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was: Re: TS5 Press Release
"Brian Massey" <bnm03@xxxxxxx> writes:
>My friend, you don't have a clue what it takes to produce good, commercial
>level software these days. In your transition from hardware guru to trader
>you've lost touch with what it takes to write broad-scale commercial
>software these days.
>
>Andy is 100% correct. Go out an assemble your software team (C++/Windows
>coders only please), spend the $100,000's dollars required to build this
>grade of software in a reasonable amount of time.
The reason Linux has been successful, to the point where it now
represents a credible alternative to Windows NT, is its open-source
development model. With hundreds or thousands of volunteer developers,
who are working mostly for the respect of their peers, rather than to
satisfy a marketing committee, the cost model is different from what
Brian is describing, bugs are unearthed early by teams of eager tester/
developers, and fixed almost immediately. It's a whole different
world from the MicroSoft model, and probably represents the only way
to produce complex, reliable software - massive peer review.
The question for us is, could this open-source development model work
to create a trading platform? I'd like to think so, mostly because
I'd like to use such a platform, and I sort of doubt that I have time
to do it all myself. But I'm skeptical that there's a critical mass
of traders who are also programmers, and are also willing to share
the fruits of their programming in a collaborative effort. Maybe,
but the response here on this list to my troll for a server specification
was a bit underwhelming. :)
Another problem I can imagine is with the data vendors. Even if
a data vendor is willing to disclose details to allow server development,
is that vendor going to choke at the idea of that information being
used in open-source development?
For now, our best prospects seem to be Bob Brickey's TradeLab effort.
It's not open source, but it is by a small team led by a guy who
knows what the words "mission critical" mean, and who has demonstrated
a willingness and ability to do what his customers want. Now if we
could just convince him to port it to Linux, we'd have a real mission-
critical OS under it.
Jim
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