[zeromq-dev] Preliminary results of voting

[Martin Sustrik]

Hi Ritesh,

Thanks for the extensive comments.

> the challenge facing the zeromq community - fastmq, imatix and the user 
> community - is to foster uptake. i cannot sell zeromq as a viable 
> solution yet in my organization - and we are fairly geeky and edgy when 
> it comes to technology. two reasons - it has very little usage in our 
> community and lack of interfaces.

Yes. The community is the main thing to care about now. We are going to 
gradually release bindings for different programming languages so extend 
the community (you've seen the Java binding was presented few minutes ago).

> so what kind of interfaces/features can be built and who should build 
> them? one taxonomy:
> 
> core functionality: topic based routing, multicasting, lower latencies....
> os ports: linux, solaris, freebsd, windows...
> languages: perl, java, python, javascript
> protocols: xmpp-whatever
> tools: excel, mysql, apache
> bridges: exchange adapters...

Most of the points are on our roadmap already. The iteresting two are 
tools & bridges. We've somehow delayed this kind of features to get the 
core functionality right first and - to be frank - we've hoped that 
community will help with this kind of functionality. However, as you 
say, lack of these features hinders 0MQ adoption.

I'm wondering what kind of tool/bridge will be the best to start with. 
Native FIX and/or FIX/FAST protocol support comes to mind...

> one might say that this poses a chicken-egg problem. evangelize first or 
> go heads down and add as many of the above as you can?
> 
> i think a middle ground approach can work. add core features - those 
> lower down the stack - core functionality - portability and rely on the 
> community to add the higher level features.

Yup, agreed.

> evangelism in the open source community should be right up there. 
> getting zeromq included in the various linux distros should be right up 
> there. showing zeromq off at the various open source dog-and-pony shows 
> should be right up there.
> 
> the example of unix is quite instructive. att was forced to give away 
> the source code and not charge for it by a justice department decree. 
> this made unix quite the favorite of operating systems professors as 
> they could get their hands on real os source code for their classes. a 
> whole lot of students in universities grew up playing with unix source 
> code. the rest is history. you need to get the oss community hooked on 
> this - imho the financial community is too reactionary and closed to be 
> the early adopters. i might be wrong and in this case i hope i am.

Our feeling is that attitude of the financial community is slowly 
changing. That's why we've started this project at the first place.

> to answer your direct question - about building bridges to existing 
> feeds at the edges of the financial data distribution - i think you have 
> to evangelize it to firms who are natural partners - the ones who write 
> feed handlers and do not have their own cutting edge messaging 
> platforms. wombat got swallowed by nyse and they do have their own 
> messaging platform but i think they could be natural partners. infodyne 
> - i think they got acquired too. and so on.....same goes for market data 
> creators - the exchanges including the otc ones.

Yes, we are working in this direction, however, it's a long-distance run.

> i do not see any competitor to zeromq but i do know a few closed source 
> messaging vendors. these vendors are now stuck with a hard to sell 
> product and an uncertain economic future - remember talarian? however, 
> once zeromq gets some traction, they will see the light. open sourcing 
> to build critical mass will be a natural strategy for them. user base = 
> high valuation and probably high revenue.

Possible, but still it seems unlikely for IBM and Tibco to open-source 
their core products.

> the window of opportunity for zeromq will start tightening once they 
> realize this.  then again blindness and (economic) stupidity might still 
> rule the day....

Actually, I should hope that that will be the case :)

Martin