Long term continuation of Jamovi?

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Tim
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Joined: Fri Oct 14, 2022 1:59 pm

Long term continuation of Jamovi?

Post by Tim »

As a stats teacher, I consider switching from SPSS to Jamovi. But as this is a serious change for me and the institution, I wonder what to expect from the long term continuation. I understand Jamovi is open source, which leads to a certain commitment, but there are several examples of open source software that quietly fade out or get overruled by a commercial overlay (like Edge and Chrome are build upon Chromium).
So, how can I be sure that Jamovi keeps developing the open source software? How will it be funded, especially when the user base gets really huge?
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jonathon
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: Long term continuation of Jamovi?

Post by jonathon »

hi,

so when i'm considering adopting software, particularly open-source software, this is what i'm looking for:

- open source
- diversity of community
- growing relevance
- no technological road blacks

open source is really important, particularly when accompanied by diversity of community, because it means that if the leadership of the project does something really deranged, the community can "move on", and continue development under a new project. good examples of this might be openoffice, where oracle totally messed things up, and that gave rise to libreoffice. i think owncloud giving way to nextcloud is another example (there was a bit of a kerfuffle with nodejs and iojs too, but i don't know the details). even just the *possibility* that the community might move on, ensures good behaviour from the leadership, and prevents "rug pulls".

now as it turns out, i am part of the leadership, and am an all around good guy ... but the good thing about the jamovi community is that you don't need to take my word for it. if i "turned evil", someone else could fill me role.

growing relevance is also key. lots of open-source projects are driven by a desire to create and be a part of something bigger, and there's nothing more exciting (imho) than being a part of a project with users numbering in the millions. jamovi is still undergoing exponential growth, and i don't see that changing for many years. its that sort of thing which really draws a community around a project, and ensures its sustainability.

"no technological road blocks" is barriers to the software keeping pace with shifts in the broader software ecosystem. an example of this might be the transition to web applications, and the gradual move away from desktop applications. desktop-only applications are heading to a cliff, and i would not adopt any software that didn't have a clear cloud/browser strategy for the future. on this account, i'm far more concerned for other statistical software ... including spss.

> How will it be funded, especially when the user base gets really huge?

the huger (is that a word?) jamovi gets, the bigger the community, the less work i, and the core devs, have to do, because the community does it for us. if anything, the "costs" go down as the user base goes up.

the cloud version is a different story, as we have to cover hosting costs, but you've probably already seen our 'cloud priority plan', and are able to cover our costs from that. in fact, we expect that will be able to fund some development work from that too.

anyhow, that's my take. i'm excited about jamovi's future, and i hope you can be excited about it too.

jonathon
Tim
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 14, 2022 1:59 pm

Re: Long term continuation of Jamovi?

Post by Tim »

Thanks a lot for the extensive reply Jonathon! I sure believe that your are a good guy :-)
It is reassuring to see you applying the open source filosophy to your own project. Off course, there will allways be a certain degree of uncerainty for the really long term, but I guess the same goes for other software like SPSS or the like.
Just one more question: what is the role of Ordina in the Jamovi-development. Would they be interested in creating some kind of commercial version on the basis of some extra features on top of the open source version, or is that just not possible?
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jonathon
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: Long term continuation of Jamovi?

Post by jonathon »

> what is the role of Ordina in the Jamovi-development

i don't think i know what ordina is ... ?

jonathon
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reason180
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Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:56 pm

Re: Long term continuation of Jamovi?

Post by reason180 »

Though jamovi could be a serious change, there is pretty-much-zero learning curve in switching from SPSS to jamovi. And if jamovi went away, the learning curve to switch back to SPSS would be pretty shallow too (though overall, I think jamovi has better usability than SPSS).

Tim wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:38 pm As a stats teacher, I consider switching from SPSS to Jamovi. But as this is a serious change for me and the institution, I wonder what to expect from the long term continuation. I understand Jamovi is open source, which leads to a certain commitment, but there are several examples of open source software that quietly fade out or get overruled by a commercial overlay (like Edge and Chrome are build upon Chromium).
So, how can I be sure that Jamovi keeps developing the open source software? How will it be funded, especially when the user base gets really huge?
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