4 ms·

But would it put Rich Hickey's children through college? This is just not something we've got a good, reliable answer for. E.g. I'm pretty confident that his

by hga 10y ago

But would it put Rich Hickey's children through college? This is just not something we've got a good, reliable answer for. E.g. I'm pretty confident that his creating and being the BDFL of Clojure wasn't sufficiently remunerative.

tosh 10y ago
I think there are a lot of valid reasons for the current model and I'm pretty sure it (and the changes over time) are well thought through. That said I also think it is worth to regularly revisit what an open sourced Datomic could do for adoption of Datomic itself as well as for Clojure (edit: not to mention what the impact would be like for the world at large). I'm optimistic that there are monetization opportunities through SaaS, consulting and other licensing concepts. Ideas?
jwdunne 10y ago
Being the BDFL of a rapidly growing programming language has its benefits. Even Rasmus Lerdorf has an impressive CV, despite a public attitude of negativity towards programming. If Datomic achieves widespread success with both community and enterprise editions, Rich Hickey would have an impressive range of opportunities. The man, however, is far more accomplished than I so I can only assume he's thought of that and firmly rejected it. Perhaps, although he wants to see his kids go through college, he also wants to be a big part of their lives. Perhaps 2 massive, popular over source projects would get in the way of that.
chongli 10y ago
But would it put Rich Hickey's children through college? I think it would. What it wouldn't do is give Rich Hickey the control he currently has over his life and his projects. He'd likely end up getting paid to work on Datomic by some big company instead of running his own as he does right now.
- fnordsensei 10y ago
  Isn't Cognitect mostly a consultancy already? Revenue wise, I mean. I don't mean to discount the incredible amount of work they pour into Clojure/Script and Datomic.
jamii 10y ago
It would be nice if we had more well-understood funding models for software. The games industry has some interesting ideas eg: Unity - free community version, pay monthly for extra features and to remove the splash screen, option to stop paying and keep license but stop receiving updates UE4 - free, source code is on github (but not FOSS), takes 5% of your gross revenue after first $3000 Lumberyard - free, source code available (but not FOSS), you must either run your own private servers or use AWS
cliftonk 10y ago
Given the change in licensing terms, I'd expect open-sourcing the db would be the next step. Enterprise support and professional services revenue would increase consummate with adoption.
- fnordsensei 10y ago
  This is kind of what I expect Datomic's path to be as well. Early adopters will take most of the financial burden in order to recover the development costs, and open sourcing will happen once it's more strategic to use Datomic as a way to promote their knowledge and services broadly than it is for them to make money directly from the product. Support tiers will remain even after open sourcing, of course. I don't expect it to turn into abandonware.
joeevans1000 10y ago
Yes.
johnmw 10y ago
I hope Datomic does well and Rich easily puts his kids through college. But as a developer I think the current license is a bit of a shame. I've played with Datomic, think it is fantastic, and would love to use it. However: - After the closure of products such as FoundationDB and Parse, I will never have a significant dependancy on a closed source product again. (maybe if the company was a behemoth like Microsoft or Oracle, but these days probably not even then.) [1] - As a little guy, the $5000 I would need to pay after one year to keep getting updates to the product is just too much. One could argue that Datomic are looking for bigger fish, but something to consider is how important it is to get people using your technology (al la Microsoft 'developers developers developers!') Little guys can go on to be bigger guys making the important technical decisions. There is post above looking at the licensing done by game engines such as Unity, where larger companies pay more and the little guys are given a break until they are making a profit. Hopefully we will see more of this in the future. [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-pulls-plug-tech-company-runs/ https://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-pulls-plug-tech-company-...
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  $5000 doesn't seem like a lot of money for a commercial endeavour. I'll just keep using the free edition for my toy/side projects. Datomic free edition also sounds great for small open source projects. It wouldn't be suitable for large scale free SaaS websites but I feel that's a tiny slice of developers.

by hga 10y ago

tosh 10y ago

I think there are a lot of valid reasons for the current model and I'm pretty sure it (and the changes over time) are well thought through. That said I also think it is worth to regularly revisit what an open sourced Datomic could do for adoption of Datomic itself as well as for Clojure (edit: not to mention what the impact would be like for the world at large). I'm optimistic that there are monetization opportunities through SaaS, consulting and other licensing concepts. Ideas?

jwdunne 10y ago

Being the BDFL of a rapidly growing programming language has its benefits. Even Rasmus Lerdorf has an impressive CV, despite a public attitude of negativity towards programming. If Datomic achieves widespread success with both community and enterprise editions, Rich Hickey would have an impressive range of opportunities. The man, however, is far more accomplished than I so I can only assume he's thought of that and firmly rejected it. Perhaps, although he wants to see his kids go through college, he also wants to be a big part of their lives. Perhaps 2 massive, popular over source projects would get in the way of that.

chongli 10y ago

But would it put Rich Hickey's children through college? I think it would. What it wouldn't do is give Rich Hickey the control he currently has over his life and his projects. He'd likely end up getting paid to work on Datomic by some big company instead of running his own as he does right now.

fnordsensei 10y ago
Isn't Cognitect mostly a consultancy already? Revenue wise, I mean. I don't mean to discount the incredible amount of work they pour into Clojure/Script and Datomic.

jamii 10y ago

It would be nice if we had more well-understood funding models for software. The games industry has some interesting ideas eg: Unity - free community version, pay monthly for extra features and to remove the splash screen, option to stop paying and keep license but stop receiving updates UE4 - free, source code is on github (but not FOSS), takes 5% of your gross revenue after first $3000 Lumberyard - free, source code available (but not FOSS), you must either run your own private servers or use AWS

cliftonk 10y ago

Given the change in licensing terms, I'd expect open-sourcing the db would be the next step. Enterprise support and professional services revenue would increase consummate with adoption.

fnordsensei 10y ago
This is kind of what I expect Datomic's path to be as well. Early adopters will take most of the financial burden in order to recover the development costs, and open sourcing will happen once it's more strategic to use Datomic as a way to promote their knowledge and services broadly than it is for them to make money directly from the product. Support tiers will remain even after open sourcing, of course. I don't expect it to turn into abandonware.

joeevans1000 10y ago

Yes.

johnmw 10y ago

I hope Datomic does well and Rich easily puts his kids through college. But as a developer I think the current license is a bit of a shame. I've played with Datomic, think it is fantastic, and would love to use it. However: - After the closure of products such as FoundationDB and Parse, I will never have a significant dependancy on a closed source product again. (maybe if the company was a behemoth like Microsoft or Oracle, but these days probably not even then.) [1] - As a little guy, the $5000 I would need to pay after one year to keep getting updates to the product is just too much. One could argue that Datomic are looking for bigger fish, but something to consider is how important it is to get people using your technology (al la Microsoft 'developers developers developers!') Little guys can go on to be bigger guys making the important technical decisions. There is post above looking at the licensing done by game engines such as Unity, where larger companies pay more and the little guys are given a break until they are making a profit. Hopefully we will see more of this in the future. [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-pulls-plug-tech-company-runs/ https://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-pulls-plug-tech-company-...

sheepmullet 10y ago
$5000 doesn't seem like a lot of money for a commercial endeavour. I'll just keep using the free edition for my toy/side projects. Datomic free edition also sounds great for small open source projects. It wouldn't be suitable for large scale free SaaS websites but I feel that's a tiny slice of developers.