Hi Michal, On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 22:17 -0400, Michal Wallace wrote: > On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Christian Tismer wrote: > > > Making money out of PyPy > > > > Jacob asked me on the last sprint, if it is possible to make > > money out of PyPy right now. I passed this around once, but would > > like to insist. I am personally interested to make PyPy move > > away a bit from its purely academical status and to think a little > > bit about how we can create practical applications in the near future, > > which allow to grow marketable services for our members, in order > > to reduce PyPy's dependency from the EU sponsoring. > > Hey all, > > I've only been reading these updates, and > I haven't actually played with PyPy in > while, so I could be way off here. But I > do run a business and know a little bit > about marketing, and I head up another > python compiler project (pirate) so I > know a little bit about the market > demand for these things... :) > > > Basically, there are really that many > applications of this technology in its > current state. The stated goal for this > project is just to make a faster version of > python, but can you really charge for that > given that pypy is already open source?
PyPy is not primarily - at least not only - about making Python faster although many people like to view it this way :-) PyPy is a lot about flexibility to produce custom implementations of Python for use in particular environments. Regarding persistence, security (e.g. sandboxing) and deployment there is a lot that we can possiblly do with PyPy implementations. I am sure that such possibilities will become clearer next year. > One option could be to find people who > need python to run fast and get them to > pay you to handle the cases that apply > to *their project* up front, but I really > don't think this is a viable market. It's > much cheaper for the client to just write > a C extension or port the whole thing to C. > > Another option is that you could use your > technology created in pypy to create new > *frontends* for pypy, and sell the service > of taking legacy code in other languages, > and translating that into call trees, and > turning it magically into python or lisp or c... > This seems like it could be a much more > lucrative service, but it's a whole new > research project and it takes you away > from your core focus on python. (On the > other hand, a company that did this would > have a massive incentive to sponsor pypy > development... Maybe there's a company that > already does this kind of thing with some > other technology... Like, say, people just > rewriting things by hand? A build tool is part of the current EU project and of our plans. > Another idea has to do with the sprints. > I already told Holger this a while back, > but I think you guys have one of the most > impressive project management styles around, > and the sprint idea seems like a great > amount of fun. > > What if you capitalized on *that*? > > A week in europe to work on an open source > project? That would be an awesome vacation! > And to get to learn about compilers and python > along the way? We are doing this regularly :-) > What I'm saying is you could market the > sprints as a sort of training package for > big companies interested in trying out python. > They send their developers and pay you guys > to train them. Even if the companies don't > care about python, their developers *might* > and that could be a great reward. > > Wasn't there a post just like this from > someone in the army a while back? > > Market demand. :) :-) > Heck, do your next sprint as a partnership with > these guys: > > http://www.geekcruises.com/ > > Anyway, it might be a crazy idea, but if you > could get it working, it would capitalize > on what you're already doing rather than > force you to come up with some other devlepoment > project off to the side... There are many possibilities but only so much time and focus to pursue them. Bea also reported quite some interest from other projects and entities in the EU context. We got invitations to Afrika and other places and i guess we pursue them :-) Thanks for your kind advice, holger _______________________________________________ pypy-dev@codespeak.net http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
