Re: Designing Lisp from scratch

On 3/21/07, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >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.

We wrote it while employees of that company, as a company project.

> >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.

And I encourage you to give it a try!  I'm suggesting that you set an
a priori threshold for "success", and try an Open Source approach if
you don't reach it.

I do hope you succeed at growing your market.  But I bet you won't be
spending most of your time hacking.  :)

> >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.

I'd like to see this articulated without a metaphor.  I don't think
it's right, but I can't be sure what you mean.

In my experience, the risk to worry about is that someone else will
turn out to be a better uCalc hacker than you are.  :)  But if you're
on the job, answering questions, fixing bugs, articulating sound
opinions about architecture, the success of uCalc will turn directly
into interest and reputation for you, which creates all sorts of
opportunities.  I made a decent living as a consultant on CVS for a
while simply because a friend and I had decided to take someone else's
unreleased network-transparent CVS code and release it, answer
questions, take support contracts, and so on.  It's my sense that the
Open Source world places a higher value on current activity than on
past contributions.

> 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.

There are a lot of different ways to monetize software.  Proprietary
licensing is the way it's usually done, but it has costs: it
segregates you from people who could contribute substantial
improvements to your work --- I've had very positive experiences in
this sense --- and makes it difficult for risk-takers to demonstrate
your project's value.

I'm like you, in that I found working for myself (running a company
with a friend) exhilarating.  I think it brought out the best in me.
(My friend left to do other things, and I didn't have the energy to
carry it on by myself, and there was nobody else I trusted as much.)
We paid the rent, had (not too cushy) health insurance, ate at
restaurants, and only worked on Open Source software.

I hope you'll keep an Open Source approach in mind.