From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id SAA05523; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:51:19 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA05169 for ; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:51:18 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from maile.telia.com (maile.telia.com [194.22.190.16]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g82GpHD27229 for ; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:51:17 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from d1o849.telia.com (d1o849.telia.com [213.66.248.241]) by maile.telia.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g82GpBcr024253; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:51:11 +0200 (CEST) X-Original-Recipient: caml-list@inria.fr Received: from gateway (h13n2fls34o849.telia.com [217.208.235.13]) by d1o849.telia.com (8.10.2/8.10.1) with ESMTP id g82GpAH25483; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:51:10 +0200 (CEST) From: "Mattias Waldau" To: "'ocaml'" Cc: "'Alessandro Baretta'" Subject: RE: What kind of industry do you mean? (Was: [Caml-list] objective caml and industry) Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 18:50:48 +0200 Message-ID: <002a01c252a0$e3dc8440$0a00a8c0@gateway> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.3416 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <3D735CB2.4090101@baretta.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk > I don't agree. My customers pay me to develop server > software on *nix, where the clients just happen to be Linux > boxes but might just as well be windows boxes, for all I > care. And I'm paid pretty well actually. Sounds more that you work as a paid consultant, so you make a living by selling hours, not software. Making a living as a consultant is much easier. I have also done that, but then you can't decide what you would like to do, and you can't select the programming language of your choice. What I meant was creating commercial software, where the bulk of the revenue is on the licenses of the program. Much higher risk than the consultant, but you are your own boss. (And you can use O'Caml, because your customers don't care) For example, someone knowledgable in O'Caml could take Spam Oracle by Xavier Leroy and improve it and package it for MS Outlook. You can probably sell it for $29, so if you sell more than a few thousand licenses per year, you make a living. (I think there is about one billion PC's and more that one hundred million MS Office users out there). Try to find a couple of thousand Linux users who are willing to pay, not even the Linux distributors succeed in that :-) (I haven't checked the licensing of Spam Oracle, so ask Xavier Leroy first.) It will probably difficult for you to make everything using O'Caml, you will need C++ or VB. Some links to get you starting: Microsoft Office 2000 provides an extensibility interface that can be exposed by add-ins created in Visual Basic, Visual C++, or Visual J++ in order to connect to and disconnect from any Office host application. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dno2kta/html/pdwiz.asp How to create a COM-add in using Visual Basic: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dno2kta/html/trcomad.asp You will soon realize that creating the program is the least of your problem, finding the customers are much harder. Here are some suggestions: 1. Continue develop the *nix-version as freeware and use it to advertise your other version with something like "Do you want you mother to get rid of spam, use the Outlook-version". Advertise the open version on Freshmeat and similar. 2. Make a Mozilla version as freeware, people who use Mozilla will not buy software from you anyway :-) 3. Advertise on the net at locations where you pay per click, or even better, you pay depending on how much people on that site buy from you. (little risk) Cost to get you starting: 1. A lot of your free time 2. Visual Studio, (v5 or 6 is enough, you can buy second hand) 3. An extra computer to test installation and similar (You need to test on clean machines and under differnent version of windows) /mattias ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners