After having had sad experiences with former employers, I decided to join a union. The union is called Prosa and it refers to itself as the union for IT proffessionals.
Fortunately I have never had to use their services for anything, but at least I have the security of money if I am fired or become unemployed for some reason or another.
well...
yes, it's an interesting story, don't you think?
Anyway, Prosa has this monthly magazine for members called 'Prosabladet' (available online as PDF), which has articles on a lot of things like work environment/conditions, open source, the patent debate etc. not always especially interesting.
Anyway in the december issue, there was an article on Jesse Vincent. It was based on an interview and a presentation he did in Copenhagen, when he was in Denmark for the Scandinavian Perl Workshop.
The article was a bit of dissappointment to me, since it does not even mention the Scandinavian Perl Workshop (I am going to address this with the editor). But the article on Jesse Vincent is ok and it really sparked something in me.
Jesse have been able to build a company based on Open Source technology and without any venture capital.
This is really inspiring and I must admit it got me thinking.
The interesting aspect is the road travlled to get to this point, since it uses one of the most basic commercial rules, supply and demand as I see it.
You do you programming and if you hit the right spot with your software you can transform you Open Source work into a business.
I might have to go over my draft for a business plan again :)
