5 ms·

Strong disagree. There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. The Linux Foundatio

Strong disagree. There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. The Linux Foundation (with the Core Infrastructure Initiative) and the Cloud Native Compute Foundation are already working in the right direction, imo. There are other organizations that work through contracting work to develop free and open source software. Red Hat and Canonical are obvious ones. But there's also smaller outfits like Continuum Analytics, Igalia, The SQlite Consortium. Further, there are loads of technology incubators and VCs who would do well to fund projects like Octave to make sure their Data Science startups can rely on these tools. > Blockchains? I'm scared to ask what you mean by this.

chii 10y ago
i feel that adding middleman organizations sap the margins, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved. I think the dual licensing method would extract the most value and give the most of said value back to the developers.
- toyg 10y ago
  The PyQt experience is that dual-licensing restricts adoption. On the other hand, it ensures the developer makes enough to keep working on it quite steadily.
  - gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
    The main fault I've heard with the PyQT licence is that the project has to pay a for a commercial licence from day 0 - companies would like to be able to prototype with the gpl version and start paying when they are close to release.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      From their FAQ: Can I develop my proprietary application using the GPL version of PyQt? Yes, so long as you have purchased the commercial version of PyQt before you distribute your proprietary application for the first time. (Note that this is different to the terms of the Qt commercial license.)
- fnord123 10y ago
  > i feel that adding middleman organizations sap the margins That may be, but the point is to keep coders coding. The overhead cost of delegating fund raising to another person who isn't committing code is worth it. >, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved. I think that it's often very deserved if the organization is well managed. If programmers can keep their hands on keyboards instead of rattling a tin cup then I think it's a better solution than the dual license.
fsloth 10y ago
>> Blockchains? >I'm scared to ask what you mean by this. To copy from another reply: "I meant it would be convenient if there was some platform to maintain the licence contract chain so that a dual licenced project could use a third party dual licensed library, and the license fees would be forwarded to all license owning parties in a transparent manner." I'm not claiming it would be a good idea. Just a thought.
- crestedtazo 10y ago
  Lightweight drones powered by potatoes
  - sctb 10y ago
    I apologize if I'm missing something here, but I don't see how this comment relates to the discussion. This account has also posted other unsubstantive comments, which is against the guidelines. We ban accounts that continue like this, so please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
    - ZoF 10y ago
      Ban again as usual.
edblarney 10y ago
"There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. " A much better way than 'government funding' would be for users to just pay for it. It's called 'capitalism' it works very well. Oftentimes, it's difficult for the government and centralized bodies to know 'what to fund' and what not to - it's a hard thing, it can get political. Money goes entirely to the wrong places, even with good intentions. It's not always possible to 'sell something' but often that works well because the amount of money allocated to the project is commensurate with it's value. Roughly. So - 'bad projects' that are either crap, or nobody really wants - don't get funded. And the ones that are awesome - and everybody wants to use - get support and expand. Obviously it's not always ideal, but it's rational. Maybe - instead of someone offering this guy a job, they could teach him how to charge a nominal amount for the software, in a manner that still respects it's 'open sourcedness'. Like a $5/month price for access to a super set of documentation, that everyone using Octave would love and have no problem paying if the used Octave.
- mbreese 10y ago
  It doesn't have to be "government" funding. Sometimes funding via traditional capitalistic sources (starting a company) just isn't the right model to fund something worthwhile. Think about low-level libraries... Also, the overhead of starting a company (or project-specific foundation) can be more inefficient than just running as a one-person shop. Maybe the author is really good at software, but bad at marketing. Governments and other organizations rarely know 'what to fund'. But there is a good model that is already working in other fields - the grant process. Why couldn't there be an umbrella organization (not gov't) that accepts donations on behalf of the community, and then has funds available to support open-source projects? There could be grants written, peer review, etc...
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "Why couldn't there be an umbrella organization (not gov't) that accepts donations on behalf of the community" Why would you do that? Why not just have people pay for it? No overhead needed. "But there is a good model that is already working in other fields - the grant process" 'Grants' are speculative redistributions of capital into areas that some decision making body deems worthy - but which may have no bearing at all on what companies and people actually want to use - ergo - not usually very efficient. We have no choice in some cases (i.e. pure research) but for this stuff we do. This is just software, it's not rocket science, there's likely a way to just have people pay for it without too much overhead. A researcher can buy his breakfast, his home, his equipment, his computer, he can buy software as well.

chii 10y ago

i feel that adding middleman organizations sap the margins, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved. I think the dual licensing method would extract the most value and give the most of said value back to the developers.

toyg 10y ago
The PyQt experience is that dual-licensing restricts adoption. On the other hand, it ensures the developer makes enough to keep working on it quite steadily.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
  The main fault I've heard with the PyQT licence is that the project has to pay a for a commercial licence from day 0 - companies would like to be able to prototype with the gpl version and start paying when they are close to release.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    From their FAQ: Can I develop my proprietary application using the GPL version of PyQt? Yes, so long as you have purchased the commercial version of PyQt before you distribute your proprietary application for the first time. (Note that this is different to the terms of the Qt commercial license.)
fnord123 10y ago
> i feel that adding middleman organizations sap the margins That may be, but the point is to keep coders coding. The overhead cost of delegating fund raising to another person who isn't committing code is worth it. >, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved. I think that it's often very deserved if the organization is well managed. If programmers can keep their hands on keyboards instead of rattling a tin cup then I think it's a better solution than the dual license.

fsloth 10y ago

>> Blockchains? >I'm scared to ask what you mean by this. To copy from another reply: "I meant it would be convenient if there was some platform to maintain the licence contract chain so that a dual licenced project could use a third party dual licensed library, and the license fees would be forwarded to all license owning parties in a transparent manner." I'm not claiming it would be a good idea. Just a thought.

crestedtazo 10y ago
Lightweight drones powered by potatoes
- sctb 10y ago
  I apologize if I'm missing something here, but I don't see how this comment relates to the discussion. This account has also posted other unsubstantive comments, which is against the guidelines. We ban accounts that continue like this, so please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
  - ZoF 10y ago
    Ban again as usual.

edblarney 10y ago

"There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. " A much better way than 'government funding' would be for users to just pay for it. It's called 'capitalism' it works very well. Oftentimes, it's difficult for the government and centralized bodies to know 'what to fund' and what not to - it's a hard thing, it can get political. Money goes entirely to the wrong places, even with good intentions. It's not always possible to 'sell something' but often that works well because the amount of money allocated to the project is commensurate with it's value. Roughly. So - 'bad projects' that are either crap, or nobody really wants - don't get funded. And the ones that are awesome - and everybody wants to use - get support and expand. Obviously it's not always ideal, but it's rational. Maybe - instead of someone offering this guy a job, they could teach him how to charge a nominal amount for the software, in a manner that still respects it's 'open sourcedness'. Like a $5/month price for access to a super set of documentation, that everyone using Octave would love and have no problem paying if the used Octave.

mbreese 10y ago
It doesn't have to be "government" funding. Sometimes funding via traditional capitalistic sources (starting a company) just isn't the right model to fund something worthwhile. Think about low-level libraries... Also, the overhead of starting a company (or project-specific foundation) can be more inefficient than just running as a one-person shop. Maybe the author is really good at software, but bad at marketing. Governments and other organizations rarely know 'what to fund'. But there is a good model that is already working in other fields - the grant process. Why couldn't there be an umbrella organization (not gov't) that accepts donations on behalf of the community, and then has funds available to support open-source projects? There could be grants written, peer review, etc...
- edblarney 10y ago
  "Why couldn't there be an umbrella organization (not gov't) that accepts donations on behalf of the community" Why would you do that? Why not just have people pay for it? No overhead needed. "But there is a good model that is already working in other fields - the grant process" 'Grants' are speculative redistributions of capital into areas that some decision making body deems worthy - but which may have no bearing at all on what companies and people actually want to use - ergo - not usually very efficient. We have no choice in some cases (i.e. pure research) but for this stuff we do. This is just software, it's not rocket science, there's likely a way to just have people pay for it without too much overhead. A researcher can buy his breakfast, his home, his equipment, his computer, he can buy software as well.