OK folks. I really can't believe I'm saying this as I've already lost far too much of my life to open source projects which have gone nowhere...but can anyone please recommend some solid open source .NET trading platforms? They must be active projects with a large user/developer community and a proven codebase. I just can't spare the time to look into any platforms being built by one bloke and his dog in a garden shed. Whilst they may be wonderful (and many are) they just involve far too much risk to be a realistic proposition. Many thanks to you all once again.
But your requirements are so impossible to fill in this industry that it's funny. There's are zero open source trading platforms with a "large user/developer community and a proven codebase". You're thinking of the software tools industry in the Java world like Eclipse, Spring, etc. The real problem in this industry is secrecy. Like tickzoom, for example, it's commercial open source and decent but it has only 5 active automated traders working on it. And, to my point, they're shutting down access to others because they don't want to share their competitive edge. So you probably can't get in if you tried. There's painfully little open source and free of charge software in this industry. You're better off rolling your own.
You are probably right Chaos. It was always going to be a long shot... And in any case, I have a natural aversion to open source projects anyway as they have such a nasty habit of being derailed by the pathetic politics and petty power struggles that seem to always plague small developer communities. So I guess I'll go with either NT or OQ, and just have to crowbar what I need out of them. No way I'm writing a platform completely from scratch. I have the skills but these days I simply don't have the time...
I had come to similar conclusions myself based on my communicaions with you scooby, but here's a list (which I'm sure you've seen already Scooby), this is it as far as what ET can offer at this point in time: Shared Resources GL
Yep, thanks Mandelbrot. That was one of the first things I read when I arrived at this site. I had a look at some of the open source stuff like EclipseTrader and ActiveQuant, but immediately smelt the usual issues oozing out their platforms. I've learnt in the last few weeks that this is still a very immature software marketplace, hence why all the hedgies I've been exposed to spent 6/7 figure sums building their own platforms from the ground up.
Hmmm. If you can get in, you might like tickzoom. It's commercial open source which means it avoids those petty problems but instead it has a "benevolent dictator" if that's really better. But the members seem happy with the direction of the project in the forum and level of support. And due to funding it has real work getting done and good support. Personally, I always take open source free of charge software "as is". If it has what I need already and works or I can easily fix a couple of issues, then I use it. As you said, you learn over time to never "count on" open source to deliver features. But with commercial software the measure is always the response from tech support. That's what everyone loves about NinjaTrader.
Frankly, I thought so too. But with the amount of money in the industry, it makes you wonder. IMHO, it has become clear that the real problem in this industry is the competition. You refer to hedgies spending 6/7 figures on building platforms. In the software tools industry, companies that spend that kind of money on software often try to "monetize it" or make it open source to get more people using and contributing code. But all these hedgies spend fortunes and keep the results strictly to themselves with 5 mile long NDA's that their employees sign. What everyone suspects seems to be true, the good stuff in this industry costs serious money. And the really, really good stuff you either can't get at all or only if you know somebody. Every heard the saying that "successful automated traders are more secret then the CIA"? If you had a solidly working system that worked and generated serious money, would you share any of it?
Because it makes no difference. I plan on most likely (pending Ninja) building my own platform but I also plan to monetize it. I see NO (as in: none) competitive edge lost by monetizing a central processing server, connectors to feeds and brokers and database as well as some visualization and strategy runners. I may not monetize or make available everything... but the core platform is just that. I wont keep anyone out by not publishing it And note that the PLATFORM does not exactly earn money. Sure, the strategies do - but then, where is the risk in publishing the platform?
I totally agree. I am not looking for anything other than a decent stable platform to handle the boilerplate stuff. I don't want anything whatsoever relating to actual trading strategies. The real problem here is there simply aren't enough serious quants such as us in the retail market to make developing (and more importantly supporting) such a product a realistic commercial proposition. In a way I take some solace in this, because it means we're probably fairly close to the technological cutting edge and that in itself provides us with a degree of trading edge. But that edge is only of use if we get the opportunity to harness it. And that ain't going to happen if we all spend the majority of our time reinventing the wheel. You've got to admit. This really is fucking frustrating. When you are used to the wide variety of mature toolsets available for building most business apps, this is like going back to bashing rocks together in the hope it eventually makes fire. Bollocks to it all. I'll keep hammering away with NTv6.5 and hope and pray that v7: (a) comes along soon (b) is a shit lot better
You have a point. Still, if you're fighting a war (which you are in trading) how willing would you be to share your central processing system with the enemy? Even if you did, would you really give them the full deal? Take the GPS system. Any one in the world including US enemies can use it but the US intentionally introduces errors into it so enemies can't use it to guide bombs. But the US has access to the extremely accurate version of the GPS for guidance systems. Your generous nature does you credit. When you have any great ideas for features in your platform, please post them here on ET. I'd love to use them myself in my own code. *wink*