Congrats on the launch ! I'm very happy to read that more people are trying to use guix commercially.
I'm also very happy that you chose a cooperative as a setup, I think many problems would be solved if every company in the world was a cooperative, but alas, the revolution is not for tomorrow. I run guix-hosting.com which does not have enough clients to sustain me, and because I hate myself everytime I do any form of marketing, it does not grow. I've never (apart from the few guix-hosting clients) managed to sell guix for guix. I've sold guix to many clients as a kind of a stowaway passenger in a different package the client was actually interested in. Most recently, I used guix to make a complex piece of software amendable to gitlab's CI system, and I also used it in a project that mixed 6 different programming languages to set and fix all the dependencies to something that worked well together. But in all cases, I was hired for a job, and used guix to do it, and never was able to get hired for guix services. I wish you all the best, and I hope you'll communicate on who your clients are, and how you managed to sell guix. Looking forward to see where this goes ! Cheers, Edouard. Maxim Cournoyer <ma...@guixotic.coop> writes: > Hi, Guixers and Guilers! > > It is a great pleasure to introduce you to Guixotic, our new worker > cooperative specializing in GNU Guix and Guile: > > https://guixotic.coop/ > > We are currently three people that you may already be familiar with: > Maxim Cournoyer (apteryx), Robin Templeton (lispwitch), and John > Kehayias (podiki). > > Our ultimate goal is to improve, strengthen, and expand Guix and Guile > by building an ecosystem of services around these technologies. The aim > is to transform a hobby into a viable livelihood, thereby fostering and > accelerating their development and adoption. > > We want to see these projects we love and have come to rely on continue > to grow, be used in all sorts of applications and businesses, and be > part of a healthy free software ecosystem. Besides ourselves, we want to > see opportunities for many more people to make a living working with > Guix and Guile. > > If this proves successful, we hope to be a model for what is possible > with a collectively managed free software worker cooperative. We are all > equal owners, and future members will be, too. We plan to have more > members in the future and be part of a group of businesses and > organizations centering on Guile and Guix. > > So, what exactly will we be doing? We offer services from education and > training to commercial support, from DevOps to system administration, > from packaging to new feature development. In short, everything Guix and > Guile. > > This is not meant to subsume the work each of us already does in these > and related projects, or have some "special class" of users or clients > influencing these projects. Rather, this is a way to allow us to work > full-time contributing. The idea is that paid projects, training, > support, etc., will help improve Guix and Guile for everyone, while also > supporting us to do more of the work we already love to do. It's about > placing the best of our energy, talent, and interests where it matters > the most to us, instead of having these restricted to late-night hobbies > and hacks (don't worry, we'll continue doing that too ;-)). > > Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or > feedback. If you know of someone or an organization/business that > would be benefit from our services, we would love to hear about > them. You can contact us via mailto:cont...@guixotic.coop. Equally > useful is spreading the word. If you don't currently have any projects > for us but would be interested in supporting our work, it's possible > to contribute to our funding via Liberapay: > <https://liberapay.com/guixotic>. > > As you might expect, we are very excited to be embarking on this > journey, and this is our first official announcement anywhere. And, of > course, we're a little nervous with what the future may hold as we feel > this isn't just about us succeeding, but opening it up for more people > to do this work, too. Nonetheless, we can't wait to see what the future > holds. > > Thanks for being part of this community and for reading this far! > > On behalf of Guixotic, Maxim, Robin and John. > > [0] http://guixotic.coop/ > [1] https://liberapay.com/guixotic
