Hi everyone;
I have approached 2ndQuadrant, Ltd about setting up a high quality PostgreSQL services business to help diversify the voices about PostgreSQL in South-East Asia and beyond. As a result of these negotiations, I will be working to, among other things, increase the exposure of PostgreSQL, and ensure that a single company does not dominate the discussion (as it currently does over here). This is a big deal for open source generally, and for LedgerSMB in this part of the world. This also has some implications regarding my involvement in LedgerSMB, but I am not going anywhere. On the whole the implications are likely to be positive, rather than negative. On one hand, my own time constraints are likely to be a bigger factor, but on the other hand, I expect that on the whole our exposure will be greater, which means more room for more consultants.
In addition to working with 2ndQuadrant, I am continuing to build, with Erik Huelsmann, the business of Efficito, Ltd, which offers LedgerSMB hosting to a variety of customers. This business will offer general support accounts as well but this business will not offer consulting (which will be provided by other consultants in the community).
I see my own role in the community changing slightly. I expect to be offering less consulting services, and work primarily upstream of other consultants. I also expect to a larger percentage of my development time on work which is not directly paid for by consulting customers of mine. This means that less time will be spent on things that other consultants can monetize and more time spent on things the software needs to grow to a larger user base.
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Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.