Earlier this year our company got bought over by a very large local company, and it just hasn’t been the same for me. About two months ago I wondered whether I should finally make the leap and go on my like I’ve been wanting to do for years, or stick with my stable job (especially considering the world economic status).

I decided to take the leap, and in just 5 days I will be done with my day job and be working in my own company full time (zanix.co.za). Many local companies attempt to extort as much money as they can from their clients by trying weird legal ways to force them to pay per-site license like fees. I plan to keep things more simple for my clients, they’ll pay for any initial development and research work and then I’ll charge them maintenance fees on a retainer basis for a period of a year (or however we can negotiate it). That way, they don’t have to pay me for thousands of sites where they implement, and I don’t have to count on them implementing anything at all (which may happen in some risky cases). I’m also going to host bug trackers/wikis/etc for these projects, and charge for that. I’m still figuring out exactly what else I’ll be doing for stable income. At the moment I have enough business to cover my salary and the company’s expenses, and in 2-3 months I should be able to hire 2-3 more people. It’s quite rough starting this time of the year, but I believe that if you wait for the perfect time it will never happen. I also hope to work with local OEM’s so that they can bundle Ubuntu recovery disks that will work 100% with the hardware they sell, but that’s one of the many projects I aim for next year, I’ll let you know how it goes, and what makes good money.