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

2019-04-01 Thread 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




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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-04-01 Thread Andrew Dalke 
On Mar 27, 2019, at 16:44, Bennion, Brian via Rdkit-discuss 
 wrote:
> One of the goals of ATOM is to fund work that will be open sourced.  I think 
> any of the partners can choose to hire consultants for the work.
> 
> https://atomscience.org/
> Atom
> atomscience.org

I think there are only three successful external funding strategies for open 
source in cheminformatics: 1) grant funding, 2) cost reduction, and 3) R 
budget for new, and typically pre-competitive, software. 

It appears that ATOM gets it funding from #1 and #3. And I have no problem with 
that. I've been funded as a consultant from grant funding.

Most of RDKit was funded (if I understand it correctly) by #2 and #3, but the 
funding is smaller and less direct now that Greg has left his previous employer.

My interest is in successful models for self-funded open source developer. Who 
will pay to maintain and develop "Our Digital Infrastructure" (to use the term 
from 
https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/
 )?

I'll be more specific. How can we get EUR 250K/year to fund RDKit development? 
This would cover a full-time developer at commercial wages, plus overhead, and 
have money available to pay people for special work - new features, 
performance, documentation, and so on.

It also makes project continuity easier. Not only is it easier for Greg to 
maintain and develop the project if there's a clear revenue source, but it also 
increases the pool of people who might be able to replace him, whenever he 
decides to step down.

In principle the money is there, given the number of commercial users with 
extra money.

The questions I ask again are "why would they contribute money?", "why haven't 
they contributed money?", and "how do we effectively encourage them to 
contribute money in the future?".

By comparison, we know that it's possible to make a living selling self-funded 
proprietary software in this field.


Andrew
da...@dalkescientific.com




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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Bennion, Brian via Rdkit-discuss 
One of the goals of ATOM is to fund work that will be open sourced.  I think 
any of the partners can choose to hire consultants for the work.


https://atomscience.org/

Atom<https://atomscience.org/>
atomscience.org
Transforming drug discovery. The Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in 
Medicine (ATOM) consortium is a public-private partnership with the mission of 
transforming drug discovery by accelerating the development of more effective 
therapies for patients.



Brian



From: Andrew Dalke 
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2019 4:07:07 AM
To: RDKit Discuss
Subject: Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

On Mar 27, 2019, at 08:24, Francois Berenger  wrote:
> As an open-source project, I feel rdkit is quite successful.
> So, the user community is not so small.
> Some people who cannot contribute time could contribute money to the project
> (especially if it is tax-deductible, I guess).

I think the questions are "why would they contribute money?" and "why haven't 
they contributed money?".

If those questions cannot be answered well, then there's little reason to go 
further down this path to the next question, which is "how do we effectively 
encourage them to contribute money in the future?".

To be clear, Novartis contributed a lot of money for the RDKit development. 
Roche also funded me to develop and contribute the MCS package now part of the 
RDKit core, and the mmpdb project which was contributed to RDKit. These are 
also financial contributions and must not be ignored, and these are not the 
only two organizations which have done that.

But I honestly thought that there would be more interest in hiring my services 
as a consultant, to work on further development of open source software. I feel 
like there are clear economic benefits for companies to fund open source 
packages.

Instead, it feels like the more open source software packages I write and 
release, the fewer leads I get for new consulting work, compared to when I gave 
"I wrote this in-house application for company X that no one else will ever 
use" talks. Perhaps what's easily available for no cost is seen as having no 
value, while that which is hidden, no matter how hacky, is treasured?

My optimism started 20 years ago, when I was still involved with the Biopython 
project. My company offered commercial support for Biopython, and I had NDAs in 
place with several of the other Biopython developers so we could easily be 
funded to work on specific improvements that an organization might need.

I never found someone interested in providing that sort of funding for 
Biopython, and it still looks like that's the case in cheminformatics.

See also 'Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital 
Infrastructure' (ref. 53 in my paper) for further examples of the difficulties 
in funding open source work. 
https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/


> On Mar 27, 2019, at 10:06, Greg Landrum  wrote:
> If rdkit was accepted at the software freedom conservancy, I understand
> the management fee would be 10%:

There's also Software in the Public Interest, which "serves the free software 
and open source community by facilitating the administrative and financial 
needs of its associated projects", including the Open Bioinformatics 
(ex-)Foundation.

When the OBF was created, it was common for many groups to start their own 
foundations. Since most of the administrative needs are the same for the 
different projects, it makes sense to consolidate.

> A question since I genuinely don't know: is it important to anyone that this 
> go through a not-for-profit entity?

The OBF became a not-for-profit to make it easier to organize the BOSC 
(Bioinformatics Open Source Conference) meetings. Some of the early BOSC 
meetings were run out of someone's personal bank account, and he was personally 
financially liable in case of problems.

Working through a non-profit makes it easier to set up things like summer 
internships (a la Google Summer of Code) and travel support, because the 
payment is less likely to be viewed as a way to get around employment laws. 
Open Bioinformatics has a Travel Fellowship program. I don't know the details.

Looking at the report for 2018 at 
http://spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/2018.pdf , Open Bioinformatics 
spends about $5,000/year for IT and meet ups, an "ordinary income" of $5,400, 
and an equity of $85K.

There's overhead to running a non-profit, like filing paperwork, and that 
requires specialized knowledge. For revenues that small, it really helps to be 
affiliated with an existing umbrella organization. The OBF gave up their 
incorporation in 2012 to be an SPI-associated project.

For what RDKit does now, I see no need to set up/join a foundatio

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

2019-03-27 Thread 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


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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Andrew Dalke 
On Mar 27, 2019, at 08:24, Francois Berenger  wrote:
> As an open-source project, I feel rdkit is quite successful.
> So, the user community is not so small.
> Some people who cannot contribute time could contribute money to the project
> (especially if it is tax-deductible, I guess).

I think the questions are "why would they contribute money?" and "why haven't 
they contributed money?".

If those questions cannot be answered well, then there's little reason to go 
further down this path to the next question, which is "how do we effectively 
encourage them to contribute money in the future?".

To be clear, Novartis contributed a lot of money for the RDKit development. 
Roche also funded me to develop and contribute the MCS package now part of the 
RDKit core, and the mmpdb project which was contributed to RDKit. These are 
also financial contributions and must not be ignored, and these are not the 
only two organizations which have done that.

But I honestly thought that there would be more interest in hiring my services 
as a consultant, to work on further development of open source software. I feel 
like there are clear economic benefits for companies to fund open source 
packages.

Instead, it feels like the more open source software packages I write and 
release, the fewer leads I get for new consulting work, compared to when I gave 
"I wrote this in-house application for company X that no one else will ever 
use" talks. Perhaps what's easily available for no cost is seen as having no 
value, while that which is hidden, no matter how hacky, is treasured?

My optimism started 20 years ago, when I was still involved with the Biopython 
project. My company offered commercial support for Biopython, and I had NDAs in 
place with several of the other Biopython developers so we could easily be 
funded to work on specific improvements that an organization might need.

I never found someone interested in providing that sort of funding for 
Biopython, and it still looks like that's the case in cheminformatics.

See also 'Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital 
Infrastructure' (ref. 53 in my paper) for further examples of the difficulties 
in funding open source work. 
https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/


> On Mar 27, 2019, at 10:06, Greg Landrum  wrote:
> If rdkit was accepted at the software freedom conservancy, I understand
> the management fee would be 10%:

There's also Software in the Public Interest, which "serves the free software 
and open source community by facilitating the administrative and financial 
needs of its associated projects", including the Open Bioinformatics 
(ex-)Foundation.

When the OBF was created, it was common for many groups to start their own 
foundations. Since most of the administrative needs are the same for the 
different projects, it makes sense to consolidate.

> A question since I genuinely don't know: is it important to anyone that this 
> go through a not-for-profit entity?

The OBF became a not-for-profit to make it easier to organize the BOSC 
(Bioinformatics Open Source Conference) meetings. Some of the early BOSC 
meetings were run out of someone's personal bank account, and he was personally 
financially liable in case of problems.

Working through a non-profit makes it easier to set up things like summer 
internships (a la Google Summer of Code) and travel support, because the 
payment is less likely to be viewed as a way to get around employment laws. 
Open Bioinformatics has a Travel Fellowship program. I don't know the details.

Looking at the report for 2018 at 
http://spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/2018.pdf , Open Bioinformatics 
spends about $5,000/year for IT and meet ups, an "ordinary income" of $5,400, 
and an equity of $85K.

There's overhead to running a non-profit, like filing paperwork, and that 
requires specialized knowledge. For revenues that small, it really helps to be 
affiliated with an existing umbrella organization. The OBF gave up their 
incorporation in 2012 to be an SPI-associated project.

For what RDKit does now, I see no need to set up/join a foundation. T5 
Informatics can organize an RDKit UGM the same way that any vendor can organize 
a UGM, and company acts as the firewall to your personal finances. T5 (or Dalke 
Scientific :) can also act as an intermediary if, for some reason, a company 
does not wish to fund someone directly. Though you'll have your own overhead in 
that case, because of the additional tax requirements in dealing with 
subcontractors.

No matter what, that's going to be easier than arranging things through a 
university, even Paul's.

It's only if you start getting multiple organizations interested in 
contributing funding, or really want the transparency that T5 and RDKit funding 
are not intermingled, where I would suggest looking at that.

Another reason is if you want RDKit-the-organization

Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Greg Landrum 
On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 10:46 AM Czodrowski, Paul <
paul.czodrow...@tu-dortmund.de> wrote:

> I’m not sure if you are asking about T5 Informatics: for me, it would be
> absolutely fine that it goes through T5 Informatics.
>

Yeah, I was specifically talking about T5 Informatics.


> In terms of legal aspects, there might be a conflict of interest (between
> Greg/RDKit and Greg/T5 Informatics), but I’m not sure about this..
>

Yeah, in this case it would need to be clear to that whatever payment is
being made goes to me (at the moment, maybe that changes at some point in
the future if there's sufficient demand for T5's services for me to bring
on someone else).
Since I don't think there's an actual mechanism to "donate" to a
for-profit, I guess it would be "buying" a sponsorship (having your name on
the website for a year?) something else to think about.


> If it was of any help: what about connecting RDKit with an academic
> institution? I would be more than happy to pave the way and check back with
> my university!
>

I think that's likely to make things considerably more complicated. :-)

-greg
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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Czodrowski, Paul 
I’m not sure if you are asking about T5 Informatics: for me, it would be 
absolutely fine that it goes through T5 Informatics. In terms of legal aspects, 
there might be a conflict of interest (between Greg/RDKit and Greg/T5 
Informatics), but I’m not sure about this..

If it was of any help: what about connecting RDKit with an academic 
institution? I would be more than happy to pave the way and check back with my 
university!


Paul

Von: Greg Landrum 
Datum: Mittwoch, 27. März 2019 um 10:07
An: Francois Berenger 
Cc: RDKit Discuss 
Betreff: Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit


If rdkit was accepted at the software freedom conservancy, I understand
the management fee would be 10%:

https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/

https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/

A question since I genuinely don't know: is it important to anyone that this go 
through a not-for-profit entity?

-greg

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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Greg Landrum 
>
>
> If rdkit was accepted at the software freedom conservancy, I understand
> the management fee would be 10%:
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/


A question since I genuinely don't know: is it important to anyone that
this go through a not-for-profit entity?

-greg
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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Francois Berenger 

On 27/03/2019 16:24, Francois Berenger wrote:

On 27/03/2019 01:46, Greg Landrum wrote:

And now that I've included two other messages, here's (part of) my
take on this.

The viability of open-source business models is something I'm deeply
interested in (I pay rent these days thanks to income from two
open-source companies) and, like Andrew, something I've put a fair
amount of thought into. Capturing all of that here is probably
impossible, so here are a few points that I think are important.

- We need to be really careful about drawing conclusions from projects
like Linux, Eclipse, etc. Andrew hit on this already, but the
potential base of potential donors/contributors to these projects is
several orders of magnitude larger than the potential base for
something like the RDKit, OpenBabel, or Chemfp.
- Geoff pointed out the possibility of setting up a not-for-profit
organization that can take donations and then disburse them. I'm not
going to do this; dealing with that kind of paperwork is something I
dislike and am terrible at. Going via OpenCollective (which Geoff
pointed to) is a possibility, but they would end up taking >10% of
each donation for overhead, credit card fees, etc. That seems steep,
but 80+% of something is still better than 100% of nothing.


I looked at the cost structure in here:

https://opencollective.com/pricing

I understand they would take 13.6% in total (the scenario in which
they manage the money + accounting, etc.).
That's something, for sure, but not crazy.


If rdkit was accepted at the software freedom conservancy, I understand
the management fee would be 10%:

https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/

https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/


- It's worth pointing out that it is already possible for companies
that want to directly support the RDKit to do so: getting an RDKit
support contract from my company (T5 Informatics GmbH) very directly
supports my work on the RDKit and the infrastructure needed to do
that. Given that the support contract may seem too expensive for small
orgs, I could also easily set something up for companies who want to
show support (and perhaps be listed as sponsors) at a lower price
point. I doubt there's any demand for that, but I'd be happy to be
wrong there.
- Another mechanism that's always available to companies is to just
pay an open-source developer to work on their open-source project.
This can take the form of funding development of a particular feature,
creating documentation, etc.
- That last bullet point likely works for academics too: think about
adding some support for open-source development to your next grant
proposal. I would assume that there are ways to engineer this.

For individuals to financially contribute is trickier... there's a
voice in the back of my head that's saying that it will never be
financially worth it to set something like this up for communities as
small as ours,[1] but I have to think about that one for a while.


As an open-source project, I feel rdkit is quite successful.
So, the user community is not so small.
Some people who cannot contribute time could contribute money to the 
project

(especially if it is tax-deductible, I guess).

Regards,
F.


I'm sure there's more to come, but I want to go ahead and hit "send"
-greg
[1] one-time donations would feel great, but they don't help when
making long-term plans unless you can assume that more will
continuously come in...
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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-27 Thread Francois Berenger 

On 27/03/2019 01:46, Greg Landrum wrote:

And now that I've included two other messages, here's (part of) my
take on this.

The viability of open-source business models is something I'm deeply
interested in (I pay rent these days thanks to income from two
open-source companies) and, like Andrew, something I've put a fair
amount of thought into. Capturing all of that here is probably
impossible, so here are a few points that I think are important.

- We need to be really careful about drawing conclusions from projects
like Linux, Eclipse, etc. Andrew hit on this already, but the
potential base of potential donors/contributors to these projects is
several orders of magnitude larger than the potential base for
something like the RDKit, OpenBabel, or Chemfp.
- Geoff pointed out the possibility of setting up a not-for-profit
organization that can take donations and then disburse them. I'm not
going to do this; dealing with that kind of paperwork is something I
dislike and am terrible at. Going via OpenCollective (which Geoff
pointed to) is a possibility, but they would end up taking >10% of
each donation for overhead, credit card fees, etc. That seems steep,
but 80+% of something is still better than 100% of nothing.


I looked at the cost structure in here:

https://opencollective.com/pricing

I understand they would take 13.6% in total (the scenario in which they 
manage the money + accounting, etc.).

That's something, for sure, but not crazy.


- It's worth pointing out that it is already possible for companies
that want to directly support the RDKit to do so: getting an RDKit
support contract from my company (T5 Informatics GmbH) very directly
supports my work on the RDKit and the infrastructure needed to do
that. Given that the support contract may seem too expensive for small
orgs, I could also easily set something up for companies who want to
show support (and perhaps be listed as sponsors) at a lower price
point. I doubt there's any demand for that, but I'd be happy to be
wrong there.
- Another mechanism that's always available to companies is to just
pay an open-source developer to work on their open-source project.
This can take the form of funding development of a particular feature,
creating documentation, etc.
- That last bullet point likely works for academics too: think about
adding some support for open-source development to your next grant
proposal. I would assume that there are ways to engineer this.

For individuals to financially contribute is trickier... there's a
voice in the back of my head that's saying that it will never be
financially worth it to set something like this up for communities as
small as ours,[1] but I have to think about that one for a while.


As an open-source project, I feel rdkit is quite successful.
So, the user community is not so small.
Some people who cannot contribute time could contribute money to the 
project

(especially if it is tax-deductible, I guess).

Regards,
F.


I'm sure there's more to come, but I want to go ahead and hit "send"
-greg
[1] one-time donations would feel great, but they don't help when
making long-term plans unless you can assume that more will
continuously come in...
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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-26 Thread Geoffrey Hutchison 
> - That last bullet point likely works for academics too: think about adding 
> some support for open-source development to your next grant proposal. I would 
> assume that there are ways to engineer this.

I have the most experience with this point, naturally. Suffice to say that I've 
written support letters for numerous NIH and NSF-funded projects. In NSF lingo, 
open source development for widely-used packages is a clear "broader impact" 
and generally appreciated by reviewers.

The big challenge on the academic side is similar to what Andrew mentioned - 
that it's easier to get people (i.e., funding sources) interested in new 
feature X than in testing, bug fixing and documentation.

Greg's point about support contracts I think is important - there's a definite 
need for this and I hope to see this area grow.

Cheers,
-Geoff

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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-26 Thread Greg Landrum 
And now that I've included two other messages, here's (part of) my take on
this.

The viability of open-source business models is something I'm deeply
interested in (I pay rent these days thanks to income from two open-source
companies) and, like Andrew, something I've put a fair amount of thought
into. Capturing all of that here is probably impossible, so here are a few
points that I think are important.

- We need to be really careful about drawing conclusions from projects like
Linux, Eclipse, etc. Andrew hit on this already, but the potential base of
potential donors/contributors to these projects is several orders of
magnitude larger than the potential base for something like the RDKit,
OpenBabel, or Chemfp.
- Geoff pointed out the possibility of setting up a not-for-profit
organization that can take donations and then disburse them. I'm not going
to do this; dealing with that kind of paperwork is something I dislike and
am terrible at. Going via OpenCollective (which Geoff pointed to) is a
possibility, but they would end up taking >10% of each donation for
overhead, credit card fees, etc. That seems steep, but 80+% of something is
still better than 100% of nothing.
- It's worth pointing out that it is already possible for companies that
want to directly support the RDKit to do so: getting an RDKit support
contract from my company (T5 Informatics GmbH) very directly supports my
work on the RDKit and the infrastructure needed to do that. Given that the
support contract may seem too expensive for small orgs, I could also easily
set something up for companies who want to show support (and perhaps be
listed as sponsors) at a lower price point. I doubt there's any demand for
that, but I'd be happy to be wrong there.
- Another mechanism that's always available to companies is to just pay an
open-source developer to work on their open-source project. This can take
the form of funding development of a particular feature, creating
documentation, etc.
- That last bullet point likely works for academics too: think about adding
some support for open-source development to your next grant proposal. I
would assume that there are ways to engineer this.

For individuals to financially contribute is trickier... there's a voice in
the back of my head that's saying that it will never be financially worth
it to set something like this up for communities as small as ours,[1] but I
have to think about that one for a while.

I'm sure there's more to come, but I want to go ahead and hit "send"
-greg
[1] one-time donations would feel great, but they don't help when making
long-term plans unless you can assume that more will continuously come in...
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Re: [Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-26 Thread Greg Landrum 
Here's another message on that thread, this one from Andrew:

On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 3:19 PM Andrew Dalke 
wrote:

> On Mar 25, 2019, at 04:05, Francois Berenger  wrote:
> > Sometimes, I wish there was a rdkit consortium/NPO (so that donations
> are tax deductible), so that rdkit could be massively funded by all its
> commercial users, and even accepting individual donations.
>
> Setting up such an organization is not difficult. It does take time,
> money, and effort, which add overhead to the funding process. It also
> requires people who are willing to do that sort of work. I was on the board
> of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, and involved with the Python
> Software Foundation. I know that I am *not* that sort of person.
>
> In any case, as Geoff Hutchinson points out, there are umbrella
> organizations like the Open Source Collective which can handle most of that
> overhead.
>
> My question is, why would users - commercial or otherwise - be willing to
> fund such work in the first place?
>
> As far as I can tell, nearly everyone uses free and open source software
> because they are available for no cost. Users are rarely willing to pay for
> software freedom, or for economic benefits like avoiding vendor lock-in.
>
> And it seems like commercial users are often willing to use an internal
> fork of a project than to work with upstream to develop new features. This
> might be because it's easier to work with existing staff or existing
> contracting arrangements than figuring out how to get upstream to do the
> work and setting up a new contractual relationship, and take the risk that
> it isn't done to schedule.
>
> My conjecture is that there are several issues at play.
>
> 1) Most end users don't realize there is a funding problem for many FOSS
> projects. Package managers like pip/PyPI, Conda, Homebrew and apt make it
> *really easy* to install a large number of packages without knowing
> anything about the funding or staffing status of each underlying project.
>
> Consider that one of the early business models for PyMol was the idea that
> people would be willing to pay for pre-compiled packages from the main
> developer, even though the source code was available for free as open
> source. That business model somewhat worked then. It would not work now.
>
> 2) The proponents of "open source" in the late 1990s emphasized the
> volunteer nature of open source, going so much as to argue that there was a
> "gift culture" (using E. Raymond's term). The implication is that there was
> a sort of social contract, where donations of source code would be met with
> other sorts of payment, including job/consulting offers and non-trivial
> amounts of reciprocal code contributions.
>
> This has not turned out to be true, with rare exceptions. Instead, I think
> the association with volunteerism and gifts has caused people to avoid
> talking about fund raising. This should be particularly odd as many
> volunteer organizations outside of computing have funding drives.
>
> 3) FOSS developers who distribute at no cost are ignoring any capital
> value in the software. They can only make income on gifts (which are rare)
> or through labor (e.g., consulting). This places them at a funding
> disadvantage compared to proprietary software vendors who can amortize
> labor costs across multiple sales.
>
> To be clear, I am only talking about self-funded FOSS projects. My paper
> mentions a few other funding models, like research grants at universities,
> or in-house projects funded by the ability to reduce costs. In the latter
> case, the minor additional costs for releasing the project as FOSS can be
> justified by even small benefits.
>
> 4) The pricing of per-unit sales of FOSS software, either institutional
> sales like what I tried with chemfp,  or end-user sales like PyMol, should
> factor in the likelihood that customers will redistribute the software
> further, and by doing so reduce the market size. This factor is hard to
> estimate, and higher in general for universities than pharmaceutical
> companies, which makes it harder to give a significant discount to
> universities like what proprietary vendors can do.
>
> 5) In my paper I bring up "free rider problem" as a way to think of the
> issues. To be clear, this is only a *problem* if people expect anything
> back from releasing and/or maintaining an open source software project. (Or
> don't expect people to insist on support, like I have received for the
> no-cost/open source version of chemfp.)
>
> Suppose I want to add a new feature to mmpdb, the matched molecular pair
> program which I helped develop and has been contributed to the RDKit
> project. I might go around to various users and ask for development funding
> as a consortium. 20 organizations might be interested, and each one willing
> to pay 50% of the development cost, which means in principle I could get
> 10x the cost of labor, which provides the extra profit that could go
> towards

[Rdkit-discuss] Open-source business models and the RDKit

2019-03-26 Thread Greg Landrum 
Dear all,

The thread about Andrew's ChemFP paper started to turn into a discussion of
open-source business models and their feasibility (Thanks for starting that
Francois). Since I think this is an important topic, I'd like to have that
in its own thread.

Here's the thread:
https://www.mail-archive.com/rdkit-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net/msg08796.html

I'm going to include a couple of complete messages from participants so
that we can discuss things here.

Here's part 1, part 2 will come in a separate message:

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 11:36 PM Geoffrey Hutchison <
geoff.hutchi...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I don't want to hijack the thread, so please feel free to take this
> off-list with anyone interested.
>
> I think it's an interesting idea in general in open chemistry. We have set
> up an Open Chemistry collective - this receives $$ from Google Summer of
> Code. The "host" is the Open Source Collective, a 501c6 non-profit in the
> United States (
> https://docs.opencollective.com/help/hosts/open-source-collective)
>
> The collective isn't perfect, it skims 5% for transaction fees and
> overhead, but it's:
> - completely transparent for donations
> - completely transparent for expenses
> - allows both one-time and recurring donations
>
> Greg can correct me - I think we handled the $$ to RDKit from Google
> Summer of Code 2018 before we set this up, but it's certainly there to use.
> You can create your own RDKit collective pretty easily too:
> https://opencollective.com/open-chemistry
>
> One big benefit is that OpenCollective handles all the legal paperwork and
> accounting.
>
> -Geoff
>
> PS One regret is that I haven't had need of chemfp in house, or I would
> have pushed some $$ towards Andrew.
>
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