Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit (Greg Landrum)

[Andrew Dalke]

On Mar 27, 2019, at 13:26, Chris Swain via Rdkit-discuss 
 wrote:
> This is an interesting discussion and suspect this does not only apply to 
> open-source software developers, there are similar challenges for small 
> independent software companies.

My points were focused on the disadvantages of a pure open source software 
development strategy with respect to proprietary software development.

There are, of course, many other problems which are shared between small 
independent software vendors of both free and proprietary software. On the 
other hand, there are also many existing resources on developing commercial 
propriety software as a small ISV.

> On CICAG (http://www.rsccicag.org) we have been discussing the possibility of 
> organising a (probably one day) meeting around the topic of open 
> data/software/publishing and sustainability.

At this point I cannot recommend that any ISV consider an open source product 
as a viable strategy, not even for marketing purposes as name recognition for 
future consulting work.

My current belief is that people hire a consultant to solve problems. They hear 
from talks or from other people that person X can help solve problems, and hire 
X.

If person X writes tool Y to solve certain problems, and sells that as a 
proprietary product, then people will contact X in order to purchase it to 
solve their problem.

If tool Y is distributed as open source, then they don't really have a problem, 
because they can solve their problem themselves by installing a package, and it 
works. That only takes a few minutes. They may not even know who X is.

This is especially true if it's distributed through the usual channels like 
(Bio)conda, PyPI, and DebianScience.

As I've pointed out before, I've seen innumerable posters where the poster 
author thanks a commercial vendor for a no-cost academic license for a product, 
but does not thank the authors of the free software packages also used. Which 
is perfectly acceptable under the respective licenses, but I think also an 
indicator that people feel more obligation for someone who actively helps 
solves their problems than for something like  "pip install Y".

Regards,

Andrew
da...@dalkescientific.com




___
Rdkit-discuss mailing list
Rdkit-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rdkit-discuss

Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit (Greg Landrum)

[Chris Swain via Rdkit-discuss]

This is an interesting discussion and suspect this does not only apply to 
open-source software developers, there are similar challenges for small 
independent software companies.

On CICAG (http://www.rsccicag.org ) we have been 
discussing the possibility of organising a (probably one day) meeting around 
the topic of open data/software/publishing and sustainability.

Most people I’ve spoken to think it is a very important topic, but they are not 
sure if there is an audience.

I’d appreciate any feedback/suggestions etc.

Chris


___
Rdkit-discuss mailing list
Rdkit-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rdkit-discuss