Back in 2005/6, tiddlywiki.com <http://tiddlywiki.com/> had quite a prominent PayPal donation button. Over the course of a year it accrued enough money for me to buy a decent camera, which was quite a thrill at the time. Then, in 2007, I sold my company Osmosoft to BT and I felt that having just profited from TiddlyWiki it wasn’t appropriate for me to be asking for money.
Over the following years, my views changed even more. The fundamental thing I realised was that it was wrong to see the TiddlyWiki community as a group from whom I can extract money. It was better for me to view the community as my partners in making TiddlyWiki better. Without the enthusiasm of the community no doubt I personally would have lost impetus a long time ago. More than that, it’s the contributions made by others that makes TiddlyWiki so interesting and useful. Whether those contributions take the form of code, documentation, or just chewing the fat with others in the community, it’s the community that breathes life into the project. So, now, building on that idea, rather than seeking to make money *from* the community, I’m much more interested in making money *with* the community. One simple scenario in which that might happen can be illustrated with one of my favourite examples of a TW5 edition. It’s tool to help teach volleyball students to high school students: http://pespot.tiddlyspot.com/#Task%201:%5B%5BTask%201%5D%5D%20%5B%5BTask%205%5D%5D%20%5B%5BContent%205%5D%5D%209 <http://pespot.tiddlyspot.com/#Task 1:[[Task 1]] [[Task 5]] [[Content 5]] 9> There’s a few things I think worthy of note: * As far as I know, the creator of PESpot is not a software developer. Nonetheless, they’ve been able to build the system themselves (perhaps with the help of the community), rather than having to engage a software developer and then explain to them what they want. The difference is profound. When you engage an outsider to build your system you’ve introduced a communication gap into the system: experience shows that it is very hard to describe the requirements of a system that doesn’t exist yet. In contrast, with TiddlyWiki, the author was able to combine their own expertise in the domain with the ability to build the system by incremental trial and error. The incremental approach allows the author to learn by doing, and removes the need for them to be able to state the full requirements up front. For me, that is the enduring magic of TiddlyWiki: to empower people to build their own digital tools without being a conventional software developer * There’s really no business model for building tools that are so specific to a particular niche. It’s hard to imagine raising VC funding for a software company specialising in high school volleyball * Although the author was able to successfully build this tool in TiddlyWiki, it’s nature as a single file edition puts a limit on its ease of use. But imagine taking this same wiki and putting in on a server with user accounts and billing. Then the author could sell it as a service that individual high school volleyball coaches could sign up for So, I think that what is needed here is a sort of wholesale version of TiddlySpace that enables anyone to drop a working single file TiddlyWiki into the system and spin up a full multi-user environment, with user accounts, payments and so on. My immediate interest in this new model stems from the progress I’ve made with Federatial over the last year. My current model is essentially selling bespoke TiddlyWiki-based products and services to business customers. The real value that customers are paying for is the custom development but there’s also a hosting component because I’m hosting some services on behalf of clients. The custom development services are not cheap because it is so labour intensive. My end game is to offer a conventional paid online service that gives users the features of TiddlyWiki in an easy-to-use and much more flexible online form. I’m currently using “Xememex” as the codename for this new service. (It comes from the term “memex” coined by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 essay “As We May Think”). My target audience for Xememex is not confined to existing TiddlyWiki users. Ultimately, I’d like it to be a truly mass market system, with Trello perhaps being a model for how things might go. However, I’m quite a few months away from having all the necessary infrastructure to do Xememex as a retailer at scale, not the least of which is billing and payments. So, to summarise, I think the opportunities for me right now are: 1) Finding new corporate clients who want bespoke development around TiddlyWiki-based online services 2) Finding TiddlyWiki community members who are interested in partnering to turn TiddlyWiki-based solutions that they have already built into a commercial service All the while, of course, building towards my ultimate goal of a retail service. Best wishes Jeremy > On 21 Sep 2017, at 07:43, stef...@gmail.com wrote: > > Hi Richard, > > On Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at 11:58:54 PM UTC+2, RichardWilliamSmith > wrote: > What if Tiddlywiki had a licence that meant you had to pay Jeremy if you > wanted to use it for anything work related? (https://licensezero.com/ > <https://licensezero.com/>) > > I'm not sure this is a good idea for the following two reasons: > > a) This would probably prevent most low-key, small-scale use cases of > TiddlyWiki in a company. If only one or two employees would occasionally take > notes in TiddlyWiki, the company probably wouldn't go through the hassle of > purchasing a licence for them. They would rather ban the software outright. > It's not just about the cost of the licence, but also because of the > bureaucracy involved in adding another piece of software to the "pool". The > IT department would probably be forced to track all "installations", make > sure they are up to date etc. (simply because it's the usual process). This > is also the reason why companies might be more likely to pay for a "hosted" > solution. > > b) If somebody was sent a TiddlyWiki file (containing data, notes etc.) to > their company account and opened it without having paid for TiddlyWiki, would > they violate the licence? What about visiting a web page with a hosted > TiddlyWiki? Technically, by loading the code into your browser, you would be > "using" the software. What if you downloaded the wiki to your local computer? > What if you added a note? TiddlyWiki mixes content and code. Therefore I > believe TiddlyWiki can only work with a "permissive" open source licence. > Even the GPL might cause trouble, due to copyleft. > > Cheers, > > Stef > > > > Of course such a thing would be difficult to 'enforce' but I bet there are > quite a few people using it at work or for work-related activities who would > quite easily be able to have their employer pay $50-$250 (or ?) for the right > to do so. I imagine that the average office already pays out thousands in > licences to Microsoft et al, on top of the machines themselves, and this > would be a drop in the ocean. > > Just a thought. > > Regards, > Richard > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TiddlyWiki" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com > <mailto:tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki > <https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/d61cfac3-4346-40db-b1bc-b5ae93370d3b%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/d61cfac3-4346-40db-b1bc-b5ae93370d3b%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. 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