Such a feature matrix may make sense from a marketing perspective (any such matrix can be made to look good by selecting the respective features and products), but if you want to show the abilities of your product publishing (and creating) an in-depth class documentation would be much better.
how can you list TickZoom as a 'yes' for 'allow any number of new users', when its the only listed software that has a waiting list to get in? i'm pretty sure most of the other software companies are just as down to have as many customers as possible as you are. also it is conceited of you to list so many 'no's in the support section of your comparison chart. especially since you've created a specific support system that only helps your product gain 'yes's and for the others to have 'no's.
No. What I'm asking is whether, when you pay the price for the product whether you actually own it. Support is a separate matter. Okay, so let's get this clear. The price of tickzoom entitles the user to download and install the software and the annual fee entitiles the user to use it. In essence, the user never actually owns the product and will always need "support". So, it is a product based upon open source technology but with a proprietary and highly restrictive commercial model. I won't ask again whether the user gets access to the source code (true freedom) as it's clear that the answer is no, ie. the product is not open source. You're desscending into condescension to explain yourself. I don't think that's good. And the logic is flawed anyway. Are you claiming tickzoom to be Nirvana? Also, if you don't want to attract the general public why are you publicizing your product on ET? Or does the "general public" undergo some kind of metamorphosis into "sophisticated traders" by leasing tickzoom? The price shown on your website is not expensive if the product is as good as you say. The only thing which will make it that good is how much power it gives to developer types. All of the other features you list are commoditiized. Perhaps you could explain this some more? I've come across other claiming great programability for their product and when you poke around you realize that isn't the case. Without access to source the power never really lies inthe hands of the user and programmatic freeedom is always restricted. I think you're not being entirely open and straightforward about your product. BTW, can you eplain the relationship between tickzoom and multicharts? I didn't realize they were linked. Thx D
It's an annual lease. Correct. Yes it is open source. 90% of functionality. Only the data engine is commercial source, sold separately. Hunh? It's on ET to find sophisticated traders who are also programmers or institutions who have programmers. The software is entirely open source except for only DLL which is the data engine and commercial sold separately. The rest of the source has been adjusted to build with SharpDevelop or VisualStudio in C#. The user can run it and/or debug it entirely withing the IDE. So it has fully automated code completion. It has extensions to C# which make it easy to code strategies like EasyLanguage but with all the advantages of object orientation. It has example code of strategies, indicators, portfolios, loaders and more. All programmers who actually use it so far say it's intuitive and elegant object oriented design. TickZOOM is 90% open source. So it leaves power in the users hands. Of course, only trail users or paid users get access to it. They can reuse it under LGPL terms. They aren't yet. It's just in the planning stage. There's not technical relationship. It's simply that MultiCharts is quick and easy to paste in and try EasyLanguage strategies in magazines or around the web just to experiment. But to have all the speed, power, and total automation of tickzoom and reliability, the users can then convert the strategy to TickZOOM C# with some examples on how to do it. Wayne
Good point. It was a typo. Originally it was phrased oppositely about restricting users so TZ was yes and the rest no. But then we rephrased it and it was overlooked to reverse the yes and nos. Thanks so much for pointing this out!! It will be fixed shortly. Well, there's no "attitude" involved. This is all a draft document and has had typos and lack of knowledge of other products support nuances. Everything any vendor or user reports we correct it almost immediately. So that's the opposite of conceited, it's humble and honest. As far known, for example, Ninja has no's for most of those support items. You can report problems but you never can see a sorted the list of all the defects or enhancements requested by other users or planned by the staff. Everyone's wondering what will be in the next Ninja version. Or is is vaporware? They don't have any voting on which features are priority. People have been waiting over a year for the latest release, etc. unless I missed it and they just released 7.0. Ninja is definitely a nice product in many ways especially for discretionary work. It was very weak at handling ticks, portfolio trading, or total hands-free automation. We're just showing the open source nature of TickZOOM to trial and paying members. If that's incorrect about Ninja or any other please report specifically the yes and no's that need fixing or a page on their site for reference or something. NOTE: We'd also love to add to the list items that those other products have which are not found it TickZOOM to help better show the difference. I just thought of something cool that's in Ninja which isn't in TickZOOM. It's a graph of the Level II data you can use to discretionary trade. What's it called? Anyway, TickZOOM has Level II data with 5 levels of DOM on every tick but nothing graphical for discretionary trading. We should add "support for using Level II tick data in strategies" as an item. TZ has that and most besides it do not. Just another way that differentiates that TZ is for sophisticated, advanced traders. Thanks! Wayne
I don't see the connection between trader sophistication and not actually owning the program for which monies are paid. Were tickzoom to go bust, a far from improbable scenario, these users would be left high and dry. I doubt that spohisticated users would accept that kind of risk. Thx D
Excellent and very practical question. That's definitely on the minds of sophisticated traders. Since TickZOOM does have an answer to this, thank you for the reminder to make this prominent on the website for potential members to consider. Entire Source Code is Available First, consider that sophisticated traders who already make money trading also purchase the source code to the data engine with updates. However, others who are still in the earlier stages on their road to success need a different solution. Alternative Solution TickZOOM has a policy such that if TickZOOM were to go bust, then the source of the data engine will be given to all paying member per the disaster recovery scenario. Disaster Recovery Scenario There are several backup people who can be contacted in case of emergency to ask about TickZOOM. These are personal friends and also managers or owners of other businesses. They have passwords to allow paying users to get access to that latest ZIP of the source code to the engine. Generally, members can contact them if they can't get any response from the forum, site, email, phone, etc. These people will be aware if the entire management of TickZOOM went down in a plane crash or "got hit by a bus", etc. and make the ZIP of source available. (I'm the only one, at the moment.) That's the same ZIP that gets automatically generated with every change to source for those who are paying for data engine source updates. Update Sorry, I early posted an outdated policy for disaster recovery. This is now the correct and latest one. It was changed due to the lack of technical sophistication of the emergency backup people. Now all they have to do is give out the id and password to get the source. They also have contacts for the admins at the data center if any need to repair the server with the ZIP. Automated Push of Source Code Updates Finally, for those members who purchase the source code to the data engine and all updates we have an automated process to push the updates to their servers via sftp for every ticket committed. Free of Cost, Open Source Would be Very Nice Again, it would be lovely if TZ could be entirely open source. But there's a risk that too many professional (money-making) traders or small/medium institutions will avoid funding TickZOOM at all if they get their hands on the data engine source code without the requirement of payment. After discussing with the current members, they feel the current measures taken to release source upon bust of the company are sufficient until they can afford to purchase source code updates for the data engine also. How to Write Your Own Source to the Data Engine My personal suggestion for those who want to "roll their own", use TickZOOM since it's mostly open source. Then when you're ready, you can just write your own data engine to replace the obfuscated DLL since the API is open source in a separate DLL. Of course, if you can afford the time and money to do that, it would be far cheaper and less time consuming to purchase the source code. So you see the value proposition to those who can afford it to purchase the source. Any other ideas? Does anyone have any additional ideas for solving this? Or do you feel these solutions are satisfactory? Sincerely, Wayne
Pippi, Hmm. Good point. The idea is for people to sign up for the FREE, zero obligation trial. That gives them a 2 week period to download the entire source, browse the source on the web, read through the tickets, read or create posts on the forum, run a demo on their PC and even create some strategies to experiment. They can also get phone support to help them answer questions on their specific needs which may not be obvious. New users find a personal phone consultation with me after they get oriented is very helpful because the advanced traders ordinarily have specific issues or concerns after trying other trading systems or because they have a trading system that they need to convert to TickZOOM to automate or test faster. So a phone chat can quickly answer if their needs are already addressed in TickZOOM or how much effort it will take to enhance it for them. When they can do that themselves or wish to pay TickZOOM to do it. Remember, TickZOOM is not a simple "off the shelf" type of system. It's a membership to a cost effective service for traders to pool their resources to have the software customized to their own specific needs. Don't you think that this trial of the entire service and software is a whole lot more fun and enlightening than just reading documentation? Current members think so. In contrast, there's little desire to make detailed documentation freely available to the public as a "marketing tool". Do you understand why? Does this all make sense? Sincerely, Wayne
Fundjunkie, you might be wondering why we have the lease and disaster recovery plan instead of simply a lifetime license. Actually had a lifetime license with optional extension for updates and support during the Beta testing period. Several processed their payment and we listened to their concerns. We play an enormous weight on paying member opinions. Amazingly, they all insisted on the lease arrangement. It was a little surprising to me, personally. I have to run to an appointment. Upon returning, I'll post an explanation of the reasons they said lease was better -- with a disaster recovery plan, of course. Sincerely, Wayne
Okay. The reason why paying members want the lease arrangement (along with a disaster recovery plan, of course) is the following: They have all been users of retail software systems with lifetime licenses and closed source code. As users of those systems, they wanted features added to customize it for their needs in ways that couldn't be done with the built in scripting or APIs. Their requests for enhancements and customizations either fell on deaf ears or took forever to get implemented. So they have already felt the pain of "lifetime" licenses which sets the business model where the vendor only generates revenue money from NEW users. That forces them to focus energies on features they feel will attract more new users rather than building more features for current users. That's of course fine and good for the retail market meaning non-programmer, non-professional type traders. But that causes all kinds of problems for sophisticated, professional traders and institutions. The first problem was already mentioned as the lack of response to enhancement or customization requests. The worst case is that the number of new users starts to dry up and so the company folds up or sells out which totally changes the direction of the software or ends any further enhancements or support. TickZOOM, instead, built a "current member" centric business model because of their recommendations. And the current TZ members love it! Specifically, the idea from all current members paying either monthly, quarterly, or yearly lease payments flips the retail business model around to be current member (or user) focused. You see, that focuses all the loyalty of the company to current members instead of getting new ones because the current renewing members will be the greatest, most reliable source of revenue. Interestingly, these sophisticated users have either the funding or skills to "roll their own" software in most cases. But they prefer the TickZOOM approach because of the community of users. The community means that more people use and potential find bugs before you do. Other users submit ideas for enhancements that you can benefit from. And most of all, the combined payments of all members fund developers with highly specialized skills which ordinarily cost over $150 to $200 per hour to get elsewhere. When they look at the $1,500 or $3,000 per year annual license, they consider it "pocket change" compared to the level of support and their own profits from trading. Certainly, this software will only be attractive to "sophisticated" traders who understand all those advantages. And they usually learn that knowledge from trying to use "retail" type systems which teach that lesson the hard way. So if you're an advanced trader with programming skills or can afford to hire programmers and feel unsure about TickZOOM, then roll your own, or try the retail ones for awhile. Eventually, you will probably see the advantage of a community of users on the same platform rather than paying for or developing everything yourself from scratch. Sincerely, Wayne