We Open Source Everything
blog.latency.at
blog.latency.at
On the other hand, man that custom font is tough on the eyes.
Their product is a globally-distributed monitoring system. Running these systems all over the world, and keeping them running, is a serious operational headache. It's probably at least as complex as operating the service the customer wants to monitor - perhaps a lot more, given that most services are not globally distributed.
As long as they price below "double your ops budget", they'll remain value for money - even if the code they use is free.
I'm the guy behind latency.at. So far it's really just a little side project.
Since few people asked: I mainly open sourced it because I believe it's useful to have a complete, real life service as an example/inspiration.
There was an interesting paper linked on HN a couple of years ago that indicated a lot of the money is disappearing from software sales. The inference was the availability of mysql depresses the revenue from MSSQL, the availability of Linux depresses the revenue from Windows and so on.
Psychology plays an important part in how markets work.
Well of course it seems that way to you, because you have defined it circularly. Open sourcing code is in no way "giving it away for no return". There is massive return on open sourcing code, from money to improvements in the code and all other manner of things.
I have the opposite perspective from you. I think that closed source code indicates you don't value you it very much. But I understand that perspectives are different and that's okay. But you have made your own leap to not valuing code very much but you should know that the truth for a lot of people is the exact opposite of what you wrote.
Money is a good proxy for value, I know the customers who paid for my software today are getting some benefit from it, they wouldn't have put their hand in their wallet otherwise. Every time I get an order I get a warm feeling that goes well beyond the financial reward.
On the other hand some of my worst and most needy "customers" have been those using open source or free tools. Their expectations are high and gratitude low.
As I said I do have some open source projects and they have received contributions, when I add it up though it hasn't paid off.
Otherwise, open source is terrible for making money. Most clients don't care, but you're giving your competition everything in exchange for nothing.
It's great for society, though.
Just my opinion, and I know a lot of people share it.
Open source is not actually giving away your code for no money, let alone no return. It's not free as in beer.
In my own experience I was trying to demonstrate that we didn't need to bastardize the codebase into a million pieces in order to give remote developers only the small part their working on; that we might as well make the code publically available
Don't forget, the vast majority of open source is paid for by companies.
https://gitlab.com/latency.at/latencyAt/issues/36
:)
Proofreading works, everyone!
Ive been working on this because I'm interested in underwater drones (uuvs), and hope to commercialise this in the form of services.
My current understanding is as follows:
- most open source systems come from universities and are GPL, with the option for licensing. (PTAM, ORB SLAM, DSO, SVO, LSD)
- Optimistically, it would require $1-3 million to build a compedative system privately. The sky is the limit here.
- No one, neither the universities nor private entities, is making serious money by licensing just a SLAM system. The well performing startups are somehow coupled to a product or a service.
- All systems basically solve the same problems, but mix and match different solutions. For example for initial motion estimation, you could rely on constant motion (DSO, ORB SLAM), image alignment (SVO), or solving directly for rotation between cameras (GSLAM).
- As a researcher, to implement a new idea, you either need to implement an entire system from scratch, or modify a GPL'd system. This is great in theory, but since everyone is playing the GPL or pay game they are reluctant to accept contributions.
I'm imagining something like opencv, with implementations of common algorithms accompanied by wiki pages describing high level details. Components could be mixed and matched into different reference SLAM systems targeting different use cases, do you want something that will run on a MAV or a self driving car?
From a commercial point of view, companies could worry more about tweaking things to work for a particular use case without needing to start from scratch. I believe that universities, with their many departments, have more opportunity than anyone else.
My belief is that it's time for a liberally licensed SLAM system. Has anyone come to a similar conclusion or care to comment to the contrary?
Thanks HN
I'm not really familiar with Python yet and try to find some example of these code.
Thank you.
If you'd like to release something like this I'd be happy to contribute. I have a background in SLAM, embedded and photogrammetry, so this is something I could really get behind.
I've been wanting to spend some time in that field myself but workload hasn't allowed it. Just out of curiosity, have you looked into DTAM (PTAM's successor) or RATSLAM? Both were on my shortlist for a future project.