floss and startups

FLOSS and Startups

Guilherme CavalcantiTechnical leader, application platform team @ Redu

Apresentações

• Guilherme Cavalcanti

• Brazilian web developer since 2007

• CIn-UFPE

• Co-founder at Redu

• Technical leader of platform team

• Twitter/Delicious/Github:

• /guiocavalcanti

Road map

• E-learning platform built on top of a social environment

2010 @ Porto Digital

2009 @ CIn

Team

• 15 friends at work

• Designers

• Developers

• Researchers

• Business people

Hiring!jobs@redu.com.br

Redu-labs

• CCTE

• 11 associated researchers

Quartas e Sextasdas 8h às 10h das 10h às 12h

Horário

Público-alvo

Ciência da ComputaçãoEducaçãoDesign(aceitamos ouvintes no limite da capacidade da sala)

Introdução a aplicações educativas; Software social; Game Design; API do Redu; Guidelines do Redu; Prototipagem de jogos; Métodos e técnicas de avaliação de aplicações sociais; Fenômenos de colaboração, coordenação e percepção social.

Ementa

educationaltechnologies

Engenharia de Software Educativo(IF800)

(60h)

Facilitadores

contato: asg@cin.ufpe.br

Key features

Key features

Key features

There is more

• Mobile learning

• Semantic visualizations

• Many-to-many content authoring

• Applications platform

Background

The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source

• Strongly based on Bruce Perens essay

• Economical point of view over The cathedral and the bazaar

• Enabling and differentiating software

• FLOSS as a mean and not as the end

The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source

Stallman is a programmer, and chose a philosophical presentation that appealed to programmers.

In contrast, business people are pragmatists and are more impressed by economic benefit. Because

Stallman's presentation limited his audience, his campaign had not been able to achieve the economic

serendipity that is visible today

Bruce Perens, The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source

The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source

In Raymond's model, work is rewarded with an intangible return rather than a monetary one.

Fortunately, it's easy to establish today that there is a strong monetary return for many Open Source

developers.

Bruce Perens, The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source

Context and key-questions

Context and key-questions

• Three problems we encountered

1. Lack of skilled people with fluence on our technologies

2. Lack of sinergy between the local startups that user the same techonology

3. Application platform boostering

Lack of professionals

Problem 1:Lack of professionals

• It’s hard to found skilled people at Recife

• + 150 curriculums

• + 25 job interviews

• 5 hires

Problem 1:Lack of professionals

• Not mainstream technologies

• Weak user groups

• PUG-PE (python user group)

• Frevo on Rails (ruby/rails user group)

• Full-stack programmers

Frevo on Rails

• We started to foment/promote the user group

• Regular meetps

• Focused on Porto Digital (local IT cluster)

Frevo on Rails

• Joint venture

Frevo on Rails

• Good growth

• Attracted big companies

• A lot of job demand

Problem 1:Lack of professionals

• It’s hard to glue people together

• The programming language isn’t an union point

• Low returning rate

• A lot of new people

• That never return

FLOSS as a gravitational center to the user group

• Traning

• Connecting people through FLOSS projects

• Few using the language at work

• What projects? How are going to maintain at first?

Lack of synergy betweed startups

Problem 2:

Lack of synergy between startups

• Few companies uses non-mainstream technologies

• Similar business

• Small IT companies

• Some share the same need

• Low cost SMS backend

• REST APIs

• Big Data

FLOSS as a way to increase the synergy between startups

• Startups are going to boost and maintain FLOSS projects at first

• Supports problem 1

• FLOSS + funders + people

Application platform boostering

WTH is that?

• Educational market issue

• Lots of segments

• Transform the product into a programable platform

• Amazon vs. Google +

Educational market

• Teacher issues

• Educational objects

• Marketplace

Problems

• How to integrate that many languages/platforms?

• SDKs/Wrappers

FLOSS as way to boost the app platform

• There are corporate needs/interests

• There are common needs betweeb 3rd party developers

• Bruce Perens essay apply

• Enabling technologies

• Differentiating technologies

To sum it up

Problemas

Lack of work force

Lack of synergy

Apps platform

FLOSS

How Redu is benefited?

• Best engineers

• Better product

• Empowering people through education

• Capacity building on our local IT cluster

• Application platofrm

• Through education.

Thanks :)

PS: (we are really hiring – jobs@redu.com.br)