Free Software at Rosenzweig and Maffia

Here in New York City we've suffered from
the quadruple whammy of economic trouble with the destruction of
the financial district after the September 11th attack on the city,
the dot-com meltdown, the stock market crash, and the assault on
technical innovation by the media industry. Many of the local Free
Software community have suffered badly, loosing their homes, their
businesses, and their self-esteem. As the President of the
New York Linux Scene
(NYLXS), I've had to done quite a bit of hand-holding and
support for members. While we've tried hard to move forward with
many of the political issues which confront Free Software, the high
unemployment in our community has pushed economic development to
the top of the group's agenda.In July, we started to take more concrete action in trying to
do something to stimulate business for Free Software in the NYC
community. We had already established a jobs posting site which has
helped hook up employers with candidates. But this hasn't been
enough. A committee has been formed in NYLXS to try to take on
first hand the task to driving sales for Free Software. We've
dubbed this effort, 'The Free Software Chamber of Commerce'. The
result of our efforts is bearing fruit, and we hope to be an anchor
and a safe haven for both well trained consultants and businesses
looking for innovative solutions to their business problems.NYLXS already had several support programs in place to help
its business development plans. First, the organization has
Software Institute (FSI), and general education and training
program which had already been a huge success. With over 250
individuals trained through the FSI, many individuals were
available for work with known business ready skills in Free
Software. It had also been responsible for two large business
expositions for Free Software with Lagaurdia College, CUNY in
Queens, and at the City of New York Graduate Center in Midtown
Manhattan. Both events where heavily attended and attracted
businesses from around the New York Metropolitan area.Joseph Maffia, a CPA and member of NYLXS' Free Software
Chamber of Commerce, and partner in
Rosenzweig and Maffia
LLP in midtown Manhattan, has joined the group because of
the large amount of Free Software he has used in his firm. Most of
his office's server infrastructure is based on GNU/Linux. They use
SAMBA, Postgres, SQL-Ledger, PHP Groupware, PHP, Sendmail,
OpenOffice.org, Apache, and Perl in their current business. They
have also made extensive use of FreeSWan VPN for remote
connectivity. This has saved them thousands of dollars on their IT
budget. And they are looking to now provide external office
services for others.While PHP Groupware has served them well in collaboration and
calendering, the program has been inadequate for their office
management needs. Currently they depend on Practice Solutions for
the office management needs. It includes important client contact
capabilities which are more functional that the time tracker in PHP
Groupware. While the company took a long look at Free Software
solution for their client billing and contacts, the functionality
in PHP Groupware and other solutions was just missing the ability
to create invoices. PHP Groupware has also shown a fair number of
bugs, especially in its Company Directory system and its client
database system. It's also missing significant Human Resources
functions such as the ability to track health insurance, pay
scales, and personnel file.On their accounting side, they've implemented SQL-Ledger,
after a long search for viable accounting software. Their present
accounting software includes a heady set of nearly functional
programs that include Practice, Go Systems audit and ProTaxes, as
well as the usual Iniut offerings. The group had searched for Free
Software solutions and even looked at proprietary systems that run
on GNU/Linux. In the tax preparation area, and the online IRS
filing software, Free Software at this junction has no answers.
Important bridges from accounting records to auditing to tax
programs are not available. SQL-Ledger is still developing, but it
is looking better and developing quickly.Complicating things further is the fact that some accounting
software uses Microsoft Office. This means that although they can
easily use OpenOffice.org for general office use, they still need
the proprietary office programs for the accounting package.These Microsoft programs can be difficult in unexpected ways.
While the FreeSWan VPN has worked flawlessly, the workstation set
up programs have put the executables on the file server. Inside the
office, this works fine. But on DSL and VPN over the internet,
connectivity is just too slow. It takes forever for applications to
open over the Internet. And in this regard, AT&T's Virtual
Network Computing has been a godsend. Implementing a combination of
VNC and FreeSWan has given a cost saving alternative to Citrix
services.Widows applications can also cause trouble with Samba. Oplock
problems with poorly written MS Access based programs have caused
corruption of files. W2000 workstations have been pressed into file
sharing services for these applications.Maffia tries to take all these things in stride. "We've tried
to be at the cutting edge in the use of powerful technology for the
benefits of our clients. For those who are in the Free Software
business, they can be confident that we can do nearly all their
accounting tools with genuine Free Software. But for the
productivity of the Office, while the desktop itself is clearly
ready for business use, the set of applications for accountants is
lagging. We're hoping that with the Free Software Chamber of
Commerce that we can help develop a new market for Free Software
accounting products. SQL-Ledger looks like it is rapidly developing
and is on track. And we will continue to work with the Free
Software development community in bringing more and more solutions
into production."The Free Software Chamber of Commerce doesn't just have
programmers and system administrators. It has accountants, lawyers,
graphic artists, musicians, cluster experts, telecommunications
experts and network experts. It works with anyone who is looking to
see Free Software succeed in the business world. They have pooled
their resources to develop a marketing strategy and promotional
literature. Everyone has pitched in, and our literature is now
being to be ramped up. NYLXS invested in folders for the group.
Literature and product development is also underway. Presentations
have already been created with OpenOffice.org, corporate training
is being worked out, and sales staff is being hired.Our emphasis is going to be the client. The purpose of this
support network is to provide clients with a user friendly
interface to the best tech minds in NYC. Paul Rodriguez has been
hired for our client relations department. Paul is very good with
people. He's a real people person and a hard worker. When you hire
one person in the network, you hire the whole team. This gives us
the ability to give top notch 24/7 support to even the smallest
businesses at great pricing. And it also gives us the ability to
service professionally the largest of corporations in NYC.The Free Software Chamber of Commerce product line is
integrating Bayonne Services into these products, combining
telephone services into the computing infrastructure. We can
provide the wiring and end to end support. We are out to show that
Free Software, through collaboration, is more capable of providing
products and services than anything else on the market.One of the advantages that NYLXS has is that it already has
an education and training program. This will allow us to guarantee
students that come through the system will have job opportunities,
and we will be certain about their skills before sending them out
into the field. We believe that Free Software needs to do business
differently. We plan to emphasis support and collaboration. We
expect to work together to give levels of technical training and
support that would not be available to consultants without
collaboration.

email: ruben@mrbrklyn.com