very small company, say not more than 5 or 10
> people. 

If I understand Gilad correctly (and we have discussed this IRL), the
point is that even senior partners in a big law firm practice law
themselves. At an extreme, they used to practice law, and just don't
have the time to do it any longer, although they still review cases
and participate in what we techies would call design reviews and
postmortems.

If you see a non-lawyer ina law firm he/she would be in HR, in the
library, or some such. The point is that somehow in tech world it is
considered quite normal that an MBA "rules over" the R&D staff,
because he is a "professional manager". Another, related point is that
in a law firm there will be no "marketing department" that will make
strategic decisions for the company. Such decisions will be made by
lawyers. How many traditional computer companies do you know where
engineers rule over marketing? 

> bosses - it was almost my last at this work.

It was Gilad's last day. It will be mine soon (anybody needs a physics
PhD with quite a bit of software experience for a permanent or
consulting R&D work? I don't do windows though...)

> idea? Any chance of opening the "practice" around the Haifa area? :)

Get in line ;-)

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked] 
=================================================================
"... Of theoretical physics and programming, programming embodied 
the greater intellectual challenge." [E.W.Dijkstra, 1930 - 2002.]

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 21:50:21 +0300

> petty cases (obviously, if you're an unknown startup firm, you will get

I suspect that the analogy exists on a tangential plane. Companies do
not do big projects in-house and outsource small ones. Companies tend
to do their core business in-house, and outsource auxiliary projects.
Network management part, software configuration, system
administration, development tools come to mind. Come to think of it,
this is exactly what lawyers and accountants do - provide auxiliary
services, rather than do parts of the clients' core business.

Thus, I suspect that Gilad's model may be applicable to "software for
use" rather than "software for sale".

> Americans still do).  

I pay someone to wash my car, and I pay someone else to clean my
apartment. I am capable of doing both, but it is not worth my time.
Learning to fix cars is a big investment of time which is not worth it
unless you intend to make a living out of it or just enjoy it. It may
be that the same will happen in computers. 

How many questions from friends and relatives who can't connect to the
internet, got a virus in their Outlook, or got a disk or a memory chip
fried have you fielded recently? A few weeks ago I helped an
acquaintance of mine disconnect the cables from her brand new computer
because she expected a carpenter to work on her desk. She would not
call me if she had a problem - even a trivial one - with her washing
machine or air conditioner. She'd pay a professional. I don't see many
ads in Yellow Pages advertising "Itzik OS installation services". This
may change when computers become as commonplace as piping in our
houses. The computer boom is very recent, remember? The boxes are
there, the services not yet.

Yes, these are "petty", boring things. That's what lawyer apprentices
start from and build reputation on before they become partners and
start getting big interesting cases. That's what paralegals do.

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 21:50:57 +0300

> http://cunterpane.com/ try to push).

That's counterpane, for sure?

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 23:48:59 +0300

> > http://cunterpane.com/ try to push).

Actually, it would be very intersting to imagine what a company called
'cunt erpane'might be up to... <giggle>

> That's counterpane, for sure?

Isn't that Bruce Schnier (sp?) company?

Gilad.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 00:01:54 +0300

> because he is a "professional manager". Another, related point is that

Maybe this is situation is common in startup companies where the
entrepreneur was an MBA and retains some sort of management position,
but it certainly isn't true in companies like the one I work in (Radware).
In Radware, as far as I can tell, everyone in the R&D department has
some sort of programming experience. Many of them, howevr, the managers,
haven't really programmed in their current job. I suspect this could happen
in a big law firm too.

> engineers rule over marketing? 

Again, I must admit that I know nothing about law firms, and all I write
now is based on movies and guesses. 

If you have a big law firm, say 100 lawyers, you're probably also working
on big cases where several lawyers are involved (e.g., I assume more than
one lawyer worked on the huge HP-Compaq merger). I assume these companies
*do* have some sort of person or people who are responsible for deciding
which multi-lawyer cases to take, and which lawyers to put on these cases,
and for being on the lookout for new cases like that.
The final decision can be brought to a partner vote, but I am guessing that
there is a specific person orchestrating that huge new job, and that he
does have some special clout with the partners. This is very similar to
a typical marketing department: they are in charge of getting large new
deals (not on selling small stuff) and while they don't have the power to
make final decisions the other executives listen to them and usually do
as they say.

> consulting R&D work? I don't do windows though...)

I guess that I won't take you as my housekeeper, then :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Wednesday, Sep 18 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Sep 2002 00:04:13 +0300

>    side show" - you never do the realy important stuff. and that often 

What I introduced was a 'solution' (maybe) for makign money from free
software (FSDO free), not how to leat an exciting life... :)

But this is not a real answer. I think the real answer lies in the
nature of the people who are working. If you have several OK people and
no sepcific specialities other then delivering on good projects then you
get the less itnersting jobs. if the people (senior hackers, at least)
are one of a kind experts in fields where there aren't many people and
charge money to show it they will get enough interesting work to enjoy
and the hackers which are not partners will work on the rest - which is
Ok, because this is how you get exprience.

I'll even go further to say that I think in software, unlike lawyering,
what will happen is that the exprts will by hired to 'escort' a project
inside the customer company, with their internal development team but
providing the experties and benefit of experience.

Why doesn't the customer just hires an expert for the team instead of
hiring from outside? because in todays business money it is difficult to
pay enough to such an expert, both in term of money and interest to stay
in one place and you don;t really want to - mosst companies don't really
need brain power of that high octane all the time. They need it most at
the begining and quite less over the life of the project.

>    client is satisfied, you begin getting more projects of this kind. it 

Then think on how to generalize and automatize doing this kind of work.
Build infrastructure so good that doing these project becomes a breeze
and get one of the 'apprentices' (I use the word on purpose - noticed
how what I describe is very similat to the old guild system? ) to those
projects for now.

>    harder to do that with clients (thought it is do-able).

You're someones bitch whatever you do. As someoen who just quit a job
two weeks ago exactly because this sort of a problem I can say at least
that being a wage slave is any better...

>    short. the shorter the projects are - the more time you need to spend 

Some projects will be short, some will be long. When you are working one
of the other partners will work to get the next job, then you switch.
This is how it is better then single consultant. Also, given enough time
and IF you're good enough - people will start coming to you.

>    them to build some software infrastructure that will help them deliver 

The firm needs to plan to use the money wisely to prepare for bad times.
What else is new?

>    give a damn, because "if it sort of works, that is good. especially if 

For short range project this may be true. Then again, it is also true
when you working in house for someone. What's the point?

> another company, that didn't get the clue yet ;)

I think I did mention that it seems that for new products (if they're
*really* new that is, not Yet Another X) then the closed source model
seems viable for the first couple of year economicly speaking. I didn't
try to 'close holes', I tried to described a situation as I see it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Gilad.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 00:05:21 +0300

> That's counterpane, for sure?

I wondered who in their right mind will start their company's name with a
four-letter word :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Thursday, Sep 19 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If you drink, don't park; Accidents cause
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |people.

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Sep 2002 00:18:04 +0300

> search for such gigs, so obviously I do not have your experience.

Mean either. As usual, I have no idea what I'm talking about...; :-)

> petty cases (obviously, if you're an unknown startup firm, you will get

Do you really think that most of the stuff that layers get is
itnersting? you watch too much TV :-) I'll assume that 95% of what a
*big* law firm handles is boring contract bullshit. That's the whole
point of being a senior partner - you get to piock teh interesting and
difficult cases and *IF* you're good enough, so good that people will
hire you as an expert you'll get more intersting stuff.

> individual wants to hire someone to explain how to use some software,

Shrink wrapped software happens on desktop systems, never on anything
beyond that in real life. You can get a shrink wrap word proccessor.
Where do you find a shrink wrapped software to run a bank, an assembly
line, to automatically change the routing rules of your big network
inresponse to QoS changes etc? you do have *soltions* for these problems
but in reality you always need quite a lot of customization to adapt
them to your needs (how many people here worked with ClearCase? how many
people that did had a guy in the company which was hired for a full time
job JUST to maintain the configuration control system? I rest my case).
And I didn;t even mentioned the fact that 95% of the software produced
world wide is actually done in house in places like banks, insurance
companies, Boeing etc etc. Shrink wrap is very *visible*, for the same
reason that desktop is very *visible*, but it's the biggest chunk.

> thousands of shekels like he does to a lawyer. More likely he'll want to

Little is at stake? for the bank that needs a system to handle the
clients money or the software company that needs a driver to be able to
be there with their whole product on the dead line? No sir.. I think you
are wrong :-)

> you must have a software engineer install your operating system for you...

What's your point? there is not law that says I must fix my car at a
licensed mechanic but I usually don';t pay the kid next door to do it
either..

> of individuals. I hope that leaves enough business for such a company to

So just like a law firm, it is very much dependent on the people
invovled and how good they are if the company will big and successful
and get interesting project or not. 

> But how can we have any effect on this future's quick arrival?

The future starts now. We create it by the choices we make. The question
shoudl really be - is the time is right? I think that the answer just
might be a yes. We will see.... :-)

Gilad

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Sep 2002 00:49:49 +0300

Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]> writes:

> clients money 

Second that. You better hope your broker and bank and insurance agent
use software that works, or there goes your retirement... Of course,
your retirement may go up in smoke even if the software is fine, but
having the right tools surely helps. 

And that's just money (which can lead to divorce). You better hope the
hospital and the power plant have reliable software. And your car
nowadays probably has quite a few chips in critical places, and
someone has designed, programmed, and QAed each and every one of
them. AFAIK some luxury cars have neural networks hooked to little
cameras that determine the posture of the driver and the passenger and
decide whether it is safe to deply airbags in case of a
collision. Gosh, I hope the algorithm is right and the implementation
is flawless...

Oh, and that computerized search your lawyer's staffer is doing in the
library shouldn't miss anything important, either... ;-)

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 01:18:08 +0300

> Little is at stake? for the bank that needs a system to handle the

I clearly said that little is at stake for *individuals*, what you called
the desktop market. I supposed that law firms deal with individuals and
their "petty" cases a lot, and what I claimed is that a software practice
would have much less business coming in from individuals (as opposed to
companies and organizations) for the reasons I stated.

When I bought my apartment, I paid a couple of laywers in excess of
10,000 shekels for not more than one or two days of their time. I don't
see where *individual* customers could bring a software practice such
large incomes. At the current state of affairs, people are not used to
paying 10,000 shekels for, say, installing their home computer network
or writing them a custom spam-filtering program ;)

> licensed mechanic but I usually don';t pay the kid next door to do it

The point was another example that makes lawyers a necessary profession,
while computer consultants are less necessary. I'm just thinking out
loud whether your business idea can turn up a viable business. I simply
don't know, but I guess there is no reason not to be optimistic :)

> might be a yes. We will see.... :-)

I was talking of course, about the future of the *demand*. We can control
*supply*, not demand. I guess that you believe that there is already enough
demand for the services you think you can give. I have no idea if that is
true, because as I said I never tried living off consulting.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Thursday, Sep 19 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Linux *is* user-friendly. Not
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |idiot-friendly, but user-friendly.

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 03:23:27 +0300 (IDT)

> search for such gigs, so obviously I do not have your experience.

there is a difference between outsourcing, and consulting - at least the 
way i see it. with outsourcing, you tend to get actuall projects to 
handle. with consulting - you give more specific consultation as to how to 
perform certain tasks - while other people would often implement those 
tasks. there are things that are 'on the grey line' (e.g. someone hires 
you to configure a router for them - is this consulting, or outsourcing? 
i'd say its neither, but i have no name for this kind of work - unless 
its a very large operation, that takes days or weeks to perform - i tend 
not to call it outsourcing).

> programmers doing the interesting stuff for them.

that's not exactly what i meant. i was trying to (but failed to) make a 
distinction between two types of clients - those who develope sotware 
inhouse, and those who don't. for those who do - they will tend to shell 
out the less interesting stuff - and that is natural, cause their 
programmers want to handle that stuff. for companies with no in-house 
software development - they'll give you the full project - but it will 
usually (even if it interesting) be less 'ground breaking' then what their 
core business is about.

the other issue is the repetitiveness. after all - an expert is someone 
who has already done something several times. the more you did this thing 
(assuming you gave good results) - the more you'll get asked to do the 
same thing _again_.

-- 
guy

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 03:49:26 +0300 (IDT)

> software (FSDO free), not how to leat an exciting life... :)

ok. but from what i know about you - this is not what you are after.

> Ok, because this is how you get exprience.

this is something that you'd wish for. however, you'll find that its 
easier said then done. perhaps after a few years of doing both interesting 
and boring work - you'll get to this status. also, if there is a large 
demand on the field, then rather soon you'll find you have tougher 
competetion, which has learned many of your secrets - and thus loose some 
of your edge. then, if you'll want to keep your model (being one of a kind 
in a field) you'll have to switch to a new field - just like the 
'commercial product' folks would, the way i suggested it. now, it could be 
that your field will keep remaining small, because there is not a large 
demand for it, but wherever people do need it - they need a realy great 
expert. the danger in this case, is that your field will get extinct. only 
if you're luckly - will it remain small and still not get extinct for a 
long time. and i don't think you think that kernel hacking will remain a 
small business in israel for a very long time.

> providing the experties and benefit of experience.

this is already happening. and then you get to work with people you didn't 
choose to work with - quite often, the same people you would reject for an 
interview in your own company. this kind of escort is good for you if you 
realy enjoy teaching. in such a case - it could even be ideal.

> the begining and quite less over the life of the project.

part of this, is because after a while, the people working there start 
getting the hang of things, and require your help less and less. at least 
that should be the optimum.

> how what I describe is very similat to the old guild system? ) to those

this requires carefull planning and financing. when this happens, the 
'code programmers' are the ones that need to work on the infrastructure - 
and then you have to delegate the job of working with the clients to the 
lesser programmers - which is not so easy a process to manage - althought 
i believe it is do-able - althoguhts requires shelling some money to pay 
for the salaries meanwhile.

> that being a wage slave is any better...

you just prove my point - that you could quit your job quite easily. if 
you had the same case with a client, it'll be much harder to 'fire' that 
client without hurting your reputation.

> and IF you're good enough - people will start coming to you.

to do the same things you already did - not to do things you've never done 
- unless its a very new field (like linux kernel programming in israel 
currently is - but then again, people who do kernel as a marginal thing, 
would come to you to write them another device driver, or make a small 
twick to the kernel, or configure it more optimally on their box. those 
who do their core business in kernel programming - will be more reluctant 
to give that work to outsiders).

> The firm needs to plan to use the money wisely to prepare for bad times.

this is harder to do without an initial investment - you'll have to juggle 
much more then people which have enough money to start things up until 
they earn a reputation.

> For short range project this may be true.

not necessarily. for the one performing the outsourcing, it is 
_advantageous to deliver a product of poor quality, and then live off it 
by maintaining it for a long duration - this is the kind of thing that 
causes a 'lock in' in the outsourcing market.

now, if the company that hired you to do the job has people that don't 
know much about software - they can not check its quality (theoretically 
they could hire a 2nd company to check the quality - they do that when 
they hire a testing team from a 2nd company - and that's becoming more and 
more common) - but that does not check if the software is easy to 
_maintain_.

secondly, this 'no check for quality' happens because quite often, the 
benefits of good quality are hard to translate into money - and most 
companies don't think too much about the long run, or don't have enough 
knowledge to test the _quality_ of the software.

> Then again, it is also true

the point is that i only need to convince one employer about the 
importance of writing quality software (might need to re-convince when a 
new manager comes to town - but in a stable company, that does not happen 
every day - and i don't have any wish to work for very unstable 
companies). with outsourcing, i have to convince each potential client 
seperately about that.

actually, this is why i work for a very small company, rather then for a 
large company. in a large company, i'd have to convince more people - some 
of which are not technical people (or not technical people any more).

-- 
guy

---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 08:13:00 +0300

> programmers want to handle that stuff. for companies with no in-house 

I take exception to this statement - every time I've been contacted
for consulting, it's been because the company simply didn't have the
knowledge of experience to handle whatever task was at hand. I agree
with you for some fields, but consider something like kernel hacking -
a company is likely to do the less interesting ( == easier) stuff in
house, and hire an expert for the really difficult ( == harder)
stuff. 

> (assuming you gave good results) - the more you'll get asked to do the 

So you do it better/cheaper/faster. As long as you're allowed to
innovate and learn from past mistakes, I don't see a problem with
doing the same thing more than once, because it isn't the same... 
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
syscalltrack hacker-at-large

---

From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 22:30:21 +0300

> http://firstpost.org/#1032335162

Wow.  Consider me both thrilled and interested -- did you have anything 
specific in mind?

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 09:04:20 +0300 (IDT)

> house, and hire an expert for the really difficult ( == harder)

you've got a slightly 'ping glasses' vision of things, then, i gather. my 
expereience differs. i've sometimes been contacted to perform tasks they 
didn't know how - and other times, to perform tasks they didn't have time 
to do, or even didn't want to perform.

as for kernel hacking - a copany is likely to want to do it in house, if 
its the core of what they do - as someone here already mentioned. in such 
a case, they will want you do:

1. help them get started, if they don't have experience with that.
2. help them with advice on which things to do - whle they actually do the 
   coding, so they will learn.
3. help with specific components, that they could later 'take over'

one thing to consider, thought - the number of times you were contacted - 
if you took them all, would that suffice for a living for a long duration 
(= over 1-2 years)? 

> doing the same thing more than once, because it isn't the same... 

i didn't say "only do one thing once". i said "don't want to do the same 
thing 5 times". there's a difference here. also, 'doing the same thing 
several times' has a higher number of 'several' for small things, then for 
large things. you can do the same very small task (few hours long) 10
times and not necessarily get bored, but if you do the same larger task 
(say, several month) more then 2-3 times, you will get bored. and if you 
do the same large task (several years) more then twice, you'll most likely 
not like it. heck, even doing this large task twice might be considered 
'too much'.

by the way, i take it for granted that every one has different 'bordom 
factors' (did i mention GUI programming todya? ;)   ), so that is why the 
kind of business gilad talks about could work for some, while not for 
others (from this perspective specifically).

-- 
guy