Okay, but isn't the actual opportunity to write a compiler that would transform Access apps into web apps (Rails or whatever)?
That would be very high level and should interest many (very) talented hackers; and you could either licence it -- or sell each transformation for a very hefty price (the price of writing it again).
Yeah, but by definition these customers don't know anything about Rails. And the way apenwarr describes it, these little Access projects are often done without anybody's approval, so getting an outside vendor involved will never happen.
What the customer needs is exactly what apenwarr provided: they continue to update their Access db as they always have, but, BAM, it's also on the web now.
That would be very high level and should interest many (very) talented hackers; and you could either licence it -- or sell each transformation for a very hefty price (the price of writing it again).