Archive for the 'Open source' Category

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Some open source programming job opportunities

Published on February 11, 2007 in Open source. 0 Comments

I was at The Fifth Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) yesterday and I ran across several companies that pay programmers to write open source software. Here’s a summary of the companies in no particular order:

  • Trixbox – produces open source management tools for the Asterisk PBX, which they pay their programmers to write; they sell support for the management tools, which includes the option to backup your config files to their servers in case your server goes down
  • Ingres – an open source database company that pays programmer to work on the database and gets money from businesses that wish to extend the database but want their changes supported
  • ClearHealth – writes open source web-based tools for hospitals and doctor’s offices to facilitate billing, scheduling etc.; sells support and assisted setup to these organizations
  • Coraid – makes NAS devices; wrote and currently maintain an ATA-over-Ethernet driver in the mainstream Linux kernel
  • ImageStream – makes Linux routers using their own hardware; they modify the kernel’s network layer and write drivers for their hardware that they open source
  • Zenoss – writes open source management tools for IT departments; sells support

I found it very encouraging to see that there are lots of companies out their that will pay programmers to write open source software and have found a business model that makes this sustainable. I think the above list shows that one’s dream to write open source software for a living can be a reality.

Open source: intro, jobs, and business models

Published on December 15, 2006 in Open source. 0 Comments

There are a bunch of topics I want to cover relating to open source in general, open source jobs, and business models based on open source, but I don’t have time to write about all of them now so I’m writing down the topics for your benefit (so you know what sorts of posts are coming up) and mine (so I don’t forget what I was going to write about).

I believe open source software improves the world as a whole, which is why I’m talking about it here. I’ll be expanding on my reasons in a future post. If you’re not familiar with open source, see Wikipedia. If I find a more concise page (and I’m sure one exists), I’ll add it. If you know of one, please add it in a comment.

The term “open sources jobs” is generally used to refer to jobs where open source software is used, but not necessarily written. From what I’ve seen in my web browsings, there appear to be three main categories:

  • Consulting – providing solutions that use open source software to companies (ie. a cluster of Linux servers for computationally-intensive tasks)
  • Training – showing people how to use or write open source software
  • Programming – writing open source software

Many businesses have been built around open source software. Notable examples of such projects include MySQL, SpamAssassin, and IBM’s Eclipse. These businesses use several different models to arrive at profitability, which I’ll discuss in future posts.