Re: Digest for tradelink-free@googlegroups.com - 2 updates in 1 topic
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Joshua Franta
Jun 18, 2014, 9:31:50 PM6/18/14
to tradeli...@googlegroups.com
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.
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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 :
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 :
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 :
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 :
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 your unlocks, and if you double click any unlock you'll see all the versions of code you've unlocked for that design (typically one).
Again this is the least common use case, but it's something you won't find on other platforms.
This option corresponds to User application A, Vendor Application 1, and User strategy Y on the graphic above.
more information : http://www.pracplay.com/products/glean/purchase/questions
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So again this is a lot of information, which is why we tried to compress it in picture form. Still that apparently can still be confusing to some especially if they might be novices.
Hopefully this gives you some more information about how and whether you can best use tradelink.org and Glean.
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. Not to say a hobbyist or non pro couldn't benefit if you were at least semi serious, but the vast majority of people contributing code to tradelink and writing tradelink applications are professionals and are trying to cater to this audience.
Hobbyists trying to have fun and not spend any money will find plenty of cheap open source trading platforms that are uncomplicated, totally free and/or open. the vast majority of the tradelink.org community is the professional crowd (software companies, trading firms, proprietary traders or groups, professional investors or advisors at the retail level, quants, and/or hedge funds or alternative vehicles).
thanks for your time and good luck in your trading,
josh
On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 10:30 AM, <tradeli...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Group: http://groups.google.com/group/tradelink-free/topics
- thanks [2 Updates]
Rick May <rickma...@gmail.com> Jun 17 08:30AM -0700
I'll tell you what I don't like about Glean. Since its introduction, the
mailing list as it once was, has been removed and posting non Glean
issues/questions in the current system is discouraged. Documentation for
Tradelink seems to have disappeared from the website, along with portions
of the software. Glean has been forced down our throats. How an Open
Source product can force a for-profit application in the same install is
disturbing. Additionally, I'm no expert on open source licenses, but I'd
think that intertwining Glean code into TradeLink code violates that
license.
I don't have a problem with you trying to make some money for all your time
and effort. I just have a problem with how you've gone about it and how
you've done this at the detriment of TL itself.
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
Joshua Franta
Jun 18, 2014, 9:43:20 PM6/18/14
to tradeli...@googlegroups.com
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
Jun 19, 2014, 3:34:49 AM6/19/14
to tradeli...@googlegroups.com
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.
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Rick May
Jun 19, 2014, 9:34:37 AM6/19/14
to tradelink-free
>> 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
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