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Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

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Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#131

Post by ma2rten »

zmmmmm wrote: post #114

Seems slightly misleading with the pitch about "no servers". More like, "proprietary Javascript framework locked to proprietary hosted cloud service, no information about pricing". Not that I begrudge anybody the chance to make some money, but along with Meteor I feel like there's a slightly deceptive nature to this kind of thing where the home page is emblazoned with "look, it's all free!" when in fact there's an un…

Firebase is not really super complicated. It's just a database with a REST Api. I can not think of much more things they could add to lock you in more. I think if this becomes a thing, someone will make an opensource clone sooner or later.

About Meteor: There might be a lot of things wrong with Meteor (insecure by design), but this is not one of them: it's opensource and has a command which makes a self containing tar.gz bundle for you to deploy on your own server.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#132

Post by davidw »

ma2rten wrote: post #131
zmmmmm wrote: post #114

Seems slightly misleading with the pitch about "no servers". More like, "proprietary Javascript framework locked to proprietary hosted cloud service, no information about pricing". Not that I begrudge anybody the chance to make some money, but along with Meteor I feel like there's a slightly deceptive nature to this kind of thing where the home page is emblazoned with "look, it's all free!" when in fact there's an un…

Firebase is not really super complicated. It's just a database with a REST Api. I can not think of much more things they could add to lock you in more. I think if this becomes a thing, someone will make an opensource clone sooner or later. About Meteor: There might be a lot of things wrong with Meteor (insecure by design), but this is not one of them: it's opensource and has a command which makes a self containing ta…

> it's opensource

Under a license that does not permit you to easily use it for commercial projects, unlike, say, Django, Rails, Node.js, etc... etc.... etc....

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#133

Post by ma2rten »

davidw wrote: post #132
ma2rten wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase is not really super complicated. It's just a database with a REST Api. I can not think of much more things they could add to lock you in more. I think if this becomes a thing, someone will make an opensource clone sooner or later. About Meteor: There might be a lot of things wrong with Meteor (insecure by design), but this is not one of them: it's opensource and has a command which makes a self containing ta…

> it's opensource Under a license that does not permit you to easily use it for commercial projects, unlike, say, Django, Rails, Node.js, etc... etc.... etc....

That is not true. It's released under the GNU GPL, which does not make a difference between commercial and non-commercial projects afaik. It only says if you distribute the binary, you also need to give away the source code and others may redistribute and modify it. That does not mean, however, that you can not run it on your own server and keep the source code for yourself.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#134

Post by davidw »

ma2rten wrote: post #133
davidw wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's opensource Under a license that does not permit you to easily use it for commercial projects, unlike, say, Django, Rails, Node.js, etc... etc.... etc....

That is not true. It's released under the GNU GPL, which does not make a difference between commercial and non-commercial projects afaik. It only says if you distribute the binary, you also need to give away the source code and others may redistribute and modify it. That does not mean, however, that you can not run it on your own server and keep the source code for yourself.

But it's all bundled up, so you're linking: you need to give your code away. That's my understanding at least. If it were purely server-side, you'd be correct, but it isn't from what I can tell.

Also, the fact that they talk about commercial licenses is indicative that they may be thinking along similar lines.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#135

Post by zmmmmm »

ma2rten wrote: post #133
davidw wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's opensource Under a license that does not permit you to easily use it for commercial projects, unlike, say, Django, Rails, Node.js, etc... etc.... etc....

That is not true. It's released under the GNU GPL, which does not make a difference between commercial and non-commercial projects afaik. It only says if you distribute the binary, you also need to give away the source code and others may redistribute and modify it. That does not mean, however, that you can not run it on your own server and keep the source code for yourself.

As davidw says, you are distributing the "binary", because you are sending it to people's browsers in the form of javascript. Under GPL you are not permitted to do that unless you also make available to them the full source of your application.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#136

Post by jamest »

webjprgm wrote: post #40

A real-time client-side library that ties in to their database hosting service, basically. Also, if you want to have any non-realtime parts of your web app that do server-side processing of data then it looks like you have to use Node.js to talk to Firebase, as there's no REST API for it that I can see. I guess they don't mind because they're trying to get you to do all data processing in the client anyway. Definitel…

You can find our REST API docs here: http://www.firebase.com/docs/rest-api.html

We're definitely working on security full speed. We have some basic security but it's not ready yet. If you'd like to beta test it, please email us: beta@firebase.com

You can check out our FAQ for more info: http://www.firebase.com/faq.html

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#137

Post by [deleted] »

zmmmmm wrote: post #135
ma2rten wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. It's released under the GNU GPL, which does not make a difference between commercial and non-commercial projects afaik. It only says if you distribute the binary, you also need to give away the source code and others may redistribute and modify it. That does not mean, however, that you can not run it on your own server and keep the source code for yourself.

As davidw says, you are distributing the "binary", because you are sending it to people's browsers in the form of javascript. Under GPL you are not permitted to do that unless you also make available to them the full source of your application.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#138

Post by rralian »

chrisohara wrote: post #121
rralian wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

un-minifying javascript is very trivial. you just copy and paste it into an online javascript beautifier. you won't get the original un-obfuscated source with original comments, but you'll get readable javasript that you can easily parse visually.

as I said above, de-obfuscating a large javascript app that's been obfuscated/minified by proprietary tools is virtually impossible to decode. Try running some of google's code - gmail, docs, take your pick - through your beautifier ;)

I don't know if anybody uses proprietary tools to minify and obfuscate their javascript. We all use the same minification tools, with different features selected. Seems like most people use YUI compressor, or one of the others listed here http://compressorrater.thruhere.net/. I assume Google is using their closure tools (which I've never played with myself).

It's a lot easier to reverse-engineer the site than to build it from scratch yourself. You won't get all the comments, and some of the names of functions and variables and whatnot may lose their semantic meaning in favor of shorter names. But yes, it is trivial to unminify the source and work through it. If it's 10k+ lines of code, that's never trivial to understand and get it all in your head, but the concern is absolutely valid. If you think minifying/obfuscating is securing your code intellectual property, you're fooling yourself. It's like security through obscurity... it's not really offering you any protection.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#139

Post by mayop100 »

ma2rten wrote: post #131
zmmmmm wrote: post #114

Seems slightly misleading with the pitch about "no servers". More like, "proprietary Javascript framework locked to proprietary hosted cloud service, no information about pricing". Not that I begrudge anybody the chance to make some money, but along with Meteor I feel like there's a slightly deceptive nature to this kind of thing where the home page is emblazoned with "look, it's all free!" when in fact there's an un…

Firebase is not really super complicated. It's just a database with a REST Api. I can not think of much more things they could add to lock you in more. I think if this becomes a thing, someone will make an opensource clone sooner or later. About Meteor: There might be a lot of things wrong with Meteor (insecure by design), but this is not one of them: it's opensource and has a command which makes a self containing ta…

Firebase is a lot more than a database with a REST API. It pushes changes to you live, as they happen, in a way that is fast enough that you can use it for real-time gaming, collaborative whiteboards, and other apps could never work with a polling architecture.

It also does the work of managing distributed state of data across all of the clients and the server, and merging that data as needed to prevent conflicts in a distributed network like this. In fact, it allows you to run operations atomically across this distributed system -- operations that are latency-compensated, and work even in offline mode.

And finally, it can scale, with no work from the developer.

Re: Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

#140

Post by mayop100 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #114

Seems slightly misleading with the pitch about "no servers". More like, "proprietary Javascript framework locked to proprietary hosted cloud service, no information about pricing". Not that I begrudge anybody the chance to make some money, but along with Meteor I feel like there's a slightly deceptive nature to this kind of thing where the home page is emblazoned with "look, it's all free!" when in fact there's an un…

We make no claim that the service will be free. It won't be. We'll charge based on usage, in the same way other PaaS type providers do.
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