Re: Designing Lisp from scratch

 
 
 
>The worst outcome is that something cool gets buried forever due  to
>licensing issues.
 
>From what I gather, you sold the entire rights of your product to a  company, 
which then pulled the plug on it?  If so I'm sorry to hear  this.  I can only 
imagine the disappointment.  In my case though, I  plan to retain all rights 
to uCalc Language Builder and sell only non-exclusive  licenses to as many 
companies as are willing to buy.
 
>I may be wrong, but I'm betting you haven't sold very many licenses  yet. 
 
I haven't sold any license at all.  That's because I always include a  
disclaimer that clearly states that you cannot purchase a license for it.   And 
that's because it is still under construction.  I have, however, sold  many 
licenses for UCalc Fast Math Parser (though not enough to make me rich),  which is 
the earlier product from which the language builder is derived.   Some users 
have inquired about, or attempted (with various degrees of success or  
frustration) to stretch FMP's limits to make it do at least some limited form of  
scripting, although it was originally intended mainly to evaluate one-line math  
expressions.  I assume then that adding outright scripting ability etc with  the 
new language builder will increase the clientele.  Rather than force my  own 
particular language on users, or picking a given pre-existing language, I  
decided to allow users to easily create their own.
 
>I don't want to be discouraging, but I suspect that the  commercial
>market for language construction systems is extremely small. 
 
I see this from an optimistic angle.  If it is indeed very small, I'd  like 
to corner this market while it is still small, and try to grow it.  I  know 
this sounds dreamy, but others have succeeded in doing just that in other  areas. 
 I figure it's at least worth a try.  Although I'd hope for  uCalc Language 
Builder to be a big hit, I know that only time can tell for sure  if there will 
really be a commercial market for it.
 
>For radical tools, I think open-sourcing it may actually improve  your
>chances of commercializing it, since it allows risk-takers to  invest
>enough in it for it to show its value.
 
The most immediate danger is that once the genie is out of the bottle,  
there's no putting it back in, even if I find that I could have done better  
without going open source.  Another consideration is that those who make  
significant contributions to an open source project may get a pat on the back,  but the 
money goes to those companies that have deep pockets, better marketing,  or 
are good at selling "support".  Ace contributors can of course be hired  by 
these deep pocket companies.  However, being hired by another company to  do what 
I'm already doing on my own would be a good way to kill the fun out of  it.
 
Daniel  Corbier
uCalc Language Builder
www.ucalc.com

 
In a message dated 3/16/07 10:45:49 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
[email protected] writes:

On  3/16/07, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> In any  event, I'm open to suggestions about open source, licensing, etc...
> I  want to make money with this, but I don't want anyone to miss out on  the
> fun due to licensing issues.

The worst outcome is that  something cool gets buried forever due to
licensing issues.  Back at  the start of the web boom, some friends and
I wrote a beautiful log  analyzer --- one of those designs that was so
great it teaches you things  about the problem you hadn't realized
before.  It's gone now.   Nobody will ever see it.  This kind of thing
happens pretty  frequently; a lot of good software gets deep-sixed for
business  reasons.

I don't want to be discouraging, but I suspect that the  commercial
market for language construction systems is extremely  small.  I may be
wrong, but I'm betting you haven't sold very many  licenses yet.  And
although you (and many others on this list) can  probably think of a
dozen ways people could benefit from it, I'll also bet  it will be a
very difficult sell.

If I'm right about sales so far, I  suggest that you set yourself a
deadline --- six months or a year, say ---  and a sales goal in
dollars, and see if you make it.  When the time is  up, if you haven't
reached your goal, open-source it.  There are  open-source-based
business models, too, so you're not even giving up on the  idea of
commercializing it.

For radical tools, I think open-sourcing  it may actually improve your
chances of commercializing it, since it allows  risk-takers to invest
enough in it for it to show its value.

Sorry  if this post is off-topic for the list.  But I think Daniel's is
a  common dilemma for innovators, so I thought other folks here might
find it  interesting.






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