Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

They are arguing it does have impact on that.

The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success.

So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it.

The argument is that open source licenses are incompatible with the kind paid license they're offering their customers. These licenses pay for the salary of their skilled employees.

Oracle makes money EXACTLY the same way -- by selling commercial licenses to a non-open-source database. That's why Java can be open source and not bankrupt the company.

Again, the argument here seems to be Just come up with a different business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars and use that to pay for Wolfram !

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edit: Since this comment is highly upvoted and visible, I'll mention that I'm seeking funding for a compiler engineer for the Oil shell, which I just mentioned on the blog:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2021/12/backlog-assess.html#mor...

So I know from over 5 years of direct personal experience that compiler engineers don't just show up to your open source project and start implementing things! Even if you have tens of thousands of readers on Hacker News for years. (Oil has had 48 contributors but not very consistently, which is understandable.)

To be clear, I did not expect help! I have asked for it, but I thought I would be able to finish it myself. So it looks like hiring someone with specialized skills is the most realistic way to accelerate the project (now that the language design is in good shape).

This funding is to finish the Python to C++ translation, which is already half done. Example:

Oil's Parser is 160x to 200x Faster Than It Was 2 Years Ago http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/parser-benchmarks.html (lots of progress since then)

I'm applying for 50K euros of funding from NLNet. Also in the process of setting up Github Sponsors. E-mail me at andy@oilshell.org if you want to make a donation -- I think I will need at least $250K to properly pay for this position. If you're a professional programmer and spend 2 hours fussing with a shell script, that's probably worth a few hundreds dollars.

I'll start mentioning this in more posts when everything is set up, but I thought I would use this extremely relevant topic to raise awareness. Programming languages don't pay for themselves! https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/oil-language-tou...

I don't really understand the definition of open source. I used to hear people say stuff along the lines of "If you just release the source and don't accept patches then that's not real open source"

But the opinion on that has changed I guess?

That's true, i was more thinking of scientific interpreted languages, a la R, Mathematica, matlab

This seems too obvious to repeat, but Google and Microsoft fund Chrome and VS Code through the profits from their other products like Search and Windows.

Wolfram doesn't have that, and most businesses don't. It's very easy for us say "just make it open source" if we don't have to come up with a way of paying people! Just come up with a different business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars and use that to pay for Wolfram !

If he had said "It isn't open source because it's ours and we don't want it to be" that would have much more integrity than this.