Open Source Developer (Economics)

Hi gentlemen,

I am new to this mailing list and have for the past several weeks followed
the many interesting discussions committed to the list by the members. Today
I am taking the bold step to introduce myself and post a question to the FSB
group in anticipation to receive input/guidance relating to the subject
matter.

I am a qualified Mechanical engineer that specialised in aerodynamics and
thermodynamics for several years, following some interesting evolutions my
professional focus turned to corporate engineering projects and
international structured finance. I have been married for 15 years and have
two kids aged 14 and 10. For the past seven years I had the good fortune of
being invited to participate in many very interesting multi-national finance
projects mostly through WOM. Some projects were successful and some weren't
but each project taught a lesson. I strive to use engineering skills and
knowledge to develop corporate and investment structures that investors feel
comfortable to invest in. My activities usually take me through the various
phases of planning, deal making and final implementation of the agreed
structures. More recently I have been privileged enough to co-invest my own
hard earned capital in some projects. The most important aspect of business
life to me is that one must enjoy what you do else it will be difficult to
sustain the pressures that any business environment can throw at you.

During the latter part of 2002 I became involved in co-sponsoring an OSS
project which initially from a financial and business sense just did not
make sense to me - but the concept of a sound sustainable business that
could add value to the lives of several thousand like minded individuals
intrigued me sufficiently to take on the project. I had a steep learning
curve to go through in order to absorb knowledge and teachings from several
of the OSS pioneers - the more I read and learned the more I became
interested. The privilege that I had was to enter the OSS industry from a
completely different perspective - you may call it purely financial,
business or capitalistic - but I saw opportunities of how the two worlds
could potentially merge. It was crucial for me to understand why several
other similar attempts with huge investment budgets failed or why they were
simply not performing the way they could/should. I am still formulating this
knowledge and if any member on the list would care to join in deliberate
discussions with me about this topic I would sincerely welcome the input and
anticipate making available the report for the perusal of the FSB.

The discussion I wish to initiate is based on various published reports that
indicate the lack of OSS with respect to "business critical" or "Mission
Critical" software that can effectively compete with SAP, ORACLE finance,
ORACLE HR, SIEBEL,  to name a few examples.
Why is it that OSS seems to focus mainly on server environments, web
applications and firewalls? It appears from many reports that there is a
potential demand in the business world for OSS to participate in these
market segments with the intent to reduce the TCO of the companies.
Could possible reasons be related to; Licensing, OSS Legacy environment,
lack of appropriate skills, or an industry "norm" to avoid these market
segments?
If there is an opportunity for OSS to enter this market segment are there
any specific aspects that we need to take into consideration that could
either prevent, hamper, frustrate a possible entry
Are we aware of any such initiatives (real quality) that are currently
active that require assistance albeit financial, marketing, strategy or
other
With Kind Regards

Julius Steyn