but I do see the need to pay bills and save for my retirement, and make sure my son has the funds to further his education, get braces, etc.

I like having job statisfaction and a positive work environment with positive feedback, I look forward to building a small business that provides that for its employees. I am not afraid to share the wealth, or pay for overtime, if it gives my company better, more productive, workers. While money is a good motivator and incentive, so is the satisfaction of doing a good job and being part of a very good team.

If I do deal with lawyers again, it may be more on my terms than their terms. Maybe contract work, and I do the work offsite, and provide them with applications, databases, etc. The smaller law firms are more paranoid with employees having access to their data, they feel they should be doing better things than suing ex-employees for data theft, unlike large law firms that give full access to data and don't care about the time and cost of suing an ex-employee for data theft, because they have the resources to do so. So I would work off their network, on my own network, using my own data, and giving them the finished result. I think I can use an open-sourced license, and create generic programs and do JAD (Joint Application Development) to customize it to their needs and ideas, and then sell them the rights to the modified code, released from my generic version, that becomes their own IP, like CrossOffice was based on WINE. Yet they should note that the generic OSS is my IP, and I am free to sell my services and a different customized version to another law firm. The OSS version will be to give a sample of what I can do, and help out law firms that cannot afford my services, but will have a base to build on, thus gaining my marketshare. No two customized versions will be alike, and they should notice that due to the OSS license, that some code has to be contributed back to the source, yet each new feature I add to the generic version will be given to them via the OSS license, if they want it. The problem would be if they want to deal with an OSS license and on my terms. Just an idea for now, there may be some problems to work out of it as I learn more.