I don't know free market theory at all well - at all for that matter. It would SEEM that if market pull exists it would have shown itself by now, e.g. enterprising (3rd party) individuals would be selling per incident and/or per year contracts to do little more than search the docs and forums for answers to users' questions and difficulties. I know this became a cottage industry with Microsoft Windows somewhen around Win95 and the small ads for Win7 persist.
Sage IS much more specialized and a much smaller market, but surely SOMEONE would be offering installation support and 1st tier answers quite independent of the sage group if a market for it existed (?). Perhaps the docs and forums are just too good (-: I understand the "policy" issues of commercial IT groups, but in reality they don't actually get much "fixed" (off-shore or on- shore). Promises of a fix in the next release maybe, but that usually just brings a new batch of bugs and they DO know this. On Feb 25, 6:16 am, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 24 February 2011 17:28, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I'm also curious about honest *opinions* about how people in the Sage > > community would feel about a company making potentially gobs of money > > selling support contracts? What balance between profit and giving > > back to the community would be appropriate? What services might be > > offensive, and what would be OK? > > People are going to make money from Sage. There is as you know a book > being published on Sage. Both the publisher and the author will make > money from it. Yet personally I see that as the best thing that could > happen to Sage. > > As for the issue I raised as support contracts, then the following > might be a method which would not irritate anyone, so has almost zero > probability of losing any Sage developers. Use the money only to > > 1) Pay for extra hardware. I don't know if you have UPSs, but that > would increase the uptime. > 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if > deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. > 3) Pay for targeted advertisements on Google - Mathematica, MATLAB, > Maple might be nice keywords. > > Do *not* pay any individual Sage developer or a mathematician to work > on some aspect of Sage, as that could potentially cause a bit of bad > feeling. > > One could sink an endless amount of money into advertising. > > Make the "accounts" public. State the number of contracts sold > (obviously not to who), and disclose how the money has been spent - X > to Google, Y for hard disks, Z for UPS's etc. > > Personally, I don't feel the amount of money raised would be huge. But > the fact commercial support was available, could make Sage more > attractive to commercial customers. > > I believe if the money was not payed to any individual developer, then > other developers would not mind providing the support for no cost. > (Count me as one). > > > * I'm curious if something like sagenb.org, but with Google ads, > > would be offensive. I could see somebody starting a small business > > that is just public notebook servers that also have ads. > > Personally I have no objection. Even a "Paypal donate" button might be > a good idea. > > > I haven't personally made up my mind about any of this. > > It's not an easy one. You need to be careful not to let it appear one > or two developers are making money from the support contracts, while > others contribute and get zero in return. > > But on the other side of the coin, you should realise that some > companies will never use software that has no commercial support. I've > also met companies that will not use free software, and critise those > that do. They see "free" as "inferior". > > I once had a discussion with a sales rep from National Instruments. > They were willing to give Labview to the university for a very modest > cost. I pointed out to the sales rep that even a small amount of money > was sometimes difficult to raise as the money was already allocated > for something else. When I asked her why they would not simply give it > free, her response was that something that if something is given free, > it is often perceived as having little value, or of low quality. > > Sage remains free, but if commercial support contracts were available, > it might help get Sage into industry. > > It strikes me Sage has many features mathematicians want, but less so > what industrial users might want, so it might be hard to get much > take-up in industry. > > > -- William > > Dave -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
