[pypy-dev] next pypy-sync meeting 20050915

[Michal Wallace]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Christian Tismer wrote:

> Making money out of PyPy
> 
>   Jacob asked me on the last sprint, if it is possible to make
>   money out of PyPy right now. I passed this around once, but would
>   like to insist. I am personally interested to make PyPy move
>   away a bit from its purely academical status and to think a little
>   bit about how we can create practical applications in the near future,
>   which allow to grow marketable services for our members, in order
>   to reduce PyPy's dependency from the EU sponsoring.

Hey all,

I've only been reading these updates, and 
I haven't actually played with PyPy in
while, so I could be way off here. But I
do run a business and know a little bit 
about marketing, and I head up another
python compiler project (pirate) so I 
know a little bit about the market 
demand for these things... :)


Basically, there are really that many 
applications of this technology in its 
current state. The stated goal for this
project is just to make a faster version of
python, but can you really charge for that
given that pypy is already open source?

One option could be to find people who 
need python to run fast and get them to
pay you to handle the cases that apply
to *their project* up front, but I really
don't think this is a viable market. It's
much cheaper for the client to just write 
a C extension or port the whole thing to C.

Another option is that you could use your
technology created in pypy to create new
*frontends* for pypy, and sell the service
of taking legacy code in other languages, 
and translating that into call trees, and 
turning it magically into python or lisp or c...
This seems like it could be a much more
lucrative service, but it's a whole new
research project and it takes you away 
from your core focus on python. (On the 
other hand, a company that did this would 
have a massive incentive to sponsor pypy 
development... Maybe there's a company that
already does this kind of thing with some
other technology... Like, say, people just 
rewriting things by hand?

Another idea has to do with the sprints. 
I already told Holger this a while back,
but I think you guys have one of the most
impressive project management styles around, 
and the sprint idea seems like a great
amount of fun. 

What if you capitalized on *that*?

A week in europe to work on an open source
project? That would be an awesome vacation! 
And to get to learn about compilers and python
along the way? 

What I'm saying is you could market the 
sprints as a sort of training package for 
big companies interested in trying out python. 
They send their developers and pay you guys 
to train them. Even if the companies don't
care about python, their developers *might*
and that could be a great reward. 

Wasn't there a post just like this from
someone in the army a while back?

Market demand. :)

Heck, do your next sprint as a partnership with
these guys:

  http://www.geekcruises.com/

Anyway, it might be a crazy idea, but if you
could get it working, it would capitalize
on what you're already doing rather than 
force you to come up with some other devlepoment
project off to the side...

Sincerely,
 
Michal J Wallace
Sabren Enterprises, Inc.
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contact: michal at sabren.com
hosting: http://www.cornerhost.com/
my site: http://www.withoutane.com/
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