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Comment by fnord123 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 '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.

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.

I think Netflix and Steam have proven that convenience can be better than free for a lot of people (not everyone, some don't have the disposable income, and some would rather deal with inconveniences in order to get it free).

I pay Netflix a nominal fee each month and whenever I feel like it I can choose to watch between hundreds of shows (currently working through Penny Dreadful), without having to hunt down a torrent for it. Especially a torrent of good enough quality.

Same with Steam. Sure, I could try to find a game to download via torrent, but I know I can find it on Steam, often at a steep discount (or put it on my wishlist and wait until the inevitable one arrives and they notify me of it).

Additionally, I know it won't have any malware or viruses hidden in it, and will be the most up to date version (seriously, try finding torrents that are up to date for most things, it's almost impossible).

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.

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.

I'm going to assume that you have no background in business or commerce, which is understandable, most people on HN don't.

If people are not willing to pay for something, then it's a very strong indication that it has no economic value.

Almost by definition.

When people pay $4.00 for a Cappuccino, and are not willing to pay $1 for 'an app' - then yes - 'the app' is worth less (to them) than a cup of coffee.

Sometimes there can transactional friction, IP issues, regulatory issues which distort the market etc., but generally speaking 'price' is a very good proxy for value.

If nobody is willing to pay money for this guys product, then it is worthless, and he should probably stop wasting his time by volunteering his time to make something that nobody derives any value out of.

Those people using it would in that case obviously have something else they can use that is 'just as good', or, they just don't need it at all.

After all - if they will pay $1 for a Bic pen, and not this software, well, that doesn't bode well for how useful this software is for them.

But mostly likely, would rather seem that this software is quite valuable to many researchers. Which is good, because they would likely indeed pay for it, just as they would a pen, a book, their computer, their lab-coat, their eyeglasses, their calculator or their lunch.

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...

"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.

>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.

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.

"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.

"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.

""Pepsi and Coke" are multibillion dollar commodity consumer brands - and have absolutely nothing to do with this."

Really? They're "established and entrenched products." I think they're a pretty good analogy here. Even if you are established and entrenched, you still have to advertise.

"Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well."

Billions of people in poverty, and rising income inequality would say otherwise.

"Really? They're "established and entrenched products." I think they're a pretty good analogy here.

They are completely irrelevant to this discussion.

"Even if you are established and entrenched, you still have to advertise."

He has a widely adopted product without having advertised before. If he didn't advertise before, why would he have to now?

"Paying money to each other as a fair exchange of value is how most of the world works, and it works well." Billions of people in poverty, and rising income inequality would say otherwise."

Total rubbish. In the last 40 years, the number of people in the world living in abject poverty has been more than cut in half.

Once China ended their Communist insanity, and embraced free markets in the 1980's, they've lifted 100's of millions out of poverty and they are flourishing.

I'll gather you've never worked in a business role?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.)

>> 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.

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