Most platforms charge fees. If you go with (let's pick lightspeed for a random example) you pay X dollars per month and you get a tech support phone number. Tradelink went the other route where they gave away the platform (code) and charge for support. If you know enough to support yourself on your own then you are fine but if not you need to pay to play either way. It's not that they are unresponsive or bad, it's that most people are probably expecting much more than what they paid for ($0). I've used Tradelink in the past and currently use BSD, Debian and Ubuntu which are all also open-source projects. They are great but you are on your own. If you have a problem you can't solve you have to either figure it out yourself (learn), wait for the community or pay for support. It's free after all... But just for reference there are billions traded via Open-Source every day whether it be via firewalls or platforms or OS'es.
I slightly disagree with your stance, if I understand you correctly you are saying "it free, so shut up". I think the issue was not about their business model and that they charge for support. I guess the issue was also not about having to pay one way or the other if one does not have the skill set to get work done oneself. Earlyexit can maybe chime in here but it sounds more like he is echoing my concerns that the attitude towards selling/marketing the product as well as communication with potential interested parties is a little off here. Did you notice that not a single word was spent on self-critical remarks towards the product? There MUST be some short comings, right? I have tested the product, used the libraries, and I can say with confidence the platform is very slow in loading, deserializing, and streaming even single symbol feeds in order to iterate over ticks. When I addressed the issue in an earlier post I was rebuffed and I was instructed to do a search for "tradelink speed" without responding to the issues of speed and performance of running back tests. I can name 20-30 short comings in my current trading and testing environment and have no hesitation to do so when being asked. I do not sell nor share my platform but I would be as forthright and honest if I would share or marketed it to others. Attitude is what is so often off and ignored when trying to sell products, market ideas, win arguments,...if someone proves me wrong based on presented evidence then I can either clarify to arrive at a mutually agreed base of facts or I need to stand corrected and need to admit I was wrong or overpromised/oversold. Always escaping by saying "well, you are HALF right, bla bla", "well, there is a FIX template, but, but, bla bla" after insisting there is no project related to FIX whatsoever sounds dishonest and only makes me distrust the product can solve my problems, so why should I get involved? This has nothing to do with whether a service or product is free of charge. By the way, I do not consider it free of charge. They try to build a commercial ecosystem around it and hugely benefit from people bug testing and running the product, asking questions, providing suggestions or even code, people spend a lot of time trying code and in the process help to make it better. It is exactly the same concept as this website, ET. Its free to use but each post, each new user, each loyal user adds raw dollars to the site's valuations when VC funds attempt to attach a sticker price. I remember years back there was a guy who started a project called TickZoom, initially open source, a very arrogant guy, who initially invited others to build the product, and there were quite a number of people who participated, then he turned around, started interpreting license agreements in his very own ways (I think the old threads should still be accessible) , ultimately changed the license, closed the code base pretty much overnight, and fuxxed everyone royally in the arse (those who spent a lot of time contributing. I did not but a good friend of mine did). I am not suggesting same things will happen in relation to tradelink but nothing in life is for free I guess is the point I try to bring home here.
I understand what you are saying. And agree. However, just for the record. The experiences I briefly spoke of wasn't really a situation where I was contacting them for support. I was simply trying to help with a feature that clearly wasn't working, even though there were multiple claims that it was from the TL guys. I was trying to show examples why it wasn't. I was told to stop and immediately dismissed as not doing something right. No matter how many others had confirmed my same problem in the user group.
Everyone, Thx for all of the posts. After speaking with Josh @tradelink and getting all of the feedback here on ET I've concluded that I'm not ready for the type of open source arrangement tradelink provides. I have no opinion whether TL is "good" or "bad" since I haven't used it. I still may try to use it at some point in the future. My problem is more with the wild West nature of open source platforms. If there was a service agreement available that would assure broker connectivity, fix platform crashes and defects w/a real-time response AND high-quality documentation then I'd probably take a much closer look at switching to TL now. Despite all of it's flaws Ninja provides these services and if there's a serious problem I can get on a Skype call with them. ~Lou
couple of points.... tradelink is distributed under the LGPL, one of the most widely used OSS licenses. we did not write the LGPL, it's written by the FSF. as a crazy example.... even if in the event google tesla'd all the developers and accidentally exploded our brains simultaneously via a google glass bug... you would still be able to continue to use your tradelink source code forever under the terms of the LGPL. tradelink can't sell you anything either, we're just a project that was created because there was (and still isn't) much in way of OSS in finance. if you leave a hedge fund to do your own thing, you need this type of stuff. we do probably have the widest set of problems addressed as any open platform because we do try to consolidate what the largest group of people are doing and make sure that works very well. we definately can't do everything, but we do have most questions answered on the website in terms of what can be done.... so you can find by googling. still in finance every person and firm has their own edge, so there are cracks. as others point out there are solutions to even the smallest cracks which generally involve you fixing things or working with somebody who can. open source provides this luxury as well. the tradelink project is at its core just a bunch of guys (and some firms) who write code and give some of it away to help each other out. we try to do it in a smart way to maximize value of the group... but it's hard. if you truely have constructive criticism to add and better ideas and something to contribute... join the group, start a discussion, build a consensus. everyone for the most part is a good listener and will try to help you out as best they can. if you come on and say 'great product', then devote sentences or paragraphs bad mouthing because something didn't work to your expectations, or yelling or name calling.... and on top of this offer no solution and leave it there... you're not making it easy for somebody to help you.