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Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

juliacomputing.com

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Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#31

Post by skybrian »

I was a bit surprised by the idea of the FAA using Julia for an "Aircraft Collision Avoidance System", since it apparently doesn't have static type checking and deployment seems like a weak spot.

Digging a bit deeper, it appears they use it to deliver specifications and example code to vendors?

"[T]ransferring the specifications to industry using this legacy system required three different types of documentation: first, the specifications were written both in variable-based pseudocode and in English descriptive pseudocode. But this approach left gaps in interpretation, leading to possible confusion or disagreement. So programmers also created state charts to fill these gaps and eliminate the potential for misinterpretation."

https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/lincoln-labs.html

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#32

Post by olympus »

Buttons840 wrote: post #20
wodenokoto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I send a patch to Julia, do I have to give them the rights to GPL and a non-GPL version?

They advertise that Julia is MIT licensed on their website, so I think the parent comment is wrong.

They state "non-GPL" version on their website: https://juliacomputing.com/products/juliapro.html

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#33

Post by [deleted] »

wodenokoto wrote: post #14
olympus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell an enterprise version of Julia for $1500 per year. The main things you get are support, MS Excel integration, and a non-GPL license. They also offer consulting, training, and a few other flavors of Julia (large scale server based gets its own edition). I'm sure the main draw will be companies that don't want to be stuck with a GPL license in their product.

So if I send a patch to Julia, do I have to give them the rights to GPL and a non-GPL version?

[deleted]

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#34

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m »

indescions_2017 wrote: post #25

I know it's also gained a following at MIT's Broad Lab amongst genomics folks. And that seems to be Julia's sweet spot: easy parallelism for scientists who can't spare the time futzing with HPC internals. Congrats to the Julia language team and to the great scientific discoveries that will be enabled with this investment! http://julia.mit.edu/

Interesting. I'm a member of a Broad Institute lab that recently evaluated Julia. We reached the conclusion that Julia, while promising, lacked the flexibility and performance of our existing tools. I suppose this is a problem that investment could address!

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#35

Post by detaro »

Buttons840 wrote: post #20
wodenokoto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I send a patch to Julia, do I have to give them the rights to GPL and a non-GPL version?

They advertise that Julia is MIT licensed on their website, so I think the parent comment is wrong.

The Julia core is MIT and thus not an issue. The issue with making a bigger GPL-free package is in libraries and dependencies (which I assume are either turned off, swapped out for non-GPL versions or have dual-license deals of their own for the gpl-free package)

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#36

Post by drej »

Julia frustrates me. I was in a mathematical modelling sphere, so I learned the language basics years ago and immediately fell in love (multiple dispatch, optional types, broadcasting, ...). But I couldn't get approvals at work to push it, because it was immature. Then a month later, all my code broke. I rewrote it using new APIs. It broke again. I know they reserved the right to make breaking changes up until 1.0, but they are hindering adoption because of all this. Sorry, guys, but I'll have to stick to Python, Go and (sigh) Fortran.

That being said, I applaud getting good funding for a project that's actually more than beyond MVP, it has happy users/customers and it serves a purpose. That's not all that common these days. Good luck, guys.

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#37

Post by KenoFischer »

skybrian wrote: post #31

I was a bit surprised by the idea of the FAA using Julia for an "Aircraft Collision Avoidance System", since it apparently doesn't have static type checking and deployment seems like a weak spot. Digging a bit deeper, it appears they use it to deliver specifications and example code to vendors? "[T]ransferring the specifications to industry using this legacy system required three different types of documentation: fir…

Yes, it's quite cool. The specification is a literate Julia program and the specification document is built from it. Simultaneously, they run large scale simulations to make sure that the specification behaves as the theory says it should. There was some discussion with them about deployment, and they funded us for a proof of concept Julia-to-C compiler, but the continuation of that discussion is probably still a number of years off. It's a very long term project.

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#38

Post by mac01021 »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #34
indescions_2017 wrote: post #25

I know it's also gained a following at MIT's Broad Lab amongst genomics folks. And that seems to be Julia's sweet spot: easy parallelism for scientists who can't spare the time futzing with HPC internals. Congrats to the Julia language team and to the great scientific discoveries that will be enabled with this investment! http://julia.mit.edu/

Interesting. I'm a member of a Broad Institute lab that recently evaluated Julia. We reached the conclusion that Julia, while promising, lacked the flexibility and performance of our existing tools. I suppose this is a problem that investment could address!

What are the existing tools that it doesn't match up to?

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#39

Post by coldtea »

jordigh wrote: post #28
rattray wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://juliacomputing.com/products/ - JuliaPro is the go-to product for anyone who wants to use Julia – professionals, engineers, software developers and data scientists. Beginners and experts can build better software quicker and dramatically improve performance. - JuliaRun is for scalable deployment of Julia in production for real time analytics and large-scale parallel simulations in the public cloud or a private…

So, are they just selling plain ol' non-free software? The "PRO" features seem to be ripping out the GPL libraries so they can link to MKL with a support contract. I have hope this means that the paid version is also free software. https://juliacomputing.com/products/juliapro.html

>So, are they just selling plain ol' non-free software?

Or, as we used to call it, just "software". They're selling software.

Re: Julia Computing Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding

#40

Post by smt88 »

drej wrote: post #36

Julia frustrates me. I was in a mathematical modelling sphere, so I learned the language basics years ago and immediately fell in love (multiple dispatch, optional types, broadcasting, ...). But I couldn't get approvals at work to push it, because it was immature. Then a month later, all my code broke. I rewrote it using new APIs. It broke again. I know they reserved the right to make breaking changes up until 1.0, b…

My girlfriend does incredibly complex modeling (she's a computational geneticist). From my limited understanding, it sounds like you may have some of the same challenges that she does.

Do you think Python and Go are more suited to that domain than R or Julia?

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