[offtopic] gnome commerce

[fritz jetzek <fritz jetzek cycosmos de>]

hi there,

as i already stated to miguel, i'm planning to bring up a gnome software
agency.
i'm thinking of a place where people (well, companies mainly) can go to
have their software ported to the gnome environment or have new tools
programmed.
the evolving products will underly the gnu public license and a part of
the price they pay be donated to the gnu project (i'm thinking of around
20%; customers who insist on their software being closed source will
have to pay a higher gnu-donation).

i've already applied for and received my license for running a business
(which you need in germany) and have also applied for a domain
registration. a friend of mine who studies fashion design is in the
midst of making a set of logos and icons for the website; take a look at
www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~crashcut/buggerz.logo.png for our logo. 

the idea for this occurred to me when i was coding a gnome-frontend to
the well-known tripwire tool for the system administration of the
company i currently work for (www.i-dmedia.com). unfortunately, they
have the copyright on it and i have no way of releasing the software -
i'm still working on them to let me release it under gpl, though.
however, i will use screenshots and a description of that program as a
'reference project' so customers in spe can see that we don't produce
bloatware ;)

i'm pre-announcing my plans to this mailing-list because 
a) i hope to find people who want to join; i need a bunch of people who
already have coding experience with gnome and who can spare some time
now and then to work on new software projects - this mainly applies to
those who already code gnome apps but don't yet receive money for it :)
b) it may seem a bit weird to write software with gnu tools for a gnu
environment and taking money for it; miguel already told me it would be
alright, and i'm convinced now that there are companies out there who
may be quite interested in having their software ported to the gnome
etc... but i rely on the gnu & gnome scene to support this as the
project depends on that very scene :-)

btw i'm a 24-year-old student of computer science living in hamburg,
germany, together with my girl friend and my 2-month-old son... i've
been into linux for almost 3 years now and still do all my coding on a
p100 ;) i go by the handle of crashcut and you'll find me almost
everyday on irc in ircnet on #hamburg (/msg ozone seen crashcut).
(btw is there a gnome channel where people from the gnome project meet?
i looked on efnet/#gnome but that one seemed to be rather empty...)


alright, that's it for now. excuse my broken english (i'm a native
german speaker as my origin suggests), and feel free to send me your
comments, however de- or constructive they may be =)

cheers and regards,

fritz 'crashcut' jetzek