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Ask HN: Why there's no Emacs paid support providers?

3 points by shakascchen 2y ago

Why is there no company charging for Emacs support/customization services? Resulting in a not-so-emacs product should be OK. That product can gradually scale up but is still based on Emacs.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jmercouris 2y ago
Would anyone pay for this? Could anyone realistically make a business out of this?
peutetre 2y ago
Not many people use Emacs and the ones that do don't need support.
uludag 2y ago
Some reasons come to mind: You'd almost need to impose Emacs as your companies "blessed" code editor, which, as we know in cases of editors, is extremely hard. Emacs users are very willing to provide support at no cost. Emacs users are pretty easy to nerd snipe. You can hire individuals for individual Emacs needs. Such people exist.
brudgers 2y ago
You can probably find a consultant if you are willing to pay consultant rates because EMACS customization is probably going to consist of Lisp programming and that's the sort of thing consultants will do for consultant rates. But a product has a couple of difficulties. One is that there are not robust mechanisms for obfuscating eLisp code. The other is that binary changes would be under GPL and the source would be available to users. And the ordinary problem that an Emacs product would be competing with free. There's not only good free tooling with almost fifty years of maturity, but also Emacs is about as deep into GPL culture as you can go.
brudgers 2y ago
You can probably find a consultant if you are willing to pay consultant rates because EMACS customization is probably going to consist of Lisp programming and that's the sort of thing consultants will do for consultant rates. IRC and Linkedin would be places to look. But a product has a couple of difficulties. One is that there are not robust mechanisms for obfuscating eLisp code. The other is that binary changes would be under GPL and the source would be available to users. And the ordinary problem that an Emacs product would be competing with free. There's not only good free tooling with almost fifty years of maturity, but also Emacs is about as deep into GPL culture as you can go.
sachac 2y ago
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsCoaching https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsCoaching lists a number of people who provide Emacs consulting for a fee.

3 points by shakascchen 2y ago

Why is there no company charging for Emacs support/customization services? Resulting in a not-so-emacs product should be OK. That product can gradually scale up but is still based on Emacs.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jmercouris 2y ago

Would anyone pay for this? Could anyone realistically make a business out of this?

peutetre 2y ago

Not many people use Emacs and the ones that do don't need support.

uludag 2y ago

Some reasons come to mind: You'd almost need to impose Emacs as your companies "blessed" code editor, which, as we know in cases of editors, is extremely hard. Emacs users are very willing to provide support at no cost. Emacs users are pretty easy to nerd snipe. You can hire individuals for individual Emacs needs. Such people exist.

brudgers 2y ago

You can probably find a consultant if you are willing to pay consultant rates because EMACS customization is probably going to consist of Lisp programming and that's the sort of thing consultants will do for consultant rates. But a product has a couple of difficulties. One is that there are not robust mechanisms for obfuscating eLisp code. The other is that binary changes would be under GPL and the source would be available to users. And the ordinary problem that an Emacs product would be competing with free. There's not only good free tooling with almost fifty years of maturity, but also Emacs is about as deep into GPL culture as you can go.

brudgers 2y ago

You can probably find a consultant if you are willing to pay consultant rates because EMACS customization is probably going to consist of Lisp programming and that's the sort of thing consultants will do for consultant rates. IRC and Linkedin would be places to look. But a product has a couple of difficulties. One is that there are not robust mechanisms for obfuscating eLisp code. The other is that binary changes would be under GPL and the source would be available to users. And the ordinary problem that an Emacs product would be competing with free. There's not only good free tooling with almost fifty years of maturity, but also Emacs is about as deep into GPL culture as you can go.

sachac 2y ago

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsCoaching https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsCoaching lists a number of people who provide Emacs consulting for a fee.