Its always great to start a new business and its totally fine to do stuff on the side to start a business. However, in practice its really hard to put your heart into one job and to start a business. To start a business one must put your heart and soul into it and its not a sideline.

W.r.t. “cutting edge” e.g. CEP team- anyone can indeed contribute to the CEP work if they so wish in WSO2. We are an open source company that is really open inside to everyone. Any engineer can, if they wish to in their own time, contribute to any team.

Contributing your time to something you are passionate about is awesomely fine. Yeah its just making a few extra bucks that’s a distraction and short term.