to build similar...
to build similar things where people would come register at the site and
exchange information and maybe go and try to buy something. The stuff was
just broken. People’s sites were down. They had bugs. If you tried to buy something,
you’d get halfway through the checkout process and you’d get a server
error. I thought, “All these people don’t even have the fundamental ideas of
how to put the server together, and we could just tell them, ‘Look, this is how a
medium-volume online community can be run off of a computer that’s medium
sized. You don’t need a huge server farm. You don’t need ten full-time sys
admins.’ We’ll give them a data model of table definitions in SQL (we happened
to use the Oracle database, which was the best one available at the time).
We’ll create some web scripts that talk to Oracle’s data model, and they can
modify it to suit their needs. It will start from our proven working core of an
application and it will save them a lot of time.”
SAP was a popular toolkit for building corporate accounting systems, and I
would say, “This is like SAP, but for building an Internet application or an
online community.” I started by giving away my software. I just tried to document
it and make it as general as possible and easy to install and stuck it on my
website as a free open source thing. We gave it a name: the ArsDigita
Community System. A kid I worked with thought it was a good name.
Then big companies started calling, and they’d say, “We like your system,
but we need ten extra features.” And I’d say, “Great. You have the source
code and the documentation. Good luck.” They’d say, “We want you to make
the changes.” I’d say, “Well, I’m busy. I need to finish my PhD. And it would
take me 2 weeks to do it.” They’d say, “No, we really need you to do it.” “How
many programmers do you have in your IT department?” “Ten thousand.”
“Well, if you’ve got ten thousand programmers and I’m just one guy, why do
you want me to make the changes?” They’d say, “We’ll pay you $100,000.”
“You’ll give me $100,000 for 2 weeks of work?” “Yes, we just need this system
up and running now.”
After a few of those calls, some of my friends and I decided that we’d band
together and have a little company to do support and service. I didn’t want any
overhead, so I thought, “Let’s just have companies hire us as individuals and pay
us directly, and nobody will be taking a profit off of anybody else’s labor.” It didn’t
last long because Oracle said that they didn’t want to risk getting in trouble
| ← will be rendered | with the IRS → |