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= Michael Mullin's Report on FSOSS =
Solutions build on Solutions.
Why is my bias important? When a software project is in demand, it will find funding by whomever needs it to provide a solution. When enough users combine their wants with purchasing power, you get demands are created that can be fulfilled by industrious individuals looking to make a profit. Industrious guys like me can fit in and contribute to either the closed source or open source projects, but this is an open source course, so lets focus on how I can contribute to the open source world, and get rewarded for doing so.
I do not yet know specifically how to fit into the process yet, therefore this paper will be an analysis of two talks given at FSOSS with the intention of trying to understand how a guy like me should proceed if he wants to earn a living in the open source world.
I also have been interested in open source / Linux for 6 years now. I used to be a Gentoo guy, but I am not a masochist anymore, so I appreciate Ubuntu.
Have I paid my dues yet... no not close *sigh*
I've been using a Mac since June of 2007, I love it.
If you are an older developer, remembrances of the days when you were a green novice might bring back fair memories.
Lets be realistic, however, you're probably just my teacher, and it's your job to read this. :p
== The Talks ==
=== Talk Two - Ross Chevalier ===
Ross is a spokesman for Nortell Nortel and spoke about XEN Virtualization. Ross presented to me the idea that virtualization can save business a LARGE amount of money, by allowing a company to harvest all the CPU cycles they possibly can.
''warning, this little use case is my position, and not necessarily Ross' this is how I understood things...''
Q: Instead of this model described above, which will have varying levels of CPU consumption on the individual machines, why not have one piece of software in control of all cpu consumption (a giant server, or cluster of smaller machines)?
A: Because the processes being run all demand different Operating Systems, or demand dedicated Environments for security purposes.
''end of example''
XEN is a very large project, and I assume hundreds of developers have contributed to various internal projects contained within its boundaries. Ross explained how Novell was working hand in hand with Microsoft to provide fully supported XEN Linux->Windows solutions.
=== Comparison ===
Miguel seems to be the only person currently getting paid to work on METRo by the Federal Government, but I believe that the service METRo can provide is of great importance. Snowy roads during Canadian winters cause a lot of damage, and better road prediction can help minimize tragedy. Meteorological companies can sell to media companies who display real-time road condition maps. The media companies in-turn sell advertising time/space to consumer product companies. The value provided by the meteorological companies depends on the accuracy of predictions; accuracy governs audience for METRo in the given scenario.
If Google could get behind something like this and display road conditions on gMaps, I would use it. A third party using METRo output to host several on-board driving advisory car devices might be very lucrative.
The important thing to consider with METRo is that it is small in terms of project size. With only one dedicated developer (who is admittedly spends very little time on the project) there is a lot of room to become a 'player' in this project. The problem with the small project size is the maintenance/upgrade demand for this software needs to be marketed and cultivated before it can sustain any dedicated developers.
== Conclusion==