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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 peop

by 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.
      - marijn 14y ago
        I'll point out again that launching by crowd-funding is in no way incompatible with being sustainable. It just eases the burden of the initial investment.
      - mishoo 14y ago
        I think both have valid points, but in such a way that Marijn is right. I did start cool open source projects without crowd-funding. It happened at certain points in my life when I didn't really need extra-money (or when I had sufficient free time — essentially the same thing). It is possible. Today? I'm not sure I could start anything substantial today without funding. My life is not the same as it was 3 years ago. Things change, and somehow paying the bills gradually becomes harder each day than it was the day before—I don't know why life has to suck this way, but so it happens. There's quite a narrow frame in everyone's life when one can start major free projects without any income — and I'm probably approaching the end of it. Kudos to Marijn for he manages to do so well, and still provide free tools of outstanding quality! (and in case you didn't notice, the demo is quite impressive — the thing is alive, not vaporware). On the Antirez side now, it's true that a project without a community is as good as dead (he also mentions evolution and bugfixes, but a community is a prerequisite for that). I certainly have projects that could benefit enormously from having a community — but it just didn't happen, for some reason. (OK, I know why: Emacs and Lisp are Just Not Popular). Tern is not likely to suffer from lacking a community, because it happens that JS is the most popular language on the planet and Tern solves a Hard Problem. You could think of Tern as the smarter big brother of JSLint. JSLint employs brute-force to find potential mistakes, while Tern employs smartness to help you find real semantic errors, or to improve the way you write code. It's unique. I don't think it'll suffer from lacking community—au contraire, I hope the community won't be as invasive as to murder this project by bringing into it tons of "I'd like my code to look that way" features — but then again, I trust Marijn for being able to trim down feature requests and leave in only what's meaningful, rather than particular use cases; and for particular use cases he will totally be able to make a living by providing custom support and development and this will eventually raise the quality of the project on the whole.
  - pfraze 14y ago
    I'm sorry, I laid my sentiment over your point and ended up missing the argument. Bad conversation on my part. You're saying, A value proposition worth paying for would focus on support, not software availability. Yeah? I'm unsure whether that's always the case. And as the OP is pointing out, support is implicitly included by his need to maintain a reputation. I'm not sure the profit model has to explicitly include it.

by marijn 14y ago

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.
    - marijn 14y ago
      I'll point out again that launching by crowd-funding is in no way incompatible with being sustainable. It just eases the burden of the initial investment.
    - mishoo 14y ago
      I think both have valid points, but in such a way that Marijn is right. I did start cool open source projects without crowd-funding. It happened at certain points in my life when I didn't really need extra-money (or when I had sufficient free time — essentially the same thing). It is possible. Today? I'm not sure I could start anything substantial today without funding. My life is not the same as it was 3 years ago. Things change, and somehow paying the bills gradually becomes harder each day than it was the day before—I don't know why life has to suck this way, but so it happens. There's quite a narrow frame in everyone's life when one can start major free projects without any income — and I'm probably approaching the end of it. Kudos to Marijn for he manages to do so well, and still provide free tools of outstanding quality! (and in case you didn't notice, the demo is quite impressive — the thing is alive, not vaporware). On the Antirez side now, it's true that a project without a community is as good as dead (he also mentions evolution and bugfixes, but a community is a prerequisite for that). I certainly have projects that could benefit enormously from having a community — but it just didn't happen, for some reason. (OK, I know why: Emacs and Lisp are Just Not Popular). Tern is not likely to suffer from lacking a community, because it happens that JS is the most popular language on the planet and Tern solves a Hard Problem. You could think of Tern as the smarter big brother of JSLint. JSLint employs brute-force to find potential mistakes, while Tern employs smartness to help you find real semantic errors, or to improve the way you write code. It's unique. I don't think it'll suffer from lacking community—au contraire, I hope the community won't be as invasive as to murder this project by bringing into it tons of "I'd like my code to look that way" features — but then again, I trust Marijn for being able to trim down feature requests and leave in only what's meaningful, rather than particular use cases; and for particular use cases he will totally be able to make a living by providing custom support and development and this will eventually raise the quality of the project on the whole.
- pfraze 14y ago
  I'm sorry, I laid my sentiment over your point and ended up missing the argument. Bad conversation on my part. You're saying, A value proposition worth paying for would focus on support, not software availability. Yeah? I'm unsure whether that's always the case. And as the OP is pointing out, support is implicitly included by his need to maintain a reputation. I'm not sure the profit model has to explicitly include it.