@freakboy3742 @jacob No, I'm aware of it and I wish them luck with it.
I mean the UV people taking a fresh take on it using whatever magic they are working with.
@webology @jacob I don’t think the magic is that magic… the magic is money. If you spend money, you can hire people, and *shit* *gets* *done*. Astral’s proving that with packaging; I’ve spent the last week working full time on getting iOS cross compiles working. That’s time that I don’t have unless someone’s (Anaconda, in my case) is paying me to do it.
@freakboy3742 @webology @jacob this is what makes me nervous about the lack of an obvious revenue stream or a stated business plan: what happens when the investor money dries up?
Can't deny the point you're making, though. People getting paid to maintain a thing gets a lot more done than whatever a community can spare.
@SnoopJ @freakboy3742 @jacob Regarding revenue streams and business plans - I can't speak for the VCs or who they are funding, but these are small investments compared to their overall portfolios. Many have orgs building tools that benefit from it. I heard from several people (no one under the UV umbrella) that they had no pressure to work on the business or revenue side. Their work was advancing other businesses they owned which paid for itself.
@SnoopJ @freakboy3742 @jacob I'm not saying the funding was out of the goodness of anyone's hearts, but they can also write off the debt which is a form of tax savings.
@webology @SnoopJ @jacob If that *is* the play, then it’s a master stroke of getting VC money to do what *we* need, not what *they* want. I just find it hard to believe that “we’ll be a loss leader so your other investments succeed” is an actual investment pitch. Or, they’re pitching a services business, which traditionally VC’s get bored with because they can’t 1000x.
@freakboy3742 @SnoopJ @jacob The US changed our R&D budgets, which are expensed and amortized, with more changes coming next year (depending on what expires, what gets renewed, and what passes, aka it's confusing AF.)
I was told that's why there was a shift in fellowship funding and other more creative ventures like this. You can use some of that tax money to reinvest but it doesn't look the same as saying everyone who builds your product is taxed (aka not taxed) as R&D.
@freakboy3742 @SnoopJ @jacob I am not an accountant and this is not legal advice. I'm just passing along how it was explained to me when I asked and what we have seen from companies I have *not* signed any agreements with.
@webology @freakboy3742 @jacob that's an interesting point, I can see how that arrangement would be preferable to a B2B contract because of said write-offs.
I don't think it's an existential threat to the project or anything, but it's something that I think about, especially in light of the tools being written in not-Python.