Because capitalism is an inherently exploitative economic paradigm?
Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
41–50 of 115 posts
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#42This is exactly the problem Open Collective[0] exists to solve. Often times, there are people who want to financially support a given open source project, but there is no channel by which to do so. Creating the financial channel is the first step toward a much needed culture change where the assumption is you will support the open source you rely on, especially if you're making money off it.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#43Also a problem for Octave. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 It also stings a little when people say that it's completely obsolete because Matlab itself is "legacy" and we should all be abandoning the language, Octave included... and yet, even though I like numpy and Python and matplotlib and Julia and R, I still find myself reaching for Octave whenever I need a quick visualisation of some…
Octave’s “business model” is “give away for free an inferior clone of a commercial product”. Why is anyone surprised that that isn’t lucrative? Anyone who has the money to spend on Octave is likely to just pay for Matlab. The defining feature of Octave users is that they want to use Matlab’s library ecosystem but they’re too cheap or broke to pay for a copy of Matlab.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#44If your open source project needs funding there is https://opencollective.com/opensource (currently waiting, I'm not affiliated)
Look at the numbers before assuming this is a solution to funding Open Source. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that the amounts it's bringing in for most projects is effectively like buying the developer a cup of coffee. It's not a sustainable sum for someone to live on, in almost all cases.
Right now, Webpack has $99k; which is respectable. That's a decent annual salary for a full-time developer that lives anywhere other than Silicon Valley or NYC. But, it falls off a cliff after that. Next is MochaJS at 16k; that's two months salary, maybe three or four in cheap places. After the top twenty projects, you're closer to nothing than you are to something. The time it takes to set it up would be worth more than it'll return (there are lots of $0 projects in the list).
Maybe it'll improve with time. I dunno how long this project has been going on, and it looks really well done. It's just that the numbers are abysmal. I hope it'll improve. I wish we had a way to fund our software without having to sell a commercial version...but, it's so far from realistic, we can't really even consider it.
I've been making my living from OSS for ~20 years now, and it's the great curse and tragedy of the thing that because the software is free, there's an incredibly pervasive belief that tiny sums are sufficient to keep a project afloat.
We tried, very early on (~14 years ago now), to crowd-fund some major enhancements to our software...we raised a total of about $15,000 (this was long before crowd-funding was a thing), which to a lot of people seemed like a lot of money, and it caused a lot of folks to feel extraordinarily entitled to specific results (e.g. because they contributed $200, they assumed it would mean we'd develop a big feature they were the only person asking for, and that would take days or even weeks to build and test). But, for two developers working full-time on something, $15,000 is practically nothing. Most developers just don't have the freedom to trade in a full-time job paying market rates for a sub-poverty annual wage. Realistically, we couldn't commit full-time to the project until we started a business based on it that brought in predictable, recurring revenue. And, we couldn't effectively do that without providing things that the OSS version didn't have. OSS is a really tough way to make a living, is what I'm trying to say, and I don't know a lot of people who do it successfully without being employed by someone that does a lot of non-OSS stuff, too.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#45Original NumPy author here. I have a lot to say on this topic, given that it has literally consumed my life over the past 20 years. You can go here for some thoughts about some of this: http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/ There are several articles there that relate but in particular http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/2012/10/continuum-and... and http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/2017/02/numfocus-past...
I knew what I was getting into when I wrote NumPy. I knew there was not a clear way to support my family by releasing open source software, and I knew I was risking my academic career.
I did it because I believed in the wider benefit of ideas that can be infinitely shared once created and the need for software infrastructure to be open-source --- especially to empower the brightest minds to create. I did it because others had done it before me and I loved using the tools they created. I hoped I would inspire others to share what they could.
There have been a lot of people who have helped over the years. From employers willing to allow a few hours here and there to go to the project, to community members willing to spend nights and weekends with you making things work, to investors (at Continuum) willing to help you build a business centered on Open Source.
There are many people who are helping to fix the problem. In 2012, I had two ideas as to how to help. Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I pursued both of them. One was the creation of NumFOCUS that is working as a non-profit to improve things. The second was the creation of Continuum (http://www.continuum.io) to be a company that would work to find a way to pay people to work on Open Source full-time.
We have explored several business models and actually found three that work pretty well for us. One we are growing with investors, a second we are continuing with, and another we are actually in the process of helping others get started with and ramping down on ourselves.
Along the way, I've learned that open source is best described in the business world as "shared R&D". To really take advantage of that R&D you need to particpate in it.
We call our group that does that our "Community Innovation" group. We have about 35 people in that group now all building open-source software funded via several mechanisms.
We are looking for people to help us continue this journey of growing a company that resonantly contributes significantly to Open Source as part of its mission. If you are interested, contact me --- I am easy to track down via email.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#46Ok, so the problem seems to be 'lack of maintainer' or could be stretched to contributer. The article later linked to https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintain... which kind of reminded me a problem which I'm facing. After getting through basic of "Introduction to Computer Science Using Python" and forever pending goal to become a "Python Developer", is anyone here who is experience in Python willi…
What sort of things ("Python development" is a bit nebulous) are you most interested in?
The sort of things which people get to call themselves "Python Full Stack Developer" or people whose primary job is to write Python code at some workplace. I just want to work in something where is Python is used and in great demand to get me a full time job. My latest depth into Python apart of learning the surface has been with Flask. Developed a CRUD using a tutorial and there is absolute so much to learn. But if I learn a lot about Flask, I won't be playing with Django which seems to have more demand. I also like to have Python projects on my Github but so far, I have no clue what to make on it and to publish. Just want to be able to develop anything by knowing the art!
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#47>the entire scientific Python stack was essentially relying upon on the “free time” work of only about 30 people—and no one had funding! 30 people? I remember a time when a certain fruit company would enter a field, literally hire all 30 of those guys, and put them behind closed doors. Then in 2 years they'd dominate the field for the next decade. Are these guys turning down offers? Or is the fruit company that poorl…
There isn't much money in writing libraries like NumPy. Why would a company hire a bunch of expensive devs to write some software to compete with Matlab? The market just isn't big enough to justify the cost.
It's not about money. Apple has $200B just sitting in a bank doing nothing. It's about supply and owning the entire market. What happens when the entire market stagnates because those devs are writing great stuff for Apple exclusively?
Apple also used to buy the entire world supply of sapphire for phones and the entire world supply of flash memory for music players. Literally, nobody else could compete, because Apple contracted it in bulk, first.
Those days seem long gone now. Today Apple takes 5 years to update their Pro desktop, while at the same time, making fun of people for using 5 year old computers.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#48Also a problem for Octave. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 It also stings a little when people say that it's completely obsolete because Matlab itself is "legacy" and we should all be abandoning the language, Octave included... and yet, even though I like numpy and Python and matplotlib and Julia and R, I still find myself reaching for Octave whenever I need a quick visualisation of some…
Octave’s “business model” is “give away for free an inferior clone of a commercial product”. Why is anyone surprised that that isn’t lucrative? Anyone who has the money to spend on Octave is likely to just pay for Matlab. The defining feature of Octave users is that they want to use Matlab’s library ecosystem but they’re too cheap or broke to pay for a copy of Matlab.
Because Matlab is expensive. Very expensive. Especially if you want to run it on servers or clusters, which is something people want to do. We're talking a single company paying millions of dollars per year for Matlab licenses, versus paying thousands for Octave (this does happen, and some companies do pay for Octave, but very few). My last job consisted in fixing Octave enough to be able to run some classifiers in servers, which would have been prohibitively expensive in Matlab and it would have also been much too expensive to rewrite in a different language. It was cheaper to pay me to fix Octave just enough for this code to run.
As to the "inferior" part, it really depends. Some people really like the Octave-exclusive features, but most are unaware they even exist.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#49Also a problem for Octave. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 It also stings a little when people say that it's completely obsolete because Matlab itself is "legacy" and we should all be abandoning the language, Octave included... and yet, even though I like numpy and Python and matplotlib and Julia and R, I still find myself reaching for Octave whenever I need a quick visualisation of some…
Really? Why is that? In my mind, it is tough to beat ggplot
Partly it's more familiarity with Octave than ggplot, but partly also that the Octave syntax is just about the easiest there is out there. Type something, immediately see some graphs. Type some more, gradually modify that graph. The simplicity is a big selling point. Julia's syntax comes pretty close, but I'm not as familiar with it yet.
Remember that Matlab's and Octave's biggest audience consists of not-a-programmer programmers, that is, people who consider using Matlab or Octave as being something different than using a "real" programming language. I call them not-a-programmer because that's what I've often heard them call themselves, even as they write Matlab or Octave code.
Re: Why Is NumPy Only Now Getting Funded?
#50Ok, so the problem seems to be 'lack of maintainer' or could be stretched to contributer. The article later linked to https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintain... which kind of reminded me a problem which I'm facing. After getting through basic of "Introduction to Computer Science Using Python" and forever pending goal to become a "Python Developer", is anyone here who is experience in Python willi…
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Want to develop a Github profile which could be very attractive to Python related job. How do I get started on it? People say "do something new and solve an existing problem with Python" But is EVERYONE solving a new problem which hasn't come before to get a Python Job? I just want to become a potential for Python Junior Dev job.