I've really enjoyed your writing on your blog at http://akkartik.name which I found through your guests posts at Ribbonfarm. Have you been writing anywhere else about your work or thoughts about readable programs?
Thanks! No new projects/demos/prototypes yet beyond the links at the bottom of http://akkartik.name/about, but I have a half-baked project in the works. Let's chat more offline; I sent you an email.
> Also, when it comes to many projects, the organization that offers services around them has a negative incentive to contribute clear, quality code.
I'm probably being naive, but in my version of this idea, I was thinking that contributing well-written, tested, and documented code back upstream from the company's account would be a good way to have the work that's done contribute to the marketing.
Part of the reason why I haven't moved past just talking about this idea is the possibility of it having a negative impact in terms of the original creators/maintainers, so I'm definitely interested in hearing more about this perspective on it.
Interesting to see this here, I had this idea a while back and have been discussing it with people before I go on validating/invalidating it.
In my mind anyway, the idea is something like https://railslts.com/ but for potentially every other gem in your gemfile. We would provide security patches, bugfixes, features, documentation, training, version upgrade scripts/documentation and so on to subscribers.
I really like the accumulated credit for features, maybe a system of like: request feature, we put a "credit" value on the complexity of the feature, then companies/people can pledge credits/money for it would work?
I've also had this on my mind for quite some time.
How would you actually implement things though? After all, you're essentially trying to sell "support contracts" for open source projects via the platform. You could implement these by a) "hiring" the project owner to work on specific bugs/features or b) hiring freelancers to fix requested bugs.
Furthermore, how would you ...
* determine the value of bugs/features?
* react to a project owner abandoning a project?
* handle multiple upstream developers?
I hadn't really cracked how to scale the business up, but to bootstrap it I was thinking that I would just do the work until it became too overwhelming. I haven't thought about what pricing would look like, so I don't know how feasible it would be to just hire more people as more and more work comes in - but it should have some interesting economies of scale since there is a lot of overlap in the gems used in rails projects for instance.
One important part as a provider would be to have a way to collect all the dependencies on which a customer depends on. This helps you priorities your maintenance work if the customer doesn't have any requests (auto-pilot mode). Is is also useful as way to sell: "see all the things you depend on". And finally it lets you take decisions on which project maintainer to poach.
I think there's something more to the open floor plan beyond collaboration and cost saving. It goes back to a post I saw here a few months ago about building unity [1] with the team. I don't know the answer, but I think there is something to be gained by fostering the feeling of "We're all in this together".
I'm a software engineer who has only worked in open plan offices, so maybe I don't know the joy of working in an office, but there is definitely a different feel from the one office where the managers/partners had their own offices and everyone else was open plan vs everyone in the same couple rows of desks.
Has anyone found anywhere to buy enclosures for different RPi projects similar to this one? I have an RPi, a screen, and a project idea, but am struggling to come up with a way to make an enclosure for it that is at least passable.
Would the best way to just find a freelance 3d designer, and come up with specs?
There's a bunch of files on Thingyverse for 3d printed and lasercut acrylic/wood Raspberyi cases, most of which are quite readily opened and modified for custom projects. (I've got a file somewhere for a common 3d printed 'pi case which has been modified/extended to include a 4-ish inch lcd screen - intended eventually for a offline bitcoin safe…)
The seneca toolkit that the post leads into and links to is super interesting. It seems like a pretty straightforward way to build with an SOA from the beginning. Does anyone have any experience using this for a sizable project that can comment on it?
Shopify and I collaborated to put out a drop shipping specific book which really gets into the nuts and bolts of drop shipping vs. general eCommerce. It's free, and you can read it via the link below. The eBook on my site discusses drop shipping as well, but not in as much granular detail:
I'd also recommend DrewSanocki.com for some solid eCommerce / drop shipping material. (Disclose: He's become a friend of mine). He started a drop shipping business in the early 2000s and grew it to mid to high 7 figures before selling. Writes a lot of great stuff about eCommerce in general:
I was curious about some drop ship info too, so thanks for those links. I was wondering though if it's feasible to bootstrap a site like this with almost $0, or if the money to start it up typically costs a couple grand or so.
Starting with $0 would be difficult. I think having at least $1,000 or $2,000 would be helpful for web hosting, some basic design / logo work, and a small advertising budget.
I started with $1,500 (for my first site, not this one. This one I invested a LOT in early on - not all of it prudently!) so you don't need a ton to begin, especially if you're willing to invest a lot of sweat equity.
Oh alright, thanks. Yeah I figured if I were to do something like this I could do most the website work by myself. I was just hoping that the deals to be made for supply didn't typically come with an upfront cost.
Downloaded your ebook to hopefully get a better look at what it takes, thanks again!
I was also in the dropshipping realm, it's possible to start with very little money (probably not $0 though).
I think bare minimum you need to register a company which costs $10 or so, dropshippers you want to do business with expect you to have that paperwork. That's enough to get you started dropshipping on eBay or something similar. You'd definitely be smart to spend a little more setting up a site with a logo, but it's not hard to get Opencart running and you could create a simple logo with open source editing software.
If you really did a lot of the work yourself I'd say you could get an eCommerce site up an running for $20-30 depending on the domain name and hosting options (many of the lower cost hosts expect you to pay a year subscription up front for the lower cost hosting options, so it would make more sense to pay more in the beginning to get the lower rate).
Yeah that doesn't sound bad at all. Still pretty difficult to think of a niche market or where to find a drop ship friendly supplier. But it's nice to know that if I stumble on that combo it wouldn't take much initial capital.
