Wednesday, August 13, 2008
New version of my KBtextmaster NLP library is available
I just released a new version of my KBtextmaster Natural Language Processing (NLP) Java library. Free for non-commercial use, with a small fee for commercial use. Should also work fine with JRuby :-)
Labels: AI, commercial products, Java, NLP
Monday, February 26, 2007
Source code releases for my commercial products
I have a new policy: source code will be made available for all of my commercial products under both a Free license for non commercial use and a for fee commercial use license. Source code will be available for free product evaluation. I need to improve the build and packaging of all of my products, so it will take a few months for everything to get released. I trust individuals and companies to play fair with my new more liberal licensing policies.
I started writing and making available free web books about 6 years ago and I have been impressed by how many people take the time and expense to support my open content writing by making donations (financial, reporting errors, and making suggestions). Since I have built my consulting business by relying on mutual trust and that has worked well for me, I have decided to also take a more trusting approach to my commercial product projects.
My hope is that enough individuals and companies find my artificial intelligence (AI) and other general purpose projects useful enough to motivate them to support further development through negotiated commercial licensing fees.
I started writing and making available free web books about 6 years ago and I have been impressed by how many people take the time and expense to support my open content writing by making donations (financial, reporting errors, and making suggestions). Since I have built my consulting business by relying on mutual trust and that has worked well for me, I have decided to also take a more trusting approach to my commercial product projects.
My hope is that enough individuals and companies find my artificial intelligence (AI) and other general purpose projects useful enough to motivate them to support further development through negotiated commercial licensing fees.
Labels: commercial products, open content, source code
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
VAR agreement with Franz
I do a lot of Common Lisp development for my commercial products. I like to develop in Lisp, start selling products compiled with Lisp, then if it makes sense, do a Java port and sell that also. I now have a VAR agreement with Franz to use Allegro Common Lisp for development and for shipping applications.
Labels: commercial products, Lisp
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Open source, free, and commercial software
Slashdot linked an article about Eric Raymond's support for proprietary binary Linux drivers. I think that he is partially right, but I would like the freedom to choose whether to use binary only drivers on my Linux boxes.
As a software developer, I look at commercial development tools as a way of life. While I find the free Ruby + Eclipse + RDT + Radrails combination to be just fine for Ruby development, for other work the commercial tools are just a cut above.
I very much enjoy using Franz Lisp, but it is expensive: Franz has been in business for 20 years continually improving its one product (Franz Lisp), and it shows. I am using Franz right now for a large project - the licensing costs are a good investment for my customer. I hope to restart my knowledgebooks.com business next year (I have set it aside the last few years because the consulting market has been so hot) and I am going to try to justify to myself the costs of Franz because that is what I would like to use.
Another great commercial development environment is Cincom VisualWorks Smalltalk. While licensing is also expensive for VW, Cincom offers a good deal for developers (revenue sharing) that eliminates up front sticker shock - a good thing for develpers wanting to grow a new business.
The point that I am making is that writing software is expensive in time and resources so sometimes it makes sense business wise to invest in expensive tools, and sometimes it does not.
As a software developer, I look at commercial development tools as a way of life. While I find the free Ruby + Eclipse + RDT + Radrails combination to be just fine for Ruby development, for other work the commercial tools are just a cut above.
I very much enjoy using Franz Lisp, but it is expensive: Franz has been in business for 20 years continually improving its one product (Franz Lisp), and it shows. I am using Franz right now for a large project - the licensing costs are a good investment for my customer. I hope to restart my knowledgebooks.com business next year (I have set it aside the last few years because the consulting market has been so hot) and I am going to try to justify to myself the costs of Franz because that is what I would like to use.
Another great commercial development environment is Cincom VisualWorks Smalltalk. While licensing is also expensive for VW, Cincom offers a good deal for developers (revenue sharing) that eliminates up front sticker shock - a good thing for develpers wanting to grow a new business.
The point that I am making is that writing software is expensive in time and resources so sometimes it makes sense business wise to invest in expensive tools, and sometimes it does not.
Labels: commercial products, open source
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