[IAEP] Building a business of Sugar/Jabber

[Walter Bender]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Russell Brown<misterruss at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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

In a word, "Yes."

> 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
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>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org