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Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

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Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#261

Post by wpietri »

pjmlp wrote: post #230
wpietri wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I have a ton of closed-source software in my projects folder. That's not a business model. Neither is open-source software, where I take some of that stuff and throw it up on GitHub. A business model is where I repeatably create value for others and receive money in exchange. A modern software company can do that in a variety of ways, including selling training, documentation, support, custom features, consulting…

The difference with open source, is that I can take you out of business with the code you wrote yourself.

Sure, there are differences, but I'm not sure that's one of them. Can you name some companies where that has happened? I'm pretty sure I can name a lot more where it hasn't.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#262

Post by skaplun »

annnnd wrote: post #248
cabalamat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My heart breaks each time I discover a free tool of recognition is developed by some altruistic talent who lives at a near poverty level while their work generates millions in added value. Maybe there could be a startup that helps people monetise their free software output?

THIS!!! In open-source there is a huge difference between value generated and value collected. The people behind open-source projects are often clueless (sorry, but it's true) how to extract value from their work while keeping community happy. How about a service which helps authors monetize open-source software for some percentage?

I honestly don't think this will be very easy to achieve on a human level. There are plenty of platforms that allow devs to meet sales partners but most people would rather just go at it alone or don't trust others or don't play well with others etc etc. Even the author of this piece, who testifies to poverty, chooses to ask for global donations rather than seek out a business partner

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#263

Post by gpvos »

sandGorgon wrote: post #116

This post today is what is wrong with open source software. If someone knows jwe, then they should tell him that lots of corporates and startups WANT to support stuff like this. But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay you will get subscriptions. I like to call this "gratitude-ware". Check out Sidekiq Pr…

I still do not get it. What explodes when a company donates (instead of paying for something with an invoice)? I cannot imagine that it is illegal.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#264

Post by usernam »

izacus wrote: post #220
zerr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. Why?

Because at least here in EU, you need an actual invoice for every expense that gets put into the accounting books. That expense can then be written off and doesn't count as "profit". Not having an invoice will make any EU-based company probably flatly refuse the payment due to how much accounting and revision issues that causes. Having a proper invoice (client address, your company address, VAT number) makes life sig…

Having a VAT number in most EU countries has a fixed cost that is non-negligible.

For a realistic example in Italy, having a VAT number implies a minimal fixed yearly cost of ~300eur (combining all various expenses) even for zero income. If you already are an employee, any extra income is likely to be taxed higher and require extra bookkeeping, to the point that cost parity is only attained if you can invoice for at least 450-500 eur.

This is purely wasted money, without considering the extra work that you have to put into for the tax records.

It's simply not worth it.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#265

Post by vitro »

sandGorgon wrote: post #116

This post today is what is wrong with open source software. If someone knows jwe, then they should tell him that lots of corporates and startups WANT to support stuff like this. But you cannot give a paypal link and expect donations. As a company, I cant do that. I need an invoice. Hell, if you can get a business account, I daresay you will get subscriptions. I like to call this "gratitude-ware". Check out Sidekiq Pr…

That seems like a good idea of a third party service - taking care of Pro subscriptions and invoicing for OSS projects.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#267

Post by TeMPOraL »

galfarragem wrote: post #259
fsloth wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Build something cool" is not sound financial advice for a person in a dire situation. The only reason it seems to work is because in the internet thousands are rolling the dice on this and you only hear of the few fraction of them who make it.

"Do not teach a starving man to fish".

Indeed. First feed them; a dead husk has no use for fishing skills.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#268

Post by wolfgke »

chii wrote: post #256
hueving wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need that much tooling for a python project, you are overengineering or writing really poor code. I've never found a case where someone is using tons of 'better tooling' for a well engineered project. 'better tools' are crutches to support a 500,000 line spaghetti code base.

The reality is that there are lots of spaghetti code bases, and better tooling is a godsend for those. There is no situation where better tooling isn't better!

> There is no situation where better tooling isn't better!

This is trivially a tautology. The non-trivial part is that what is better or worse depends a lot on the circumstances.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#269

Post by toyg »

chii wrote: post #254
fnord123 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. There should be funding bodies for projects like this who can fund projects and also provide a semblance of orchestration. The Linux Foundation (with the Core Infrastructure Initiative) and the Cloud Native Compute Foundation are already working in the right direction, imo. There are other organizations that work through contracting work to develop free and open source software. Red Hat and Canonical…

i feel that adding middleman organizations sap the margins, and also gives those middleman organizations that do the funding some measure of power that i feel is also undeserved. I think the dual licensing method would extract the most value and give the most of said value back to the developers.

The PyQt experience is that dual-licensing restricts adoption.

On the other hand, it ensures the developer makes enough to keep working on it quite steadily.

Re: Looking for Work After 25 Years of Octave

#270

Post by toyg »

sandGorgon wrote: post #252
cabalamat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My heart breaks each time I discover a free tool of recognition is developed by some altruistic talent who lives at a near poverty level while their work generates millions in added value. Maybe there could be a startup that helps people monetise their free software output?

+100 this is a YC-fundable startup. Here are the projects I can think of: 1. Celery - jeez. It runs half the world's high availability python software, yet has severe funding crunch. 2. Octave - obviously 3. Jupyter+Pandas - http://jupyter.org/ 4. Vue.js - http://vuejs.org/support-vuejs/

5. PyPy
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