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"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 'governmen

"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.
  - fnord123 10y ago
    >No overhead needed. Sales, marketing, payment systems, and invoicing are plenty of overhead. >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. Sure. People are doing it. Red Hat, Canonical, Continuum, Igalia, and Mozilla are all organizations that pay for developers to work on open source. I would guess OP could look at NumFOCUS or get a job at Continuum Analytics if they want to help move Matlab developers into the open source world.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      There's no need for a sales and marketing team for a very well established and entrenched product. He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service. In fact, if he did it properly, he could be wealthy, or chose to hire a bunch of people to make his software even better. Mozilla is a great org, but I'm not sure if they are the best example as I believe they depend on the benevolence (or strategic foresight) of entities like Google etc.
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        "There's no need for a sales and marketing team for a very well established and entrenched product." So should I go tell Pepsi and Coke that they're wasting their money? Plus, while Octave is an established project, there are many projects being started each day. No project comes into being fully established. "He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service." Do that, instead of working on his project. Plus, the source is already out there. It's not going away.
        edblarney 10y ago
        "Pepsi and Coke" are multibillion dollar commodity consumer brands - and have absolutely nothing to do with this. "No project comes into being fully established" Octave is well established, so he doesn't have that problem. For those that are 'new' - it's extremely difficult for governments to decide how to allocate funding. There are 1000's of 'open source' ideas. It's very hard to tell which one's would work, and have merit. It seems this guy was able to make something on his own. Great. Now he can generate some revenue and expand the project - OR - work full time somewhere else, and plug away at this in his spare time. "Do that, instead of working on his project." He's not going to be 'working on his project'. He's going to be 'working full time somewhere else' because his project has no income. The time and energy he spends on some kind of 'revenue' is an 'investment' not a cost. Once it's up and running, there should hopefully be net surpluses. If it goes well, he can even hire a small team to do 'sales and marketing', and possibly hire some developers to make his project considerably better, so that it's even more useful to others, and possibly even more people want to use it. There's no reason that he couldn't try to find a way to generate income from his project, it's creating a lot of value for others. Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well.
st3v3r 10y ago
Have you been on the internet for a while? You know that anything someone can get without paying for it, most people will go for it. Pirating video games, torrenting movies, music, ad blockers, etc. And honestly, this idea of perfect meritocracy, the idea that if you don't get funded, then your project was crap, has been disproven a long time ago. There was a kickstarter that raised insane amounts of money for someone to make potato salad. Not as a product, but making a bowl of potato salad for themselves.
- edblarney 10y ago
  He has a valuable, entrenched product that is apparently used by a lot of people and provides value for them. If those people won't pay a small sum to use this - or can find some easy substitute, then that could be an indication that this open-source project simply isn't that valuable. If there is no easy substitute, and he is creating consistent value, he should be able to get some kind of revenue for something, possibly enough to pay himself and a few others to make it better. It's not always easy, but it's not remotely irrational for him to try a few things. There's no reason for him to 'work for free' to help other people in their endeavours. They can pay him, and everyone still ends up a winner. It's called 'comparative value' - it's how most of the economy works. It's good. Apparently, he wants to 'get a job somewhere' writing code. How are his future employers going to pay him? By asking people to pay for the software that he writes. Or something along those lines. In fact - given that he does have a 'high degree of expertise' in this open-source he made, that apparently people are using - it would make good economic sense overall if he (and possibly some others) were working on that, as opposed to him 'getting a job' elsewhere. It's a matter of plugging into the revenue stream. Again - not trivial, but something that could surely be tried.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    Your post once again goes to the extremely flawed and inaccurate "If people aren't going to pay, then your thing is not good" thought, which has been proven false time and time again.
    - 10y ago

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.
- fnord123 10y ago
  >No overhead needed. Sales, marketing, payment systems, and invoicing are plenty of overhead. >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. Sure. People are doing it. Red Hat, Canonical, Continuum, Igalia, and Mozilla are all organizations that pay for developers to work on open source. I would guess OP could look at NumFOCUS or get a job at Continuum Analytics if they want to help move Matlab developers into the open source world.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    There's no need for a sales and marketing team for a very well established and entrenched product. He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service. In fact, if he did it properly, he could be wealthy, or chose to hire a bunch of people to make his software even better. Mozilla is a great org, but I'm not sure if they are the best example as I believe they depend on the benevolence (or strategic foresight) of entities like Google etc.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      "There's no need for a sales and marketing team for a very well established and entrenched product." So should I go tell Pepsi and Coke that they're wasting their money? Plus, while Octave is an established project, there are many projects being started each day. No project comes into being fully established. "He could make something very easily himself, 1-click to $X a month for some bit of software or service." Do that, instead of working on his project. Plus, the source is already out there. It's not going away.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        "Pepsi and Coke" are multibillion dollar commodity consumer brands - and have absolutely nothing to do with this. "No project comes into being fully established" Octave is well established, so he doesn't have that problem. For those that are 'new' - it's extremely difficult for governments to decide how to allocate funding. There are 1000's of 'open source' ideas. It's very hard to tell which one's would work, and have merit. It seems this guy was able to make something on his own. Great. Now he can generate some revenue and expand the project - OR - work full time somewhere else, and plug away at this in his spare time. "Do that, instead of working on his project." He's not going to be 'working on his project'. He's going to be 'working full time somewhere else' because his project has no income. The time and energy he spends on some kind of 'revenue' is an 'investment' not a cost. Once it's up and running, there should hopefully be net surpluses. If it goes well, he can even hire a small team to do 'sales and marketing', and possibly hire some developers to make his project considerably better, so that it's even more useful to others, and possibly even more people want to use it. There's no reason that he couldn't try to find a way to generate income from his project, it's creating a lot of value for others. Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well.

st3v3r 10y ago

Have you been on the internet for a while? You know that anything someone can get without paying for it, most people will go for it. Pirating video games, torrenting movies, music, ad blockers, etc. And honestly, this idea of perfect meritocracy, the idea that if you don't get funded, then your project was crap, has been disproven a long time ago. There was a kickstarter that raised insane amounts of money for someone to make potato salad. Not as a product, but making a bowl of potato salad for themselves.

edblarney 10y ago
He has a valuable, entrenched product that is apparently used by a lot of people and provides value for them. If those people won't pay a small sum to use this - or can find some easy substitute, then that could be an indication that this open-source project simply isn't that valuable. If there is no easy substitute, and he is creating consistent value, he should be able to get some kind of revenue for something, possibly enough to pay himself and a few others to make it better. It's not always easy, but it's not remotely irrational for him to try a few things. There's no reason for him to 'work for free' to help other people in their endeavours. They can pay him, and everyone still ends up a winner. It's called 'comparative value' - it's how most of the economy works. It's good. Apparently, he wants to 'get a job somewhere' writing code. How are his future employers going to pay him? By asking people to pay for the software that he writes. Or something along those lines. In fact - given that he does have a 'high degree of expertise' in this open-source he made, that apparently people are using - it would make good economic sense overall if he (and possibly some others) were working on that, as opposed to him 'getting a job' elsewhere. It's a matter of plugging into the revenue stream. Again - not trivial, but something that could surely be tried.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Your post once again goes to the extremely flawed and inaccurate "If people aren't going to pay, then your thing is not good" thought, which has been proven false time and time again.
  - 10y ago