Thoughts on Open Source

Thoughts on Open Source

Note : tradelink.org is now dead for the reasons described here.

Some people have asked how tradelink.org fits with Glean.

We’ve also had some people ask about ASP and Quotopia no longer being in tradelink.org

tradelink.org purpose

The purpose behind tradelink.org is the same as always :

• to give you tools that get you trading faster and making more money
• to lower costs by community code reuse and patching
• give you the option to access source code for your entire trading platform, best reason being that you raised money to start a fund.

Glean + tradelink.org

Glean improves on these benefits and also makes them easier to access for anyone.

Specifically :

• Glean lets you build tradelink.org strategies hundreds of times faster
• Glean strategies are designed 100% visually
• Glean removes the need to “think like a programmer” while still delivering the same capabilities
• If you have existing code or produce signals in a analytics platform, Glean can connect to this code and libraries
• Glean lets you build as many strategies as you want, test and trade them for free
• Before you pay anything, Glean gives you the ability to prove a strategy is profitable with real money.
• Glean allows any strategy design to be unlocked so it will run on tradelink without Glean, preserving the 100% open source option we’ve always offered
• Glean designs are guaranteed to run the same on any broker, simulator and be capable of trading hundreds of markets per machine (running ASP)
• Pracplay support will hold your hand with designing questions for no charge

There’s a couple of small things that have changed in tradelink.org in the past year or so, that users have had questions about.

tradelink.org Revision Number Changes

We discovered some password files in the old tradelink, as well as a file that a committer had accidentally included that we did not have permission to distribute. To correct this we had to reset the SVN repository, which removed old versions that had the bad files as well as resetting the version count.

tradelink.org Connector Changes

Some proprietary trading firms we work with asked if we could remove prop firms connectors from the open source project. We did this as a courtesy because they contribute code back that makes the connectors better (unlike most tradelink users who don’t contribute code back). These only apply to registered (non retail) traders, retail connectors are still open source. There are also a couple of proprietary trading firms that requested their connectors be open, so those have remained open.

This will not affect most users because we still distribute all the connector for free to everyone in binary form, via the Glean installer.

We also will still provide connector source to Glean clients who require it.

These differences are now reflected in the new LGPL column of the provider feature matrix at [removed].

ASP changes

Some users have noticed ASP is no longer included in tradelink. Why is this? We had a number of Glean users who were confused because ASP referred to responses, which are different than designs (designs transparently create responses behind the scenes, but responses can’t create designs). So for cosmetic and consistency reasons we changed ASP to refer to designs. However because designs can’t be created via the open source project, it didn’t make sense to keep ASP in tradelink. However as always we still make ASP available in binary form for free, and support Glean users in using it.

Also like proprietary connectors, we can still make ASP source code available to users who require it (such as if you are using Glean unlocks), but we know this to be a rare occurrence.

tradelink.org Quotopia changes

Quotopia is also no longer included in tradelink. This was for two reasons. The first reason being obviously the same as with ASP, if a user wanted to load a design in quotopia this was confusing because quotopia doesn’t support designs directly. The second reason is the more important. We converted quotopia to run as a Glean design. This lets anyone customize their quote screen and order entry using Glean designs, without requiring programming, with full support and with no charge. This makes it far superior to the old quotopia, so we removed it.

New quotopia source code (even for your own customized versions) is still available via Glean unlocks. Like ASP and the connectors, we can also make available legacy Quotopia source available to clients who require it, although we expect this to be incredibly rare.

platform code updates

If you have purchased design unlocks you will also find platform updates in your github account. Contact us to enable.