small worlds and better than ransom

[Thomas Lord]

The "ransom" models of funding R&D don't quite work.  They
say "I will release a program that does X but only if the public
ponies up $Y."   Variations might let the exact value of $Y float
but all ransom variants have in common that "X" -- what the
program being sold does -- is known in advance.   (I consider
"bounty" models to be a special case of "ransom" models, for
this analysis.)

The only ways to know in advance that your program will do X
is if either it is a fairly uninteresting program that you plan to
write or if you've already done the bulk of the interesting work.
Either way, you aren't selling the activity of doing R&D: you're
selling past work.  (In the case of "bounties," if X isn't boring
and trivial and isn't already done, then you aren't selling development
at all -- you're selling your liability that feature X will be
ready by some specific time.)


R&D is, by nature, an activity of uncertain value.  You can
analyze the chances of one effort or another but, at the end
of the day, it is gambling.


A close cousin of "ransom" captures the nature of R&D more
accurately.   In particular:

A researcher with a promising project can perhaps bootstrap
by publishing an early version of the project, but then selling,
primarily, "pre-purchases" of future versions at a customer-determined
price.

That is, you can have release 0.1 for free.   When release 0.2
is published, you can get that for free as well but, until then,
you can pre-purchase a copy of release 0.2 for any amount of
your choosing.

Customers who pre-purchase, rather than wait for, release 0.2
establish a relationship with the R&D vendor.   When they
speak to the vendor they are heard not as a member of the
general public, but as a valued customer whose repeat business
is hoped for.    It is for the purpose of establishing such a
relationship that some potential customers may choose to
actually incur the extra expense of making a pre-purchase.

This is gambling because customers bet that, in the end,
they get more value from their customer relationship than they
would have gotten by investing the purchase price in other
ways.   Competing customers, paying different amounts,
define a landscape of bets against which the R&D vendor
"fixes" the game.   In an honest R&D game, the vendor
fixes the game -- dedicates his attention in response to
pre-purchases of future releases -- so as to maximize his
repeat business.  (Unlike casino gambling, honest open source
R&D  vendors are unlikely to use cheap drinks, think
steaks, flashing lights, and noisy environments to encourage
reckless purchases by their gambling customers.)

For example:

  http://www.dasht-exp-1a.com/first-light/index.html

-t

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > The "ransom" models of funding R&D don't quite work.

I agree, but not because of uncertainty about product, but rather
because of social issues.  People who are willing to pay for a
proprietary product generally either don't care about eventual open
source release or actively dislike it (eg, if it's an input into their
product, thus inviting new entry into their market).  People who want
*open* source (as opposed to access to source, which could be granted
as part of a proprietary product) general believe in a mutual
contribution model, and will be put off by the ransom demand.

 > They say "I will release a program that does X but only if the
 > public ponies up $Y."  Variations might let the exact value of $Y
 > float but all ransom variants have in common that "X" -- what the
 > program being sold does -- is known in advance.

This is not entirely true; X can float as well, although it may
require tedious renegotiation with all those have have paid in the
past.  Furthermore, the exact details of the UI, performance, etc are
rarely specified.

 > Either way, you aren't selling the activity of doing R&D: you're
 > selling past work.

This is the way it works in almost all pure-science grant programs
(NSF, for example), though.  As RMS pointed out in the GNU Manifesto,
people do speculative programming (and research) because they like to
do it.  They get themselves funded by showing evidence of competence,
usually past output (except for Young Investigator-type awards), much
of which is to be integrated into the allegedly new content of the
proposal, rarely on the basis of the wonderfulness of the proposal.

 > A researcher with a promising project can perhaps bootstrap
 > by publishing an early version of the project, but then selling,
 > primarily, "pre-purchases" of future versions at a customer-determined
 > price.

This looks to me to have all the disadvantages of VC funding, except
from the researcher's point of view (he doesn't have to give up
equity).

 > Customers who pre-purchase, rather than wait for, release 0.2
 > establish a relationship with the R&D vendor.   When they
 > speak to the vendor they are heard not as a member of the
 > general public, but as a valued customer whose repeat business
 > is hoped for.

A problem is that the valued customer*s* may have a wide variety of
priorities.  To the extent that those conflict, some customers will
lose.  This uncertainty is (in many cases) larger than either the
uncertainty about what "X" is, or the uncertainty about if and when
"X" will be delivered.

After all the dancing is done, what's left is "if you need/want to
maintain control of the development process but to be paid for the
product, use a proprietary model."  If you're feeling generous, simply
*promise* to release as open source under certain (unacceptable to a
profiteer) circumstances, and keep your promises.  As you gain a
reputation for keeping your promises, RMS will heap hot coals on your
head, but both the people who want the best now and are willing to
pay, and those who are willing to accept last year's version as long
as it's free (in whichever sense) will come to like you and give your
their business.  It worked for Aladdin/Ghostscript for many years;
even ESP Ghostscript was more about the CUPS business plan than any
real clamor in the community for a more advanced GPL Ghostscript.

 > R&D  vendors are unlikely to use cheap drinks, think steaks,

I could be attracted by a think steak. :-)

 > flashing lights, and noisy environments to encourage
 > reckless purchases by their gambling customers.)

DNA Lounge, anyone? *chortle*

[Forrest J. Cavalier III]

Thomas Lord wrote:

> The "ransom" models of funding R&D don't quite work.  They
> say "I will release a program that does X but only if the public
> ponies up $Y."   Variations might let the exact value of $Y float
> but all ransom variants have in common that "X" -- what the
> program being sold does -- is known in advance.   (I consider
> "bounty" models to be a special case of "ransom" models, for
> this analysis.)
>
> The only ways to know in advance that your program will do X
> is if either it is a fairly uninteresting program that you plan to
> write or if you've already done the bulk of the interesting work.
> Either way, you aren't selling the activity of doing R&D: you're
> selling past work.  (In the case of "bounties," if X isn't boring
> and trivial and isn't already done, then you aren't selling development
> at all -- you're selling your liability that feature X will be
> ready by some specific time.)

Saying "I have written software with feature X, ransom is $Y" reveals a great
deal about the uncertainty of completing a competing product (nearly 0%), and
the effort needed to produce it.

In Open Source, a lot of your competitors are not in it for the money.
If a small group knows it can spend a couple of weekends creating
an GPL'ed X competitor, they might do it for fun or the glory.  They
lack $ but have time.  They don't want to waste either time or money
on failed efforts, but you just told them what it costs to finish.

How do you avoid that problem?

If your $Y is bigger than a couple of weekend's of effort, then you
don't have as much competition.  It is also true that you have a
very limited market of buyers who want to spend $10,000 or more to
free your work.

One strategy is publicizing your "X" only to specific potential buyers.
This is establishing the supplier-customer relationship, which you
describe.

I'm not trying to be critical, I like your analysis, but what does this
have to do with Free Software?   Customers like it when they can
buy an "X", and not let competitors have "X" for free.

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>  > Either way, you aren't selling the activity of doing R&D: you're
>  > selling past work.
>
> This is the way it works in almost all pure-science grant programs
> (NSF, for example), though.  As RMS pointed out in the GNU Manifesto,
> people do speculative programming (and research) because they like to
> do it.  They get themselves funded by showing evidence of competence,
> usually past output (except for Young Investigator-type awards), much
> of which is to be integrated into the allegedly new content of the
> proposal, rarely on the basis of the wonderfulness of the proposal.
>  

NSF and similar programs work well for some things and
quite poorly for others.   I'd rather not digress into an analysis
of NSF if it isn't important.

I don't know what RMS did or didn't say but I know why
I do open source R&D, and how I do it, and why I think
people should care, etc.

I do it because I'm very good at it and I'm not very good
at many things.   I do enjoy it and that probably helped me
to become good at it.   I do it semi-systematically -- a
literary comparison would be to using Burroughs-esque
cut-up techniques to generate new ideas, and then just
technical, improvisational coding skills to systematically
try attractive ideas out.   I think people should care because
I've had some successes this way in the past (projects that
create value, even if I didn't personally reap much) and
my rate of success seems to be going up (suggesting I'm
getting better at it).

People don't generally get themselves funded by showing evidence
of competence -- not competence at software R&D, anyway.
By one route, some people get funded through the relatively
dysfunctional credential-based allocation of research funds (but,
again, I don't mean to digress into NSF).   By another route, people
get funded when there is a "growing concern" -- a firm that
can suck up between .1 and 5 $M cash with a plausible ROI in
3-6 years.   The skills needed for achieving success by either
route are not the same as and are not a superset of the skills needed
to be inventive with software.   Those funding systems are
absolutely wonderful when the work but there has to be a third
way for when those systems just get in the way.

Open source software R&D is a "basis craft".  The skill is to, by
a mix of "feel" and technique, design a basis set of new ideas and
technologies such that that basis set is impressively generative.
That is, if combinations of elements of the basis, and combinations
of those combinations have a large and relevant "span" then the
R&D has succeeded: it  has created new culture -- a new space of
activities -- degrees of freedom along new axes.

You can see this "basis and span" nature of R&D in famous examples,
like traditional lisp or early unix.   Both technologies feature
"composition" centrally -- functional composition in lisp,
composition of processes and pipes in unix.   A basis set with
just a few types of primitive components and universal ways
to compose them is likely to have the desired large span of easilly
reached applications.   The contribution of R&D, in these cases,
was to define the new basis sets.    Markets then captured the
value of the span much later, and in many scattered transactions.

A later example is the LAMP stack.   It's rules of composition
are not nearly as regular as traditional lisp's or traditional
unix's, but they are still among the simplest rules of composition
that span a large space of interesting web applications.

If there is a systematic way to invent new "basis sets" of
technology, and to reward the investors in that system with an
advantage in claiming value from the resulting "spans" -- then
that is a business model for open source R&D.  It is such
a model I seek and I'm trying for a very simple-minded approach,
rather than something overly fussy and theoretical.

Some would argue, I think, that the systematic way to
invent new basis sets is to just let people scratch itches -- the
basis sets will evolve organically -- no business model is needed.
However, nobody can name a single historical case (not even
LAMP) where that has actually occurred:  all of the big advances
came from individuals and  small teams of deliberate explorers
who purposefully set out to invent a new basis, usually in
pursuit of a definite economic reward.  Open source
itch scratching has proved effective at building out into the
spans of basis technologies.   It has not been good at creating
new bases.


>  > A researcher with a promising project can perhaps bootstrap
>  > by publishing an early version of the project, but then selling,
>  > primarily, "pre-purchases" of future versions at a customer-determined
>  > price.
>
> This looks to me to have all the disadvantages of VC funding, except
> from the researcher's point of view (he doesn't have to give up
> equity).
>  

Oh, it's quite different.   You're looking at it the wrong way.

People with one set of skills are in the start-up entrepreneur
business.   Their job is to sell chunks of equity in growing
concerns to VCs for big chunks of money.

Let's dub that class of people the "start-up folks".

The start-up folks do some things for themselves and other
things they outsource.    So, by the time they have an ordinary
business office, probably they are outsourcing the emptying
of the trashbins, but they will do the network design for their
new social networking site themselves.   Right?

The start-up folks are pressured to always become more and
more efficient.   One of their biggest obstacles is coming up
with new visions and new founding technologies.

I'm suggesting that the start-up folks partially outsource
their brainstorming work.    This is heretical in the valley
where the paradigm is that first you invent the transistor
in your garage and then you become chairman of a
multinational corporation but, mythology aside, it seems
a realistic approach to driving the VC engine, to me.

>  > Customers who pre-purchase, rather than wait for, release 0.2
>  > establish a relationship with the R&D vendor.   When they
>  > speak to the vendor they are heard not as a member of the
>  > general public, but as a valued customer whose repeat business
>  > is hoped for.
>
> A problem is that the valued customer*s* may have a wide variety of
> priorities.  To the extent that those conflict, some customers will
> lose.  This uncertainty is (in many cases) larger than either the
> uncertainty about what "X" is, or the uncertainty about if and when
> "X" will be delivered.
>  

If there are enough customers with conflicting goals and some
are paying well below what the R&D firm wants to spend
addressing the low-paying customer's needs then, yes, the low-paying
customers lose.  (But, not always:  if a lot of low-paying customers
all have similar needs, they can add up to a regular customer.)

Pricing is the big question there.   A losing customer buys
pre-purchases and is disappointed in the end.   So, unless there
is some mitigating circumstance, presumably they don't want
to buy more pre-purchases.    The price for the first ones have to
be high enough to work for the R&D seller but low enough that
customers can take the risk of losing everything.

> After all the dancing is done, what's left is "if you need/want to
> maintain control of the development process but to be paid for the
> product, use a proprietary model."  If you're feeling generous, simply
> *promise* to release as open source under certain (unacceptable to a
> profiteer) circumstances, and keep your promises.  As you gain a
> reputation for keeping your promises, RMS will heap hot coals on your
> head, but both the people who want the best now and are willing to
> pay, and those who are willing to accept last year's version as long
> as it's free (in whichever sense) will come to like you and give your
> their business.  It worked for Aladdin/Ghostscript for many years;
> even ESP Ghostscript was more about the CUPS business plan than any
> real clamor in the community for a more advanced GPL Ghostscript.
>  

That is silly, though.  There is simply no need.

There are natural advantages to being the customer of an open
source R&D firm.   When a customer expresses their point of
view to the firm, that influences the direction of future research.
When the firm reports developments to a customer, that customer
gets a leg up on competitors at understanding the new, evolving
technology.

Think of it in terms of mailing lists.   As a researcher, I could
create a public mailing list and declare that that is the main
way to talk to me.   Even if I make no such declaration, many
people will assume that is the main way to talk to me and
will even lash out if it turns out not to be true.   My other choice
is to declare simply that I prefer to speak with customers and
that without customers, I can't do much at all.

I guess I am saying that open source R&D is simply
"the business of having customers".

>  > R&D  vendors are unlikely to use cheap drinks, think steaks,
>
> I could be attracted by a think steak. :-)
>
>  > flashing lights, and noisy environments to encourage
>  > reckless purchases by their gambling customers.)
>
> DNA Lounge, anyone? *chortle*
>
>  

Touche.

-t

[Thomas Lord]

Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:
> In Open Source, a lot of your competitors are not in it for the money.
> If a small group knows it can spend a couple of weekends creating
> an GPL'ed X competitor, they might do it for fun or the glory.  They
> lack $ but have time.  They don't want to waste either time or money
> on failed efforts, but you just told them what it costs to finish.
>
> How do you avoid that problem?
>


I am trying to embrace it because as much I impress myself
with what I have already released, I am confident in my ability
to add on more in the future that I doubt "the crowd" can
keep up with.     At least up to some point, and then it's off
to another project from the back burner.


People should just fork the newly released XQVM, for example.
I'll probably release more code for it so try not to diverge too
much but, by all means, fork away.


>
> If your $Y is bigger than a couple of weekend's of effort, then you
> don't have as much competition.  It is also true that you have a
> very limited market of buyers who want to spend $10,000 or more to
> free your work.

If total revenues don't do better than $1,500 or in that range then,
yes, that's just a little bit of work and competition is fierce.  In
that case, the product is a flop, so far.

But if 10 customers each do $1,500 now we're getting somewhere.
And if that were to keep up, pretty soon I have to start contemplating
hiring some of those weekend warriors as contractors (whose work
is immediately GPL and public-released).   (I think my first
hire, when I can afford a few hundred, might well be a graphic
designer who can do some technical illustrations for me!   That
is *such* a time-sink when I try to do it myself.  I'm all thumbs
with drawing programs.)



>
> One strategy is publicizing your "X" only to specific potential buyers.
> This is establishing the supplier-customer relationship, which you
> describe.

Social connections for that are closely guarded and I'm
not exactly the most skilled at using them.   I do try.

Targeted (paid) advertising is very much in my plan but isn't part
of the launch because I don't have budget for it (or much of anything).


>
> I'm not trying to be critical, I like your analysis, but what does this
> have to do with Free Software?   Customers like it when they can
> buy an "X", and not let competitors have "X" for free.
>

In the realm of "new technologies" things aren't that simple.

You and your competitors can both have "X" but, as a new thing,
"X" takes time to puzzle out and experience to build out into
consumer-facing products.   If you have better access to me
than your competitor, you're in much better shape to adopt
"X" and to influence the future of "X".

(Also, the "X" in this case, XQVM:  for various technical
reasons, everyone gets more value out of it the faster it
becomes a commodity with multiple independent implementations.
This value of "X" is a special case in that way.)

-t

[La Monte Henry Piggy Yarroll]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Thomas Lord writes:
>
>  > The "ransom" models of funding R&D don't quite work.
>
> ...
> After all the dancing is done, what's left is "if you need/want to
> maintain control of the development process but to be paid for the
> product, use a proprietary model."  If you're feeling generous, simply
> *promise* to release as open source under certain (unacceptable to a
> profiteer) circumstances, and keep your promises.  As you gain a
> reputation for keeping your promises, RMS will heap hot coals on your
> head, but both the people who want the best now and are willing to
> pay, and those who are willing to accept last year's version as long
> as it's free (in whichever sense) will come to like you and give your
> their business.  It worked for Aladdin/Ghostscript for many years;
> even ESP Ghostscript was more about the CUPS business plan than any
> real clamor in the community for a more advanced GPL Ghostscript.
>  

I've always seen the lagged release of open versions as close to
pessimal. The Andrew Consortium used this approach and the effect was to
stifle any active FLOSS community. Why should I contribute patches to a
system when the bugs may already be fixed,  or it's going to be a really
long time before my patches will be in a release?

I must say that I'm a little surprised at the success of Ghostscript.
How does this project get around the problems that kept Andrew from
developing much of a community?
>  > R&D  vendors are unlikely to use cheap drinks, think steaks,
>
> I could be attracted by a think steak. :-)
>  
It seems that "think steak" is now a technical term just asking for a
definition and matching jargon entry.

Thomas, what do you suggest?

[Thomas Lord]

La Monte Henry Piggy Yarroll wrote:

>>  > R&D  vendors are unlikely to use cheap drinks, think steaks,
>>
>> I could be attracted by a think steak. :-)
>>  
> It seems that "think steak" is now a technical term just asking for a
> definition and matching jargon entry.
>
> Thomas, what do you suggest?
>
>

Oh, dear.   Silly.   Um... i was going to say something about a think
steak being what you get after slaughtering and carving up think chattle
but, lemme be optimistic.....


Think steaks are little introductory rhetorical (perhaps multi-media)
slices through some "mind set" -- an introduction to a new way of seeing
the world.    So, whether they succeed or fail, the Long Now
Foundation's video presentations are attempts to serve up think steaks,
for example.    So is my XQVM intro page.

Sometime soon there's (as an example) a little flyweight conference in
SF -- the "Ignite" event -- with 15 minute, 20-slide,
15-second-per-slide presentations.    Those would be attempts to serve
up "think, juicy, burgers".  

-t

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

La Monte Henry Piggy Yarroll writes:

 > I've always seen the lagged release of open versions as close to
 > pessimal.

Then you've missed the point.  It's not a binary choice between
releasing under a FLOSS license now or under the Microsoft EULA.
"Proprietary" as currently defined means (more or less) "any rights
reserved except those that are reserved in the GPL".  (I detest that
terminology, but it's too late to fix it.  So I accept it.)  But there
are one heck of a lot of rights that can be less reserved than they
are in a Microsoft EULA---and still leave you with a proprietary
license.

 > I must say that I'm a little surprised at the success of Ghostscript.
 > How does this project get around the problems that kept Andrew from
 > developing much of a community?

It reserved certain rights that (it believed that) it needed to
support its business model, namely commercial redistribution of any
kind.  Noncommercial redistribution was fully supported, source that
was not bound by NDA was released to the public under the Aladdin Free
Public License (a copyleft but not free software license despite the
name) pretty much immediately.

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > NSF and similar programs work well for some things and
 > quite poorly for others.   I'd rather not digress into an analysis
 > of NSF if it isn't important.

You made a blanket statement that "you're not selling R&D, you're
selling past work", and I'm simply pointing out that that model seems
to work well for certain areas of speculative R&D.  (For values of
"well" == "providing the incentives the NSF claims to want to provide"
as well as any other proposal I've seen.)

 > I do it because I'm very good at it and I'm not very good
 > at many things.

So far you haven't been terribly good at making money at it, though.
At least not proportionate to your contribution.  So why are you still
at it?

 > I do enjoy it

That's my guess. :-)

 > By one route, some people get funded through the relatively
 > dysfunctional credential-based allocation of research funds (but,
 > again, I don't mean to digress into NSF).

I used to think that.  Then I spent 18 years in a system which is a
truly dysfunctional credential-based allocation of research funds.
I'm now of the opinion that the NSF is best of breed. :-)

 > The skills needed for achieving success by either route are not the
 > same as and are not a superset of the skills needed to be inventive
 > with software.  Those funding systems are absolutely wonderful when
 > the work but there has to be a third way for when those systems
 > just get in the way.

Well, there's at least one third way: get a day job and hack as a
hobby.  OK, that's not good enough (even if it did work for Albert
Einstein).  So we need a fourth way. :-)

 > If there is a systematic way to invent new "basis sets" of
 > technology, and to reward the investors in that system with an
 > advantage in claiming value from the resulting "spans"

Traditional IP is a way to provide such an advantage, but it doesn't
encourage basis set creation as much as it creates a tragedy of the
anticommons in a basis set.  But basis sets are exactly the "ideas"
that nobody (except robber barons) wants to be patentable or
copyrightable.  So I think you're in trouble here; on the traditional
side you have a very inefficient way to encourage fundamental
research, on the more comprehensive side you have an "advantage" that
scares all right-thinking people to death (and causes Bill Gates to
drool like a two-year-old).

 > > This looks to me to have all the disadvantages of VC funding, except
 > > from the researcher's point of view (he doesn't have to give up
 > > equity).
 >
 > Oh, it's quite different.   You're looking at it the wrong way.

I didn't say it was the same; I said the disadvantages were the same.

 > I'm suggesting that the start-up folks partially outsource
 > their brainstorming work.

I don't see where you're suggesting that (note that "outsource"
implies a contract for what gets delivered), but I'll take it as given
for now.

 > This is heretical in the valley where the paradigm is that first
 > you invent the transistor in your garage and then you become
 > chairman of a multinational corporation but, mythology aside, it
 > seems a realistic approach to driving the VC engine, to me.

Don't you know that you can only ask a riddle of an elephant once?
The elephant never forgets the answer ....  There's a reason why the
first thing the startup folks do is to make the actual inventors sign
NDA/NC agreements.

The problem that you started with is that the most inventive people
rarely are good businesspeople, or even if they were, they "should"
concentrate on inventing (a much rarer talent).  The businesspeople
then are dependent on the inventors, and that's the important thing
about IP: it's transferable from those who know how to generate the
IP, to those who know how to exploit (to use an appropriately
distasteful term) the IP.  This reduces the dependence, and thus
provides incentive for business creation.  Not an optimal outcome, but
I don't see where your scheme helps to create businesses, so (unless
I'm completely missing it), your scheme can't hold a candle to
traditional IP for this purpose.

 > If there are enough customers with conflicting goals and some
 > are paying well below what the R&D firm wants to spend
 > addressing the low-paying customer's needs then, yes, the low-paying
 > customers lose.  (But, not always:  if a lot of low-paying customers
 > all have similar needs, they can add up to a regular customer.)

True, low paying customers are most likely to lose, but software
development is uncertain, as you point out: big spenders can lose
too.  Your scheme increases uncertainty with no benefits to anyone --
except the inventor.

 > There are natural advantages to being the customer of an open
 > source R&D firm.   When a customer expresses their point of
 > view to the firm, that influences the direction of future research.
 > When the firm reports developments to a customer, that customer
 > gets a leg up on competitors at understanding the new, evolving
 > technology.

Scratch "open source" from the above, and you've said something
important.  (As a leading example, that's precisely the Ghostscript
business model.)  Leave it in, and it's merely disingenuous.

 > I guess I am saying that open source R&D is simply
 > "the business of having customers".

Again, the "business of having customers" is redundant.  You are in
business if and only if you have customers.  The question remains: how
do you attract those customers?

 > > DNA Lounge, anyone? *chortle*
 >
 > Touche.

Yeah, but it's Jamie who's going to have a new Heidelburg-style scar
on his cheek. ;-)

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>  > I do it because I'm very good at it and I'm not very good
>  > at many things.
>
> So far you haven't been terribly good at making money at it, though.
> At least not proportionate to your contribution.  So why are you still
> at it?
>
>  

Because that is what I do.



>  > I do enjoy it
>
> That's my guess. :-)
>
>  

It is becoming more difficult to enjoy it.

>  > If there is a systematic way to invent new "basis sets" of
>  > technology, and to reward the investors in that system with an
>  > advantage in claiming value from the resulting "spans"
>
> Traditional IP is a way to provide such an advantage, but it doesn't
> encourage basis set creation as much as it creates a tragedy of the
> anticommons in a basis set.  But basis sets are exactly the "ideas"
> that nobody (except robber barons) wants to be patentable or
> copyrightable.  So I think you're in trouble here; on the traditional
> side you have a very inefficient way to encourage fundamental
> research, on the more comprehensive side you have an "advantage" that
> scares all right-thinking people to death (and causes Bill Gates to
> drool like a two-year-old).
>  

Either I am good at this kind of research or I am not.  And if
I am good at it, and afforded more opportunity to do it, then
those most closely engaged with the process stand to gain.



>
> Again, the "business of having customers" is redundant.  You are in
> business if and only if you have customers.  The question remains: how
> do you attract those customers?
>
>  

Show a little leg?   Put on the red light?



>  > > DNA Lounge, anyone? *chortle*
>  >
>  > Touche.
>
> Yeah, but it's Jamie who's going to have a new Heidelburg-style scar
> on his cheek. ;-)
>
>
>  


Heh.

-t

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > >  > I do it because I'm very good at it and I'm not very good
 > >  > at many things.
 > >
 > > So far you haven't been terribly good at making money at it, though.
 > > At least not proportionate to your contribution.  So why are you still
 > > at it?

 > Because that is what I do.

Which is coming awfully close to the infamous informal definition of
"insanity".  I know what you mean, and I don't deny the validity of
that existential position.  But you presumably recall what happened to
"Phaedrus" in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_.  While what
happens to *you* is up to you, there's no denying that a lot of
inventive people are scared out of their ethical wits by that prospect.

 > >  > I do enjoy it
 > >
 > > That's my guess. :-)
 >
 > It is becoming more difficult to enjoy it.

Satan sez, "it would be a lot easier if you had money, and here's a
nice shiny apple labelled 'proprietary'" ...

 > Either I am good at this kind of research or I am not.  And if
 > I am good at it, and afforded more opportunity to do it, then
 > those most closely engaged with the process stand to gain.

No, that's very unclear.  Your existential position is that you are
creating a lot of value, which is pretty easy to verify up to this
instant, and that you (very generously) wish to recapture enough to
make it possible for you to continue, but not enough to "get rich".
Unfortunately, your ethical position is that you wish to do so in ways
that make it difficult for third parties to exploit your contribution
economically.  So much for support from VCs ....

Again, I use that word "exploit" intentionally.  That's what VCs are,
at core, exploiters of others' contributions.  It's a valuable
service, but not terribly savory.

 > > Again, the "business of having customers" is redundant.  You are in
 > > business if and only if you have customers.  The question remains: how
 > > do you attract those customers?
 >
 > Show a little leg?   Put on the red light?

Worked for Roxane.

However, developing software is fundamentally different from fucking
(although I've heard researchers describe "aha!" moments in terms
usually reserved for orgasms :-).  Your software is a gift that will
keep on giving pretty much forever (well, eventually it falls into
disuse, but that's another story).  IP is a device for ensuring that
you get a piece of that.  There's an ethical balance to that.  IP also
creates a large degree of monopoly power, so there's a major ethical
flaw too.  If ethics were easy, we'd all be good.  :-)

RMS sez in the GNU Manifesto that programmers don't need to collect
royalties.  There's always work for hire, training, bug fixing, etc.
Someone who hustles can live well.  But "hustles", as you know, is an
oft-used euphemism for whoring.  I think it's ethically disgusting to
suggest that as an appropriate way to make a living for you, based on
the lasting nature of your major contributions.

NB I would very much like to find a way that open source as *you would
like to do it* can regularly be commercially successful.  But I don't
think prepurchase is the way.

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:


> No, that's very unclear.  Your existential position is that you are
> creating a lot of value, which is pretty easy to verify up to this
> instant, and that you (very generously) wish to recapture enough to
> make it possible for you to continue, but not enough to "get rich".
>  

I just want to compound my investment -- to "get ahead".
You could call it my "red paper-clip", albeit using a capitalist
rather than a bartering model.

For example, why didn't I make a splashier first release by
developing and hosting some fancy web service based on
XQVM?   Answer: It's not even an option.  I don't have that kind of
money.    So, there is a prerequisite problem: getting more
capital to start with.


> Unfortunately, your ethical position is that you wish to do so in ways
> that make it difficult for third parties to exploit your contribution
> economically.  So much for support from VCs ....
>
>  

That's absolute nonsense.   Tell me: how has the open source nature
of the LAMP stack impeded the current generation of, for example,
"web 2.0" services?




> Again, I use that word "exploit" intentionally.  That's what VCs are,
> at core, exploiters of others' contributions.  It's a valuable
> service, but not terribly savory.
>  

Right.   When I think in terms of my personal "long range plan (or vision)"
I think that, if 5 or 10 years from now I've had to sell equity in something
and personally take VC money then, probably I've blown it.

The simple problem is that taking VC money is a poor risk if you
can't possibly afford to lose -- and that would be my situation in
most imaginable scenarios.



>  > > Again, the "business of having customers" is redundant.  You are in
>  > > business if and only if you have customers.  The question remains: how
>  > > do you attract those customers?
>  >
>  > Show a little leg?   Put on the red light?
>
> Worked for Roxane.
>  


A better analogy might be performance -- as in performer and audience.

The pre-purchase business is like selling tickets to a performance.  There
is a venue there, of limited size, and with better and worse seats.  In
the course of the performance, a relation develops between performer
and audience and this relation colors and helps to shape the performance.

The experience of the audient has some value -- the ticket prices it
supports.     A live performance has value when the audience becomes
engaged in its production -- an experience that can't be obtained
from mere recordings of a performance.

The value of the performance business is the venue size multiplied by
the ticket price.



> RMS sez in the GNU Manifesto that programmers don't need to collect
> royalties.  There's always work for hire, training, bug fixing, etc.
> Someone who hustles can live well.  But "hustles", as you know, is an
> oft-used euphemism for whoring.  I think it's ethically disgusting to
> suggest that as an appropriate way to make a living for you, based on
> the lasting nature of your major contributions.
>  

Are ticket prices royalties?   Do they interfere with software freedom?



> NB I would very much like to find a way that open source as *you would
> like to do it* can regularly be commercially successful.  But I don't
> think prepurchase is the way.
>
>  

Isn't it a choice, really?   Many firms and many start-up folks
regularly mine the public open source world for innovations that
can be exploited to create new products or improve existing ones.
Pre-purchases and things like them offer an alternative approach.

One thing to consider is what happens if not just me but
perhaps a few people actually succeed in starting a business like
this.   That will change the landscape a lot because many people
will try to emulate this.  That is, many entrepreneurial hackers
will follow suit and offer their work under similar terms.

Most, one presumes, will not win.   What will happen though
is a sharp improvement in meaningful, quick feedback between
the ambitious part of the open source community and the
consumer-facing parts.   That is: hackers around the world
will focus more sharply on actual hard-problem needs because,
if they come up with solutions (or even objectively plausible
advances towards solutions) then there's immediate money
in it for them.


-t

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> NB I would very much like to find a way that open source as *you would
> like to do it* can regularly be commercially successful.  But I don't
> think prepurchase is the way.
>
>
>  


Also, it seems to me that the only alternative to using
pre-purchases to influence "the community" is to try
to participate directly in the community at a social and
political level.   Taking that latter route puts firms in
the business of trading endorsements and threatening
defamations and other political power plays: not a good
long-term way to make true friends in "the community".

Pre-purchases could be understood as, simply, a mark
of professionalism.

-t

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > > Unfortunately, your ethical position is that you wish to do so in ways
 > > that make it difficult for third parties to exploit your contribution
 > > economically.  So much for support from VCs ....
 >
 > That's absolute nonsense.   Tell me: how has the open source nature
 > of the LAMP stack impeded the current generation of, for example,
 > "web 2.0" services?

It hasn't.  It is, however, a perennial complaint of developers like
you that those who benefit from the open source LAMP stack don't
contribute enough back to the initial, speculative developers like
you.  This is a crucial market failure because huge messy
big-ball-o-mud "solutions" like the LAMP stack generate equally huge
installed bases and impede development and deployment of elegant,
small, but equally powerful stacks like XQVM.  (Not a direct
competitor to LAMP, of course.)  Or was that a different Tom Lord who
posted complaints about Red Hat et al?

 > Right.   When I think in terms of my personal "long range plan (or vision)"
 > I think that, if 5 or 10 years from now I've had to sell equity in something
 > and personally take VC money then, probably I've blown it.
 >
 > The simple problem is that taking VC money is a poor risk if you
 > can't possibly afford to lose -- and that would be my situation in
 > most imaginable scenarios.

Well, on the one hand VC is capital; they don't have grounds to sue
you for the money back.  On the other, unless you negotiate very
shrewdly, you won't own your own product, and (I've heard) VCs often
play dog-in-the-manger with products they fail to make money on.

 > The pre-purchase business is like selling tickets to a performance.

So you're back to "internet busking", which is where you are.  Dammit
Tom, you deserve better, just plain as a human being, and in
comparison to your contributions.

 > There is a venue there, of limited size, and with better and worse
 > seats.  In the course of the performance, a relation develops
 > between performer and audience and this relation colors and helps
 > to shape the performance.

 > The experience of the audient has some value -- the ticket prices it
 > supports.     A live performance has value when the audience becomes
 > engaged in its production -- an experience that can't be obtained
 > from mere recordings of a performance.

But this analogy is temporally backward.  The value in a live
performance is that you *were there*, it can easily be a spot
exchange.  The value in a relationship to an independent software
developer is something in the future, uncertain, and unlikely to bend
to the customer's will, any more than Pavorotti would have acceded to
requests for "Truckin'" for his encore just because people bought
tickets in advance.  (Nonetheless, I'd like to hear it!)

 > Are ticket prices royalties?  Do they interfere with software freedom?

Are you allowed to carry recording equipment into the venue?  In my
experience only for the Grateful Dead; most of my favorite indie
performers funded their guitar strings with CD and cassette sales
(yeah, I'm old enough to have bought cassettes from indies...).  Not
even the indies welcome recording equipment.

It worked for the Grateful Dead.  There aren't very many professional
indies who are very happy about the situation, though.

 > Isn't it a choice, really?   Many firms and many start-up folks
 > regularly mine the public open source world for innovations that
 > can be exploited to create new products or improve existing ones.
 > Pre-purchases and things like them offer an alternative approach.

Why pay for the milk when the cow is free?  These people generally
don't care about future development of the core app.  They have a
widget they want to build, they take your free version, hire a hacker
(with an axe, not one with a scalpel) to beat it into shape, combine
it with the hardware, and spend the lion's share on marketing.  If you
are willing to consult at the level of writing drivers for new widget
hardware and writing optimized assembly code for a particularly
performance-sensitive operation, yes, they'd love to prefund that and
get you committed to it (Ghostscript, Cygnus).  But they're not
interested in funding the progression from larch to tla to revc to XQVM.

Look, you've been there, with Canonical.  They clearly thought they
had a better use for your time than working on Arch, no?  They
considered revision control a problem under control, they could
delegate incremental improvement to people without your vision in that
area.  (I'm aware that there were a lot of other things going on, but
stated as bare facts that's correct, is it not?)

 > One thing to consider is what happens if not just me but
 > perhaps a few people actually succeed in starting a business like
 > this.   That will change the landscape a lot because many people
 > will try to emulate this.  That is, many entrepreneurial hackers
 > will follow suit and offer their work under similar terms.

Agreed, and I sincerely wish you good luck.  But the bottom line on
the back of the envelope I'm looking at says "you're gonna need luck
in round lots."

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > Also, it seems to me that the only alternative to using
 > pre-purchases to influence "the community" is to try
 > to participate directly in the community at a social and
 > political level.

Substituting money for discussion in politics has a name, and not a
pretty one.  You are literally talking about "selling influence" now.

At best, the "influence" is "honest", and it's a patronage model, not
a business model.  That model has failed, IMO.

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> So you're back to "internet busking", which is where you are.  Dammit
> Tom, you deserve better, just plain as a human being, and in
> comparison to your contributions.
>  

I appreciate the sentiment but that isn't a professional
consideration, exactly.    People may or may not choose
to become customers as an expression of good will
if they want to act on such considerations of their own.



> Look, you've been there, with Canonical.  They clearly thought they
> had a better use for your time than working on Arch, no?  They
> considered revision control a problem under control, they could
> delegate incremental improvement to people without your vision in that
> area.  (I'm aware that there were a lot of other things going on, but
> stated as bare facts that's correct, is it not?)
>  


Canonical discussed the possibility of employment with them
to work on Arch.   In those discussions, three non-negotiable
conditions emerged from Canonical, at least as I understood
their position:   1) That I would make any
change to Arch I was ordered to (though would be free to
not include it in the public release).  2. That I would submit
to personal surveillance of my whereabouts and activities
(to be personally conducted by the founder, no less!).
3. That no equity was being offered.

I declined.   It did not help that when the plans for what
changes to Arch I might be asked to make were discussed,
I found them unimpressive and technologically wrong-headed.
If I had thought the ideas were good, (1) might not have been
an obstacle, if (2) and (3) could have been answered.

What happened next was a situation in which his employees
behaved in manners I consider unprofessional and that,
in fairness, probably do not reflect the reflectively held
values of those employees, Canonical, or Canonical's founder.
And, in fairness, I did not, in that process, make any
kind of commercial counter-offer to Canonical.   If I
had thought to make a counter-offer, some like pre-purchases
would have made a lot of sense.

Water under the bridge.

>  > One thing to consider is what happens if not just me but
>  > perhaps a few people actually succeed in starting a business like
>  > this.   That will change the landscape a lot because many people
>  > will try to emulate this.  That is, many entrepreneurial hackers
>  > will follow suit and offer their work under similar terms.
>
> Agreed, and I sincerely wish you good luck.  But the bottom line on
> the back of the envelope I'm looking at says "you're gonna need luck
> in round lots."
>
>
>  

That luck-deficit is invariant under all plans and scenarios
I can think of.   Gotta play the hand you're dealt.

-t

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Thomas Lord writes:
>
>  > Also, it seems to me that the only alternative to using
>  > pre-purchases to influence "the community" is to try
>  > to participate directly in the community at a social and
>  > political level.
>
> Substituting money for discussion in politics has a name, and not a
> pretty one.  You are literally talking about "selling influence" now.
>
> At best, the "influence" is "honest", and it's a patronage model, not
> a business model.  That model has failed, IMO.
>
>  

As things stand now, social norms are imposed that have
nothing at all to do with the craft of creating software.

If you want to get somewhere in the open source community,
you pretty much have to suck up to a small clique of
"leadership" employees at various firms.   That clique is
judged by their employers by their skills at getting people
to suck up to them.   There are whole books that aim to
teach others how they to can get community members to
suck up to them.

Don't you think a little honest exchange of money would be
a breath of fresh air?    Or do I need a another scholar to
write a think-tank report about how I like to hack because of
the giddy thrill of getting social pats on the head from people
with more money than me?


-t

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:
 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > > So you're back to "internet busking", which is where you are.  Dammit
 > > Tom, you deserve better, just plain as a human being, and in
 > > comparison to your contributions.
 >
 > I appreciate the sentiment but that isn't a professional
 > consideration, exactly.    People may or may not choose
 > to become customers as an expression of good will
 > if they want to act on such considerations of their own.

It's not a professional consideration.  It's a public policy
consideration.  "Does it make sense to advocate an extreme position
when there is no known reliable way to mitigate the kind of experience
you've had?"

Again, you've been able to basically maintain your ethical stance on
free software in the face of very adverse experiences.  Do you really
think that FSB has a future if free software demands that of all its
adherents?

 > It did not help that when the plans for what
 > changes to Arch I might be asked to make were discussed,
 > I found them unimpressive and technologically wrong-headed.
[...]
 > And, in fairness, I did not, in that process, make any
 > kind of commercial counter-offer to Canonical.   If I
 > had thought to make a counter-offer, some like pre-purchases
 > would have made a lot of sense.

From their point of view?  AFAICS they weren't talking about
acquisition of an independent vendor, they were talking about an
employment contract.  So what do you think you had to offer that they
would *recognize* as being of value?  The fact that you were
unimpressed by their proposals implies to me that it wasn't much.

This isn't surprising: they're entrepreneurs, and you're a visionary.
I hear similar things said by people a lot, and I just think it's
unavoidable because of the difference in the kinds of people who take
on the different roles.

 > Water under the bridge.

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to learn from history. ;-)

 > That luck-deficit is invariant under all plans and scenarios
 > I can think of.   Gotta play the hand you're dealt.

You've chosen to discard all your aces, considering it unethical to
keep them.  Thing is, you're an inventive guy, and you can say to The
Dealer Up There "hit me", and you will get some more good cards.  What
will you do with them?  Will you discard them, or play them?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Thomas Lord writes:

 > As things stand now, social norms are imposed that have
 > nothing at all to do with the craft of creating software.

Welcome to the wonderful world of business bureaucracy.  AFAICS it's
inevitable once you have firms with more than a couple hundred
employees or $100 million in revenue.  These social norms have nothing
to do with the basic productive activities in *any* industry, but they
grow up like weeds wherever large organizations and large sums of
money converge.

All they really mean is that free software has come to be of interest
to big organizations.  It's like getting a dog; you will eventually
have to de-flea the living room.

 > Don't you think a little honest exchange of money would be
 > a breath of fresh air?

No, not in the free software community.  I think if you managed it,
you would immediately be accused of selling out and your judgments
about the needs of your projects would be suspect.

Anyway, you're not talking about an honest exchange of known values
like money.  You're talking about being paid to do what you think is
important.  You will get money, the universal token of value; it may
not be enough, but you know what you're getting.  But what about the
pre-purchaser?  They are rather unlikely to get what they want on the
schedule they need it.

The hell of it is that what you think is important probably *is*
important in the larger scheme of things.  But there's little reason
to suppose it will reliably be what the pre-purchaser needs for her
business.  There's a huge conflict of interest there, and that
conflict of interest is, I believe, going to vitiate your plans for
"prepurchases".

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> You've chosen to discard all your aces, considering it unethical to
> keep them.

That's false on both counts.


> Thing is, you're an inventive guy, and you can say to The
> Dealer Up There "hit me", and you will get some more good cards.  What
> will you do with them?  Will you discard them, or play them?

"hit me" + discard?  I think you are mixing metaphors.

Basically I can't make ante so about all I can do is ask
potential customers to put up a stake for me and buy me
a seat at the table.


> So what do you think you had to offer that they
> [Canonical] would [have] *recognize[d]* as being
> of value?  


I think they shot themselves in the foot with zero-sum
thinking.   They got it into their heads that the world would
be a better place if there was only one line of Arch development
that the public cooperated with and they assumed it was
to be a fight to make sure that that line of development would
be there's.    That is, they behaved as if the goal was to
minimize the number of people who cooperated directly
with me -- they strove to create attrition from my project.
If they were thinking more clearly, they might
instead have behaved as if the goal was to maximize the
number of people working on any viable branch of Arch
at all.   It's classic "bigger slice" vs. "bigger pie" thinking.

I think they shot themselves in the foot by winding up with
almost 100% of a much smaller pie.   They just didn't
"get" open source.   They acted like they had to kill the
GNU project to survive, and that's (with all due respect
to Andy) just what they did.

-t