An idea for commercial support for D

Joakim via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri Jan 9 07:39:12 PST 2015


On Friday, 9 January 2015 at 14:43:02 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Friday, 9 January 2015 at 12:21:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>> To be honest if something like this would ever happen my 
>>> first move would be to reach company leadership and discuss 
>>> possible full forking of D compiler as a simple matter of 
>>> ensuring business safety. This scheme introduces unacceptable 
>>> amount of risks for customer.
>>
>> I see, so some outside devs selling patches to other companies 
>> poses "unacceptable" risk for your company.  Funny how such a 
>> stone-age relic move seems to have such an effect on you. ;) 
>> In essence, Sociomantic is already running a forked compiler, 
>> D1, as it isn't publicly maintained anymore, so I'm not sure 
>> what the difference is or why we should care what you do.
>
> It poses unacceptable risk of company becoming hostage of 
> ecosystem were "buying" closed patches is only way to use the 
> tool effectively. In software world where even .NET goes 
> open-source there is simply no reason why would one agree on 
> such terms.

See my response to Joe above, most devs rely on closed 
toolchains.  Funny how they all avoid becoming "hostages."

> Right now quite some of other developers contribute to D2 
> toolchain and related projects even if it is not directly used. 
> It makes sense exactly because project is fully open - there is 
> a good trust that such work won't get wasted and/or abused and 
> sit there until its actually needed, encouraging other people 
> to contribute in the meanwhile. It won't work that way with 
> hybrid model.

I don't see how other devs selling paid patches will affect the 
mentioned aspects of OSS devs working on D.  Simply claiming that 
"it won't work that way" anymore is not an argument.

>>> Selling of software in any for is a relict of stone age and 
>>> we must help it get forgotten.
>>
>> Funny, how does Sociomantic make money again?  Oh right, by 
>> selling access to their closed-source software.  I guess 
>> because it's on a server and the business logic doesn't run on 
>> the customer's device, that's _completely_ different from 
>> "selling of software." ;)  Or maybe Sociomantic is about to 
>> open source all their code and go pure FOSS!  I look forward 
>> to the announcement.
>
> There are so many ridiculous statements here.
>
> 1) Selling services is indeed much different from selling 
> software and much more honest. When you sell a program you 
> don't really sell anything of value - it is just bunch of bytes 
> that costs you nothing to copy. When you sell service you don't 
> just sell "access" to same software running on the server but 
> continuous efforts for maintaining and improving that software, 
> including developer team costs and server h/w costs over time. 
> This is actually something of value and charging for that is 
> more widely accepted as just.

The only ridiculous statement I see here is your claim that 
building a desktop/mobile program doesn't also require 
"continuous efforts for maintaining and improving that software, 
including developer team costs and server h/w costs over time."  
Both server and desktop/mobile software are widely considered 
worth charging for: it is highly idiosyncratic and 
self-rationalizing for you to claim that one is significantly 
different from the other.

> 2) We don't even sell plain service access - it is more 
> delicate than that, exactly to ensure that our client don't 
> feel like product hostages and get encouraged to try with no 
> big commitment. You can contact our sales department for more 
> details ;)

You take money and create mostly closed-source software: those 
are the only details that matter in this discussion.

> 3) There are indeed plans for open-sourcing at least base 
> libraries we use. It is taking very long because making 
> something public in a way that won't hit you back is damn 
> tricky legally these days and it is blocked in legal department 
> for quite a while. No announcement because no idea how long may 
> it take.

Sociomantic has always been generous with the D community, I 
don't mean to imply you haven't.  But unless you open-source all 
your code, you're employing a hybrid closed-source model, exactly 
the kind of model you're objecting to here. :) Funny how it's 
good for Sociomantic but not anybody else.

>>> At the same time offering more commercial support is 
>>> something very desired for business and something I'd like to 
>>> see extended. Right now pretty much only available option is 
>>> to reach Walter personally and agree on some contract with 
>>> DigitalMars which is both limited by manpower of a single 
>>> person and not advertised in any way.
>>
>> I have no doubt that you'd rather someone worked for you for 
>> peanuts on a support contract, rather than making more money 
>> off a productized D compiler.  But what you should consider is 
>> the latter is likely better for D and your preferred approach 
>> is not preferred by everybody else.
>
> Yes, I am much in favor of paying for actual effort and not 
> helping make money from nothing like it has happened with 
> Microsoft. It both more honest from the point of view of 
> commercial relations and motivates faster development by paying 
> exactly for stuff that matters. With your proposed scheme best 
> strategy is to hold off adding new stuff upstream as long as 
> possible to force more people buy it.

Microsoft is an extreme example of product software, most 
software product companies didn't connive their way into a 
similar monopoly position.  Android is the product I keep using 
as an example, no "actual effort" there?

If you're such a believer in open-source support models, I look 
forward to Sociomantic open-sourcing all their code and then 
providing paid hosting and support instead, getting paid only for 
the server baby-sitting you claim is worth paying for.  I don't 
see that happening and we both know why, because your current 
service model from selling access to your mostly closed-source 
product is just much more economically viable.

You are subject to the same incentives with your hybrid-source 
software as you complain about with hybrid models, ie to hold off 
on open-sourcing the few libraries you plan on releasing to make 
more exclusive money off them in the meantime.  As I've said from 
the beginning, the decision on when to open-source in my model is 
not taken by the developer, it is contractually agreed to ahead 
of time based on certain funding and time limits.

> You won't get customers in the long term if they feel like 
> being extorted money. Your proposed scheme does exactly that.

I see no arguments for why that would happen, simply bald 
statements with no real reasoning and seemingly ignoring the 
funding/time limits involved with my hybrid model.


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list