Private company and code salvation

[David Bateman]

Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
> David, forgive me if I'm being too naive, but if any company wants to
> use Octave "commercially" and wishes an OO LGPL API to exist, they're
> obviously free and welcome to donate money specifically for such a
> project. I'm sure the community would answer such a demand.
> It seems to me, though, that the community itself, developing GPL
> software,  would not benefit from such an interface, which obviously
> raises a question why should they (we) bother. Of course, a
> goal-specific donation *is* a good reason.
>   
All of my thoughts come from the question of why Octave isn't seeing a 
significant amount of funding given its large user base. And from that 
what can and should be done to get funding for Octave and in particular 
what would need to be done to finance a company formed to supply paid 
support for Octave.

To me the question is not one of whether a company would finance such an 
API. Given that the Octave community would accept such an API, which is 
still not certain, and someone is willing to go and sell the use of 
Octave to commercial partners, then yes I fully believe that money could 
be found to write it. Companies don't just throw their money at open 
source projects. Someone has to go and ask for it, and give good reasons 
why giving that money to the open source project is good for the company 
doing it.

The thought behind the need for such an API is that any support company 
formed to supply support to users paying for it, and incidentally also 
contributing code to Octave, would need to fight the argument that any 
code a commercial partner wrote using Octave would have to be GPLed, 
which would significantly limit where funding might be found. We as a 
community are facing the issue at the moment of how to finance the 
development of Octave, and we need to ask ourselves why the money isn't 
already rolling in, and question our own role in the fact that it isn't..

> In commercial software, you pay for using existing functionality,
> while in open source software, you typically pay (donate) for
> functionality that you wish to be implemented (and then you can use it
> freely).
>   

That still doesn't mean that someone doesn't have to go and ask for that 
"donation" and in the process "sell" the company on the use of Octave.

There are other reasons why perhaps creating a paid support company for 
Octave isn't necessarily a great idea. The major one being that any such 
entity is a logical target for a patent lawsuit on the part of 
Mathworks. Mathworks aren't hesitant in using patent law to suppress 
competition (cf 
.http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2006cv00334/case_id-97908/) 
But forming a paid support company has to be considered as one option of 
getting funding for the development of Octave in the current situation.

Cheers
D.

-- 
David Bateman                                David.Bateman at motorola.com
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