Hi all,
Perhaps budding Entrepreneurs might want to read this article at C|Net. Here's a link: http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-999961.html
The article talks about making technology deliver maximum good the people first, and then worrying about finances later.
Jim Frutecherman (the author) describes the social enterprise as a technology venture run like a business but structured as a nonprofit with two bottom lines: social and financial. The goal is not to make lots of money, but instead, to deliver the maximum good while operating in a sustainable manner (generally at breakeven). The technology user is treated as a customer--not the recipient of charity--and the enterprise must meet his or her needs or lose revenue.
___________________ It's most certainly GNU/Linux, and not Linux. Read more here: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
The article talks about making technology deliver maximum good the people first, and then worrying about finances later.
That is the approach I used in the GNU Project. Instead of trying to get funds so that I could do work, I just started doing work. Later on it became possible to raise funds.
Perhaps budding Entrepreneurs might want to read this article at C|Net. Here's a link: http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-999961.html
I've read it, it is a nice one.
I think any enterpreneur should put the socal benefit superior than anything else. In China, the company law require this explicitly.
Unfortunately, this is a vague sometimes to describe what a social benefit means (for a specific companies), and the current social system stupidly measures it just by the tax one pays, which misleads the masses that if a company is profitable, then it pays more tax to the society, then its contribution to the society is large. I think that's why so many companies (like the tabaccos) are just seeking for money, and forgot their responsibilities to the society, obviously the proprietary software publishers are the typical case of this kind.
Someone may argue with me: how can I get paid if I do free software business (by putting the social benefit superior than anything else)? My experience has shown if a hacker can pass the thresholds of the technology, then he owns a rights or a qualification to offer nice service or software. TeX is free software, my typesetting business based on TeX is creating funds for me now. However, having understood how TeX works internally has taken my 7 years (read the Prof Knuth's TeX books Vol 1 took me 2 years, the Vol B 3 years, and metafont/metapost 2 years). For many software companies, they might be dead in the time overcoming the technology threshold(s). As this is not related with the capital. Talent can not be accumulated over a night. And hackers who passed the threshold are always in shortage in the market. (many other restrictions lead this effect.)
So, back to the topic, I don't think raise money is hard, but the premise is the hacker should truly understand how the technology works to meet the social demands --- this is really tough. Most people I met in China always ask me the same question, but for a true hacker, this is not a problem at all.
Another issue is: not every hacker is a good business man, many hackers are smart on technical issues, but they are truly awkward for business, that's why their talent are always abused by the bad businessmen who do not care the social benefits at all.
That's why in my hackerdom training program, I always first remind the students the importance of the freedom, the moral goal of technology, the responsibility a hacker should undertake. I usually explain them by the case of nuclear technology --- it can be used for generating energy for our life (good), and can be used by the war madman to build the bombshell to kill people(evil).
-
Amol Hatwar -
hongfeng -
Richard Stallman