Group: http://groups.google.com/group/tradelink-free/topics
Joshua Franta <jo...@pracplay.com> Jun 18 09:31PM -0400
hey rick while that isn't glean feedback I appreciate you sharing your
thoughts.
yours and ted's comments bring up another good point about this list.
namely, it's helped identify a cluster of you who are confused about
similar things...
Here's what I understand so far on what you share in common :
1) you're confused about the difference between glean and tradelink
2) you're confused about the difference between various ways of using
glean and/or tradelink, eg :
a) open source
b) closed source and free
c) closed source and not free
d) closed source with an embedded option to get the source privately
(private is different than open)
Almost all of this is covered in various places on the websites (depending
on where you're are entering from), but I'll try and summarize the whole
picture here just going through this list above.
-----------
1) GLEAN / TRADELINK.ORG DIFFERENCES
As I mentioned in previous email here, tradelink.org is an open source kit
that lets you build trading applications and connect to brokers and
simulators. The target user base for tradelink.org is groups or companies
that need custom applications and can support themselves completely, or
very talented individual programmers who need custom applications and can
support themselves completely.
The reasons we've always offered tradelink.org as an open source
application :
a) tradelink.org saves costs and time for target users (by not having to
reinvent the wheel, by contributing patches back, by having more "eyes" for
bug finding, etc)
b) tradelink.org allows target users to put more time on things that
generate edge or alpha (versus working on infrastructure)
c) less commonly, but importantly.... to minimize costs for maximal long
term flexibility (eg if you build successful strategies on glean and later
raise money to start a hedge fund, you may want to take your entire
development to an in house team)
Just to be clear, we did NOT open source tradelink in order to teach people
programming, to teach people finance, teach people how to write connectors
or simulators, provide a place for people to decide whether they want to
enter finance, etc. There are people who don't fit into the target user
base who can still benefit from tradelink, but all we're saying is if you
don't fit the target user and you decide to use it against our advice....
don't complain in the community about your decision.
Now, there's an important category of users who don't the target user of
tradelink but who we do try to help via pracplay's glean product. I
mentioned this in a previous email, but Glean is focused on helping people
who want to maximize both the amount of money they can make with tradelink,
as well as the time it takes to make a given amount. The target user for
glean is anyone who fits this category, regardless of whether they are a
programmer or not, regardless of whether they are technical or not.
Glean is powered by tradelink, meaning that Glean links to the tradelink
core (core aka sdk aka appkit). In this sense Glean is just like any
other tradelink application, like say record or gauntlet. They all link
to tradelink.
One difference is that Glean is not an open source application, whereas
record and gauntlet are obviously open source. This is also true of
almost any application that a tradelink.org target user would build, it
would most likely NOT be open source. This is important in finance
because people like to keep their edge private, and we needed to allow this
so we chose the LGPL as the tradelink.org license. The LGPL is library
friendly, in that it lets commercial apps link to open source apps at the
binary level only (such as what we do with Glean and other pracplay
commercial applications, and there are applications and broker connectors
produced by other firms that work similiarly).
So If you link at the binary level with the LGPL, there is no requirement
to open source the linking application. Also with the LGPL, you can
modify the open source project for your own personal use or use by
employees of a single company and not open source the changes you make to
the open source project. So that covers binary only linking, and
modifications for personal use or use by employees. If you go beyond this
and modify the open source project and distribute it outside your
organization, whether it be by giving away or selling an application, or
offering tradelink service via a website, this is called distribution and
you are required to contribute your patches to tradelink back to the
community. (the community is not required to adopt them all, but you still
have to make them available as a patch on the tradelink issue page). If
you both modify the source and link to the binaries and distribute your app
as described, you only have to distribute the changes to tradelink.org
back. This would include the core as well as example applications like
gauntlet and replay, but not to your edge (which you generally want to put
in a seperate exe or dll and link to it, to use this protection of the
LGPL).
So as examples, there are users and companies who build or contract to
build closed source apps and connectors that are tradelink compatible, but
not open source. So they would fall into the same category as most closed
source pracplay applications, including Glean.
Now that we've come back to Glean, I just want to reiterate again the
target audience for Glean is people who want to maxmize the dollars they
make with tradelink and minimize the time to do so. Again Glean users may
or may not have a technical background, we've designed it to appeal to both
sides as long as you fit the max/min target audience.
So hopefully this makes it more clear. The short version is that
tradelink.org users know what they're doing and know they need tradelink
and can help themselves with it, and everybody else should use Glean or
something else.
With that said, lets get into the second point... the various ways of using
glean.
2) WAYS OF USING GLEAN/TRADELINK
if you look at http://tradelink.org there is picture that helps identify
these ways :
https://www.assembla.com/spaces/TradeLinkSupports/documents/bTtFVCO-0r45RcacwqjQXA/download/bTtFVCO-0r45RcacwqjQXA&nonsense=thisisanimage.png
Things in white are either open source (eg tradelink), or at least open in
the sense that you have an option to see the raw source code (even in most
cases you don't want to actually open source them). Lets go through the
options :
a) open source. aka tradelink.org.
this would be anything in the core kit plus any example applications in the
tradelink.org source (gauntlet, record, etc). this option corresponds to
the big white box on the left of the picture that says 'open source'.
open source is obviously not only available to everybody, and not only free
as in beer, but free as in speech (as long as you honor the LGPL).
As you've discovered on this list, free as in beer doesn't mean that it's
actually free to write all the code, test and maintain it. So while the
target user community can access and contribute to tradelink without paying
anything, we did at the request of some tradelink target users add a
donation page last year. This is for target users who know that the
tradelink.org costs a lot of money and they want to help cover these costs
going forward, so they can confidentally build custom application ontop of
it. The recommended donation is $200, which is simply the 3rd party
recreation cost of tradelink divided by the # of people who have downloaded
the code. We also allow people to submit custom donations if they like,
but again we recommend $200 annually. Since the # of tradelink target
users is very small, most people are not going to use or support
tradelink.org directly, they're going to use it via an application that
another community member sells (eg such as Glean).
more information :
https://code.google.com/p/tradelink/wiki/WhatIsTradeLink
https://code.google.com/p/tradelink/wiki/encourgetradelinkcore?tm=4
http://gleanusers.vanillaforums.com/discussion/108/thoughts-on-open-source#latest
http://gleanusers.vanillaforums.com/discussion/6/summer-of-glean-part-2-rewarding-contributors#latest
b) closed source and free. aka glean community.
With glean we let everybody use it, design and test strategies for free,
forever with no trial or time limit. When we say test, we don't just mean
testing on a single instrument (which we do allow), we don't just mean
testing on a big portfolio of instruments (which we allow), we don't just
mean testing on live data with a paper trade (which we do allow). We also
allow you to test on live data in a live account, with a limited amount of
real money.
We do this because we want you to maximize the benefits of Glean, which is
that you can build strategies that work in all of these enviroments in
minutes or hours without needing programming experience or paying a
programmer. This lets you look at lots of ideas, not just one... and see
which ones not only make money historically, but how well the results hold
up with real dollars. This lets you identify the best opportunities to
put the most capital behind, as well as help make a little bit of money
which can offset or pay for the non free parts of Glean (the difference
between offsetting and paying for being dependent on the profitability of
the strategy in question and the patience of the user to wait to scale up).
Note that this means we're giving every user the option to not pay
pracplay anything without first making money.
This option corresponds to the grey boxes on the diagram (user app b,
vendor app 2, user strategy x), when the user is trading at or less than
the level of buying power they receive in Glean community edition.
more information :
http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean
http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean/features
http://gleanusers.vanillaforums.com/discussion/13/summer-of-glean-part-4-glean-designs-vs-coding#latest
c) closed source and not free. aka glean leases.
When you have your design working the way you want on live money, at some
point you're going to want to trade more capital than what is included at
the community level. At this point you click the unlock button in your
design, enter the maximum level of capital you need to trade (aka buying
power or BP), and buy it via the website. Then restart glean and it will
automatically pick up this lease and increase the buying power for this
strategy.
Leases also produce an external dll that contains your strategy, which can
be run in any tradelink compatible application. This is useful for
trading in ASP, which can trade your design on many hundreds of symbols per
machine. This is how we allow you to truely scale up and trade an idea
that makes money across the entire market if you want. (It would be most
prudent to do it in steps, but how is up to you and the particulars of your
strategy).
This is the most common use of leases, and it corresponds to User Strategy
X on the graphic above (where the BP traded is above the level offered at
community edition).
There is another way you can use leases which is less common. Because
glean designs support discretionary strategies, you can also use leases to
build complete trading applications. Discretionary strategies are those
which require some sort of user input for entering or exiting trades, or
sizing, etc (they're sometimes also called grey boxes in proprietary
trading world, as opposed to black boxes which a fully automated strategy
that is the most common Glean leasing use). Designing a discretionary
strategy in glean means you're linking some of your signals to manual
inputs. In glean this is controlled by right clicking a discretionary
strategy and choosing from the options available. (this is also how we
were able to convert quotopia into a glean design).
Now discretionary designing is built into glean community and only requires
a lease if you're trading more than the community BP level. However if
you lease a discretionary design you not only get the extra BP, but you can
also wrap the design with a custom application interface that builds a
better menu or user interface than what we offer in Glean. With this you
can technically build most trading applications and save a lot of
programming time and cost, not to mention reuse parts of your applications
with other Glean designs more efficiently. The reason is that most
trading applications follow a common pattern and differ primarily in their
UI. The Glean historical and live players are actually built this way
and use the designs in the same way a 3rd party application would use a
leased dll. This is a less common application though because most people
want to build strategies, and also because it requires programming
expertise to wrap a dll. Whereas this is not required to simple build,
test and trading a regular leased design even if you are going to scale it
up to the entire market.
This less common use of leases would correspond to User application B or
vendor application 2 in the graphic above (where the amount of leased BP
was above the community BP level).
It should also be mentioned that while Glean leases are purchased per
design, when you have leases you're allowed to move them between any design
in your account, in any amount you want. So if you have a strategy
you've been leasing say 1M for, and you don't need all of that every week
on the strategy (or it stopped making as much money), you can reallocate it
to other designs as you see fit. Leasing also increases the # of designs
you can create at once (every lease you create gives you 20 extra design
capacity).
more information :
http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean/purchase/questions
d) closed source with an option to get the source privately. aka glean
unlocks.
This is the least common options, however it's important to provide maximum
flexability and interoperability with tradelink.org.
The reason it's called closed source with an option on the source is
because we're letting you build and test everything upfront in Glean (as
described above), but it's not free because we're charging you to exercise
this option (which is different than the option in tradelink, which is
provided upfront at no cost).
Glean unlocks let you take any design in Glean and dump it to raw
tradelink.org source. This is most useful if you fit option 1c above
(you're starting a hedge fund and taking everything in house). The
drawback of using this option is that when you dump to source code you lose
all the productivity benefits of designing that Glean provides. So if
you want to change the strategy after an unlock you're going to have to
know how to program, and even if you're really good it's going to be a lot
slower than designing. Also if you break something or hurt design
performance, you're on your own with these changes.
The good side is that you only lose these benefits for the strategy you
unlock, and not for other strategies (which you can still design in Glean).
So you can keep designing and only use unlocks when you really need
them. Unlocks can also be useful if you have a strategy that makes money
but doesn't really change much, you can unlock it and avoid paying regular
lease costs. So it's really just a typical outright purchase option.
Regardless of how you use the unlock, you buy it the same. Click unlock
in your design, skip the BP amount and choose the unlock purchase option at
checkout. The restart and you will see a new Unlock view that includes
Joshua Franta <jo...@pracplay.com> Jun 18 09:43PM -0400
I think I may understand you better now ted.
You're correct, the purpose of Glean has never been to produce open source
code to be used by everyone.
I'm not sure how you got the impression that it might have that purpose,
but that was never something we tried to achieve with Glean nor with other
contributors that helped make tradelink.org. In both there's definately
been an effort to offer things that are unique or lacking unique elsewhere
in the market, but our audience has never been the hobbyist or amateur
investor, nor a person who needs to both always control everything and
obtain that control for zero cost.
I'm sorry if you had some misunderstanding about this. Hopefully now that
you know you can move on to something designed more for your purposes.
I wish you only the best in your endeavors. If you ever decide to go pro I
hope you can give glean a second look.
good luck,
-josh
Ted Penner <tedp...@gmail.com> Jun 17 12:58PM -0500
Unfortunately, I'm not being paid to work for you. I've tested it and
what
we found is that the strategies created with the Tradelink 'builder' you
call Glean, is that once you have used it to create a strategy, you
cannot
see or edit the source code behind the strategy directly.
You can't. I've said it over and over, sent screenshots to prove it.
If you say it can then prove it. Send me a video that shows how you can
see
and edit the source code for the strategies themselves without purchasing
an 'UNLOCK' key, to OPEN the source code that you claim to be open
source.
The strategies Glean produces are NOT OPEN SOURCE>
-Ted R Penner
www.tedpenner.com
(254) 214-3013
Ted Penner <tedp...@gmail.com> Jun 19 02:34AM -0500
I of'course don't care about all the details regarding your model that is
clearly advertised as open source.
Call all of the various pieces what you will.
The fact remains that if you use the builder to build an automated
strategy, and you want see the source, you can't.
It's just that simple.
-Ted R Penner
www.tedpenner.com
(254) 214-3013
Rick May <rickma...@gmail.com> Jun 19 06:34AM -0700
You are right, I did go off on a tangent. I don't have comments about
Glean because it doesn't help in the type of trading I'm doing. And even
if it did, I'd rather code it by hand and know what is going on. I don't
have time to read your whole post at the moment, but may at some point.
Thanks for the time you put into it.
>> namely, it's helped identify a cluster of you who are confused about
similar things...
Maybe some are confused. If so, I think that tells us one thing. You have
yourself a marketing/communication problem.
>> And just to repeat.... if you're a non professional like I believe Ted
and some others here may be, you probably should not use
>> tradelink nor Glean. Both are designed for professional audiences that
want to create, maintain and maximize a real dollar edge.
I'd be careful about labeling people. You are only going to alienate them
further.
-Rick
I dont believe you. You sure didn't used to be able to. Show me in a video if that has changed.
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It isn't open source if you can't see the code without paying for it. That is the bottom line.
Joshua Franta <jo...@pracplay.com> Jun 23 09:33PM -0400
Hey ted thanks for writing. You sort of lost me again. If you build a
strategy in Glean you can absolutely see the code for it. Think of Glean
as being a programmer that has experience writing thousands of different
types of strategies on the same platform, who writes strategies 100 times
faster than any other person you could hire, who is available 24x7x365, who
never gets sick, who only charges you when the strategy is working, where
he always gives you to option to see it make money before paying, where he
always documents code, and who always writes on an open source platform.
That is what you're getting, and that is why you are paying to see the
source.
The fact remains that if you use the builder to build an automated
strategy, and you want see the source, you can't.
It's just that simple.
Joshua Franta <jo...@pracplay.com> Jun 23 10:09PM -0400
Rick May <rickma...@gmail.com> Jun 19 06:34AM -0700
You are right, I did go off on a tangent. I don't have comments about
Glean because it doesn't help in the type of trading I'm doing. And even
if it did, I'd rather code it by hand and know what is going on. I don't
have time to read your whole post at the moment, but may at some point.
Thanks for the time you put into it.
No worries rick.... I'm actually going to have somebody re-write this
post in more visual form, but i wanted to get the details in one place to
summarize from. we also pushed some updated glean-centric marketing
materials last week :
http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean
http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean/purchase
what type of trading are you doing? fwiw we built Glean so you can
see all the same stuff as if you were running in a debugger.
>> namely, it's helped identify a cluster of you who are confused about
similar things...
Maybe some are confused. If so, I think that tells us one thing. You have
yourself a marketing/communication problem.
That's absolutely true of the group on this forum, we have not done a
good job marketing Glean to you. Like I said, that's the second reason
I'm here to see if there is anybody here with the budget thinks they can't
use Glean.
So if you have the budget, I'd be interested to hear what type of
trading you're doing. either here or on the pro community forum
http://community.tradelink.org doesn't matter.
>> And just to repeat.... if you're a non professional like I believe
Ted and some others here may be, you probably should not use
>> tradelink nor Glean. Both are designed for professional audiences
that want to create, maintain and maximize a real dollar edge.
> I'd be careful about labeling people. You are only going to alienate
them
That's good general advice. To be clear there's nothing wrong with
hobbyists or students. Not infrequently people I've never heard of write
me letters saying thanks for teaching them how to program or learn finance
or whatever. That's nice to hear and it's good for them but it's not why
we open sourced tradelink. Part of the reason we changed the community
to a more pro style setup is because we were afraid we might be attracting
the wrong audience. Not that wrong is bad, we just can't make everybody
happy unfortunately. We don't want to waste people's time in this sense.
There's certainly students who have contributed great code back to
tradelink, which is also why we provide Glean incentives to people who
contribute. That's a small # of people who fit this category though.
Also fwiw for fun we are running a promotion in June to celebrate
hitting 1.2million minutes. It's not really designed for student budgets
either, but it is designed for people who want to experiment more without
committing to monthly fees :
http://gleanusers.vanillaforums.com/discussion/114/1-2-million-reasons-to-get-your-glean-on-this-summer#latest
anyways no pressure or whatever i just thought i'd drop a line to see where
people are at.
On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Joshua Franta <jo...@pracplay.com> wrote:
Ted Penner <tedp...@gmail.com> Jun 23 10:32PM -0500
I dont believe you. You sure didn't used to be able to. Show me in a video
if that has changed.
Ted Penner <tedp...@gmail.com> Jun 23 10:34PM -0500
Your reference to open source is illegal. Your product is not open source because the strategies built with it are not open. You must pay to see the source code after you have done all the work to build it using your product.