Richard Hennessy wrote:
> "It is unlikely that someone would pay for what amounts to a rarely-used utility program like pw.mac."
>
> This is true about pw.mac. I am looking for ideas on what to do next. I want to learn Lisp too for my next project whatever it is.
> I want to do programs that are faster and maybe better than my first one. I was thinking about inverse Fourier Transforms of
> piecewise functions but I bet that is also in the same category as pw.mac, a "rarely-used utility program".
IMHO The best method for making money while using maxima and other free
software programs is to do it as a consultant. The key is to find some
people who have specific real-world type problems to be solved, but do
not have the sophistication to write the software to solve them.
Lawyers, Biologists, manufacturers, shipping companies, network
engineers, etc all have problems related to time series, random signals,
graph theory, statistical estimation, materials science, and who knows
what else. Most of them don't even know they have these problems, or
rather don't know how to model these problems that they have. Many don't
even know what a model really is. If you can figure out how to
A) convince them they need a model and
B) build and implement the model
you can make a good consulting business while using free software to
develop your tools.
my 2c
Dan