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"Tern is not currently open source. I'd like it to be, but I have to pay my bills. So I'm running a crowd-funder where interested parties can pledge money. If s

• marijn 14y ago
  What do you mean?
  • antirez 14y ago
    I mean that from my point of view "gimme money if you want that open sourced" is very bad approach. Either build your closed source business, or try to earn from an open source product to pay the bills. 1) What is the current state of the source code? It could be a mess. 2) The value of open source is mostly in continued developments, support, community, not just in releasing the code itself. 3) If you have this mindset, who guarantees me that tomorrow you'll write plugins that are closed and ask again for money to release?
    • marijn 14y ago
      As for trust, the JavaScript community knows me as the maintainer of CodeMirror, and apparently likes the way I'm handling that project. This seems to lead people to believe that I won't deliver a horrible mess, and that I won't try to rip them off after the fact. Starting up a project with a crowd funding does not make it impossible to later fund continued maintenance by selling support and such. It is a way in which I'm safeguarding my initial investment. In short, I still fail to see the problem.
      • espadrine 14y ago
        > This seems to lead people to believe that I won't deliver a horrible mess That, and View Source.
      • pfraze 14y ago
        I agree that trust is not at stake, but the implication bothers some people because it cuts against the culture of OSS (rightly or not). You may just be one of the early pushers of a profit model that hasn't had time to normalise. I'll be interested to see. EDIT: cut down for brevity
        • antirez 14y ago
          The point is, this is not a model at all IMHO, since a model requires the ability to work in the long run. So you know wrote code for 1 month, and you want to be crowdsourced. Ok, what's the plan for the continued development of the project? Code as it is is worth zero without bugfixes, evolution, and a community.
          • marijn 14y ago
            A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works. It does require the reputation part, I guess. But I'm quite puzzled why you are so hostile to it.
            • melicerte 14y ago
              I agree with antirez point of vue. To write a software is one thing, you can be crowd funded for that, no problem. What Antirez is saying, as far as I understand it, is that your software is not valuable if you don't have a sustainable model in the long run. You'll still have to pay your bill the day the software will be released open source. In that perspective, crowd funding might not be a solution. So in the end, I think what Antirez is saying is that you probably should choose between releasing open source (and find something else to pay the bills) or go and make your project sustainable by making it something like licensed closed sources.
              • 14y ago
    • BruceM 14y ago
      What does it matter? Does it harm you in some way? If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And either way, we've learned something. There's one one approach or set of approaches that are blessed and known to work 100% of the time. I was more than happy to support it given the fine work that he's done in the past and how easy it has been to get answers from him about CodeMirror. If this helps him produce more software or release some of what he's already written, then great. I'd rather he do this than get a more traditional job and have the fruits of his labor locked up. But either way... what's the harm in trying a different approach? What's the harm in (potentially) giving him the opportunity to continue doing what he enjoys and does well? If you don't want to give him that opportunity, that's fine. But there's little need to cast aspersions, right?
    • robbrown451 14y ago
      So don't donate. I think its awesome that he's doing it, and the fact that he did CodeMirror open source should count for something. I think it's an excellent model. I hope it makes the target, so he doesn't have to go the closed source route with it. And I hope more people do things this way. Even if he doesn't continue developing it (leaving it to others to do so) or if he wants to write closed source plug ins, so what? That's not what the 10k is for. If he wants to make a big enhancement to it in a year and crowd fund that, I say go for it.
• kayoone 14y ago
  Your development of Redis is sponsored by VMWare afaik (which is awesome and so is redis), so whats wrong with crowd-sponsoring this guy ? Sure it might be a trust issue, and it might be better to release the code first and then ask for money, but as it looks this guy has a good reputation in the community so i dont see too much of a problem.
  • antirez 14y ago
    I talk from a general point of view of my ideas, not as the Redis developer. Anyway for 1 year I worked at Redis for free, and it was open source since day 0.
  • hderms 14y ago
    do you really think these two projects are comparable, or for that matter, that their code-licensing models are comparable?