I have become a personal investor in FP Complete. Why have I done that?

In the Haskell community our current model is based on

open-source volunteers. Together we have achieved some pretty

remarkable things.  I’m biased about GHC, of course, but Cabal

and the extraordinary flowering of libraries on Hackage are even

more impressive. People make new tools and libraries all the time,

the Haskell Platform has been a huge step forward, and the

community has a strong culture of mutual support.   That

is so great.  I love you all.

And yet there is stuff that isn't getting done, and is

standing in the way of adoption.  Curated libraries, IDEs,

integrated tool support, and plain training, are all

important.  They are not researchy, so university

academics aren't interested.  They are a lot of

work, so volunteers without much spare time can’t take it on. 

This is one of the reasons that Haskell can be more talked about

than used, and it limits the goodness that Haskell can give to the

world.

To fill this gap we need someone who wants to build a business

by making Haskell great in the commercial sphere.  

Making money is what makes it sustainable, and holds out the hope

of scaling to much more ambitious goals.

Best of all would be a business that itself plays an active role

in the Haskell ecosystem, giving back as well as building on the

foundations we have laid, by sharing ideas, vision, and code. 

That’s what I think FP Complete will be.  Other companies,

like Galois and Well Typed, use Haskell a lot, and also give a lot

back to the community; but FP Complete is the first to focus on

Haskell itself, and its tools and libraries.

Of course, FP Complete thereby faces the challenge of making a

business out of a language ecosystem, something known to be

difficult!  Here I am encouraged by the fact that Aaron and

Bartosz are not, like many of us, primarily techno-geeks whose

primary motivation is the technology itself (just read the Haskell

Weekly News if you have any doubt what I mean).  They are

excited by Haskell all right, but they want to build a

business, and they have experience of doing just

that.  And I’m very encouraged by the fact that Michael

Snoyman (a giant of the Haskell community) has joined them, along

with several others.

On a personal note, I won’t have any management or consultancy

role in FP Complete.  My job is to be a researcher at

Microsoft Research, who give me amazing freedom.  In practice

my research is largely focused on Haskell and GHC -- but research

is the #1 goal.  I constantly have to balance my research

goals (pushing onwards) with my desire to make GHC into a fantastic

product (fast, reliable, usable...) for people to use.  So

another reason I am excited about FP Complete is that it will help

to “thicken up” the ecosystem of people who maintain and develop

GHC.

Welcome to the Haskell community, FP Complete!  The future is bright.  Let’s have fun together.