[scribus] About SCS

[Richard Cichelli]

Kundo wrote:

>Thanks,Would you share more about your company and what you have done previously
with open source?

Kunda, Thanks for your interest in Software Consulting Services, LLC. 
SCS builds trusted newspaper systems. SCS was founded in 1975 by my 
wife, Martha. I joined her at SCS as president after 9.5 years as 
Research Manager of Computer Applications at the American Newspaper 
Publishers Association Research Institute. SCS is one of the oldest 
newspaper vendors under the same ownership and management. We are a 
technology driven (and technology driving) company with 20 employees. We 
have well over a dozen applications for newspapers. All of our customers 
are located within 5 miles of the surface of the earth - 18 countries, 5 
languages, as small as the PennyPower shopper in Coopersburg PA and as 
large as the LA Times. And including major newspaper groups including 
all of Gannett, Tribune, Lee Enterprises, Sandusky, etc. SCS's first 
open source participation was as the distributor of the Pascal 
Validation Suite in the mid-70's. SCS also distributed an interactive, 
conversational, integrated development system for Pascal written by me 
and my students at Lehigh University. That was in the mid 70's as well. 
We also wrote and deployed Linux-based systems at metro newspapers 
starting in the mid-90s. (Linux v. 0.6, I believe) While our 
applications are proprietary SCS software, many of the utilities and 
platforms we use come from the open source community, such as 
GhostScript, (We provide fixes and financial support to 
GhostScript/Artifex), poplar 
http://processes.freecode.com/projects/poppler, and dozens of others. We 
like to see ourselves as being a disruptive influence for good. When 
newspaper pagination workstations cost $100,000 per seat, SCS made the 
first XTentions to QuarkXPress (1987) so you could do pagination for 
$6,000. When Sun Microsystems Servers cost over $125,000, we built 
comparably powerful networked platforms for newspapers out of Dell boxes 
(We are Dell's first reseller, 1986) for one-tenth the cost. In the same 
way, the prospect of dethroning Adobe appeals to me. I see Scribus as a 
tool for doing so. http://jensorensen.com/2014/05/19/cloud-control/

>What is your interest in promoting the use of Scribus?

We are satisfied that Scribus can be used to do what newspapers need 
desktop publishing tools to do, including page assembly (pagination) and 
ad building. Further, in having done development with Scribus, 
QuarkXPress and InDesign, we believe Scribus is both a better platform 
for the development of the next generation of our systems and a better 
business environment for us and our customers. I.e., Scribus with free 
GPLed development from us provides more business opportunities than 
working with the proprietary alternatives. We very much appreciate the 
welcome we have received from the Scribus community. We hope to prove 
worthy of your trust and support. Richard. Richard J. Cichelli 
President/Member Software Consulting Services, LLC Suite 420 630 
Municipal Dr. Nazareth PA 18064 Sales 800-568-8006 Voice 610-746-7700 
Fax 610-746-7900 www.newspapersystems.com cichelli at newspapersystems.com 
------------------------------------------------ From the Scribus Digest 
of 5/21/14 vol 74 issue 24. Message: 3 Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 10:27:41 
-0500 From: Kunda Loves Scribus <scribus.user at gmail.com> To: Scribus 
User Mailing List <scribus at lists.scribus.net> Subject: Re: [scribus] A 
Day with Scribus Message-ID: 
<CAAt0FRjGBRBJ20teN0kDb+FBuKceLP=Uk=HBqDrKKe8+XoivYw at mail.gmail.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 10:17 
AM, Richard Cichelli < cichelli at newspapersystems.com> wrote:

> Software Consulting Services, LLC is promoting the use of Scribus by
> newspapers.  We will be holding a free seminar at our offices titled "A Day
> with Scribus".  Please write to me (cichelli at newspapersystems.com) if you
> have an interest in attending or offering training or other expertise.
>
Hi Richard,

Thanks,Would you share more about your company and what you have done previously
with open source? What is your interest in promoting the use of Scribus?


/Kunda