Software Packaging - Freelance

[ajbritton]

Given the spending cuts coming down the road, I'm considering my options for future employment. Wondering if anyone out there would pay for software packaging. I know that a lot of people on here do their own, but perhaps smaller schools would be interested. Any thoughts?

[jamesreedersmith]

Be careful about licensing though - some companies may be funny if you package there product as a commercial operation.

[jsnetman]

Don't know if you could make a living just concentrating on packaging exe's. Most decent software comes with an MSI, I think you would have to offer a host of services rather than just one.

[Greenbeast]

There is (or was) work to be had packaging, my father in law contracts for a large pharmaceutical company, now mostly general support but he used to be contracted just to do software packaging.

[Hightower]

As others have said, most come with MSI's. RM does a whole host of BluePrints (simple exe's that create MSI's from a set of files) for free (obviously RM schools), and if those aren't available I believe they still sell packages to schools for around £20 (for certain titles only, but the list is quite extensive).

 

After that, there's AppDeploy which helps with packaging all sorts of software.

 

Personally, I don't think there's business in this alone, and would need to be offered alongside other services.

[dhicks]

Wondering if anyone out there would pay for software packaging.

 

Yes, I'd think so. The can't-package-a-licensed-product thing actually works to your advantage - you'll have to package each institution's software individually. We still have plenty of software that doesn't come packaged as an MSI, too.

 

--

David Hicks