Funding & Focus

[d-cook]

Should we consider ways to organize a more focused joint-effort (e.g. a company), and how it could be funded? Is it possible to succeed if we only work on separate projects in our spare time? What do we need to do to prevent larger entities from stealing / stopping such an effort if it shows real potential?

Any other related concerns or plans?

[kahunamoore]

Dan,

If you are considering starting an “ongoing concern” (e.g. a company) may I suggest forming it as a cooperative. There are advantages that co-ops bring including transparency, democratic governance and long term sustainability. They are usually LLCs so that they are recognizable to the U.S. legal system and can be put on approved vendor lists, etc. As with anything there are some drawbacks (e.g. VC funding is harder to secure b/c they typically don’t like having democratic control over their interests.)

My take on funding is that if you can avoid it you should, you will have more control, fewer distractions & less pressure. Sweat equity is probably the best approach. Given the uncertain time horizons involved it would be risky to take on debt. Once the clock starts ticking your runway is dramatically shortened.

FYI, I have been working on defining a series of sw licenses (similar approach used by Creative Commons) that address the concerns of multi-stakeholder software/tech co-ops but that still allow for value capture not easily done under FOSS licenses. I’m also working on defining membership agreements, bylaws, etc. specific to these types of projects. I’d be happy to share rough drafts, discuss tradeoffs, etc... If you think engineers are expensive, try lawyers...

Looking forward to seeing where this effort goes!

Alan

On Nov 12, 2017, at 5:25 PM, Dan Cook notifications@github.com wrote:

Should we consider ways to organize a more focused joint-effort (e.g. a company), and how it could be funded? Is it possible to succeed if we only work on separate projects in our spare time? What do we need to do to prevent larger entities from stealing / stopping such an effort if it shows real potential?

Any other related concerns or plans?

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[asmodehn]

As someone with previous experiences in various startup, using open source or not, I have thought about it a fair amount. I would like to write here few thoughts :

• I believe some sort of income for people willing to work in a non sporadic way is needed, otherwise life will eventually take priority, and motivation will eventually fail even the best of us.

• I do not believe the traditional company or more recent startup model is suited to deeply theoretical and technical work required, as short term interest will take priority, and the purity necessary to fundamental endaevours will be spoiled by private interests.

• Coop might be a way to go for organization ( i dont have much experience in these ) but there are also other alternative to think about, like non profit fundations, associations, etc. or even just a distributed set of freelances, loosely connected via the use of technological means, but not by responsibility or accountability for risk taken.

  The trick is to find a profitable application of the technology as a way to drive technology growth. This application can vary between each collaborator, but the more we share the more it benefits us, as long as we do not enter direct competition, or fight between ourselves in closed market silos.

Few ideas :

• private teaching (for kids or adult). a new programming language can be used as a base to learn programming concepts, but also maths, physics, game design, etc.
• financial application. Some feature of a programming language can be useful in a private financial setting. for exemple a language with stastistical primitives would be helpful in market modeling... The area is very competitive, but also quite lucrative potentially, one of the group making it big might have a chance at funding at least part of that group.
• crypto/smart contracts implementation. Some fundamental theoretical work is going on there and if we want smart contract to be used by people eventually there is a "human friendly understanding " aspect to it that must be addressed.