There is a story (probably exaggerated) that when the board of Hitachi saw the bill from I.P.Sharp associates for the port of SHARP APL to Hitachi mainframes, they (after receiving the necessary medical attention) wrote to Ian Sharp and said "PLEASE send us an invoice for a million dollars immediately!". And IPSA was a relatively successful commercial operation for a decade or two. Of course, as someone pointed out earlier, it was an odd age, where programming was given away for free to people who were subsequently able to burn a hundred dollars per CPU second on your mainframe (and some of them were "multicore", even in that age). IPSA grew at an incredible pace without an actual marketing operation because in the late 1970's APL Timesharing on the worlds' first packet-switched network was a tool of such awesome power that it didn't need a salesman. And then, when the PC and internet arrived, *poof*.
Buying books and training is fine, but it doesn't address the need for an ongoing, reliable source of income that would allow the company to invest in product development. What I would do is look at my business and say something like: My j-based business is worth (say) $100,000. I pledge not a tithe, but one fifth of a tithe, to support my "spiritual foundation". Write to jsoftware and ask them to draw up a contract for $2,000 per annum and start invoicing you. Or better still, say you have five customers - a contract which obliges you to pay $400 per annum per customer using your product or service based on j. Or some other number that makes you feel comfortable that you are getting a good deal and supporting the technology that makes it all possible. If they won't do it, then I DO suggest that you seriously consider switching to Dyalog APL ;-) If you don't think you are reducing your costs by 2% by using j, then I would suggest that you are taking a completely unacceptable technology risk by using it and I suggest that you stop immediately! Fortunately, what our customers generally tell us is not that "It's wonderful, APL saved me 10% last year", they are saying "I would never have gotten this project off the ground at ALL without your product". So 2% sounds like a good deal to me :-) This only applies if you DO have a commercial business based on J. But I'm told that J is growing faster than APL, so there must be SOMEONE making money out there...(?) As a customer of array language vendors in the past, I have held several meetings to find ways for them to send us bigger invoices. I bought a j source code license in a previous life - and was a proud commercial sponsor of the sparse array project. When working for a company that was planning to float on NASDAQ(*), we managed to negotiate the sale of some stock options to our vendor at the time. Not "out of the goodness of our hearts", but because it is always in your interest to ensure the health of anyone you intend to rely on. I'm sorry to be going on about this, and I promise to disappear for a while now. If I have moved anyone in the direction of writing checques to jsoftware, I would be very pleased. Sure, we're "competitors" but we have much more in common and I actually believe that the health of j is both in the interests of me (it's cool, mind bending stuff!) and the company that I work for (array language vendors of the world, unite!). You may find it hard to believe, given all this talk about "business cases", but I enjoy writing code in APL, or doing mental gymnastics trying to decipher J, much more than being a "businessman". But I grew up with APL, I can't imagine life without it and I'm damned if I'm going to let it wither and die because people aren't willing to ask for money, or contribute appropriately. Companies like MatLab and Mathematica have made lots of money by essentially selling applications. APL/J vendors take a more purist stance because the core language itself *is* more valuable (and at Dyalog, we also intend to remain a technology vendor and leave application-building to our customers). But we (MUST!) demand a fair share of the revenue. The intrinsic value of J and APL technology is measured in billions. / Morten (*) The bubble burst and we had to settle for a $150M sale to Cognos (so the underlying product is now back at IBM, from whence it started its journey 20 years ago, which is very funny - and also that as a result of this and other acquisitions, IBM is now running APL+Win, Dyalog, and J (and APL2 - and who knows what else). But the options DID increase in value. -----Original Message----- From: Raul Miller [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27. maj 2009 19:39 To: Chat forum Subject: Re: [Jchat] More APL (was: No More APL) On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Morten Kromberg <[email protected]> wrote: > However: And this is something that I think the J community should rethink > (and then DO something about if it really cares): Unless its users find a way > to start paying substantial amounts of money to jsoftware so that this company > can hire some apprentices and start growing, I really don't see how it can survive > in the long term. That's an interesting thought, however... I have recently (within the last year) started incorporating J in some small projects at work. However, at the moment, it's less of a factor here than some other software which we paid $55 for. I have some hope that this will change, over time, and at some point we may reach out to jsoftware for training. I do not know what else I could buy from them. (They do not have a cafe press shop, for example, and the only obvious "buy" link I can find from the home page is their consulting page which I am not prepared to pay for at this time. I know I could buy some books, but I have already bought most of the ones I wanted.) -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
