The first question most people ask me about JaamSim is "Why are you doing this?" This is a good question. We are going to a lot of trouble to develop and promote software that generates no revenue for us.
There is a personal reason and a business reason for JaamSim. I'll start with the personal one. I've been a simulation consultant for more than thirty years now, and I would like to make a lasting contribution to the field. Over the years, I've developed strong opinions on how simulation models should be constructed and on the role simulation technology should play in the world. I'll say more about these topics in future posts, but suffice it to say that the present generation of commercial off-the-shelf simulation software is not suitable for this vision and that JaamSim is designed to fill this gap. JaamSim embodies all our ideas on how simulation software should work.
The business reason for JaamSim is simple. We want to be recognized as a leader in simulation technology to help us sell our consulting services. It's no good for us to claim that our software is the most sophisticated because everyone else does this too. Clients have no way to make a technical evaluation and simply assume that the most popular software is the best and safest choice. The only way for us to prove the value of our software is for it to be widely used by other simulation professionals. We have made JaamSim free and open source so that more people will try it out and hopefully adopt it as their preferred software. At the end of the day, our reputation is more important to us than any money that JaamSim might have generated as a commercial offering.
I've worked with Promodel and Simul8, and I really think we needed an open source, high level alternative to the commercial ones. Thanks for your contribution.
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