[IAEP] Building a business of Sugar/Jabber

[Russell Brown]

Hi,
Please accept my apologies if this is the wrong list for this, and
please be kind enough to direct me to the correct one if you have the
time.

I've been aware of OLPC for some time. It is only with the recent
Sugar On A Stick release that I have actually tried the Sugar platform
for myself. On its own it is brilliant, but with a Jabber server for
collaboration thrown in it is truly astounding. I often lament the use
of Windows and Office (!!!, can you believe it?) at schools. My son is
in primary school and he hates their ICT classes too. And when I hear
how much my local authority just spent on providing Vista and Office
to all High School children...

I have been thinking of starting a computer club at my son's school
for some time and now, with Sugar On A Stick the barrier to entry is
suddenly miniscule. They Already have a bunch of PCs on a network...

I have some Sugar instances and a patched Ejabberd server running in
VMs and the collab is awesome. I also have an Asus eeepc running SOAS
my kids love playing "memorze" against each other. And having robot
chat blows them away.

So...I can see that what you have is the most amazing platform and
with the Ejabberd platform it is streets ahead of the alternatives...

My question is: am I allowed to make money from this? I have a few
ideas including

1) Computer course for kids in summer holidays...this would just be a
day or two, but I would want to charge
2) Sell school server and SOAS devices to schools/clubs/whoever

The 2nd is way ahead of what I can do right now, but the 1st is well
within reach I think for the next holidays.

If I learn anything that can be used by the community I will gladly
contribute back. And if I make any money I will donate a portion of it
to the sugar program. I can see that collab is not perfect, for
instance, even on my local network it can take a while for a new
joiner to show up, and people sometimes vanish straight away, so there
must be stuff that I can do to help.


Sorry for the rather unfocussed and gushy introduction, the summary
is: wow what a platform, may I try and run a business using it?

Thanks

Russell