191–200 of 309 posts
Very nice but keep this in mind, the tech is the easy part. Getting a whole community who contributes to it in the long term is the hard part. The genius of Linus Torvalds wasn't that he started an OS. Although, that was smart on it's own. The genius was that he was able to motivate a bunch of people to contribute to the project for decades. Learn how he did that and you can have a solution that can change the world.…
What about the actual "marketplace" part? E.g. the channel-partner product listing management; the product recommendation engine that combines global factors (user reviews) with personalized interest; the shopping cart that packing-problem's your order on checkout into separate orders according to logistics-provider constraints, etc. When you say "open-source Amazon", this is the part I envision.
As far as I know, many pieces of the technology stack required to be an individual FBA seller already mostly exist as FOSS; but what does not exist as FOSS, is the technology to build your own two-sided-marketplace on which others can list products for sale.
Even more starkly, the software and systems to run an "Amazon-style" warehouse to back that marketplace — one where the sellers on your marketplace can send you SKUs of merchandise to hold such that you can then centrally fulfill orders for a bunch of sellers, and the whole ecosystem of backend support to allow them to remotely manage that held inventory — are nowhere to be found outside of Amazon itself, for love or money.
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Here's Google's stance on why they ban AGPL software: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl... > The primary risk presented by AGPL is that any product or service that depends on AGPL-licensed code, or includes anything copied or derived from AGPL-licensed code, may be subject to the virality of the AGPL license. > This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the pr…
> This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the product or service be released to the world under the AGPL license. This is triggered if the product or service can be accessed over a remote network interface, so it does not even require that the product or service is actually distributed.. This is the entire point. The goal is to stop the SAAS loophole.
You could have one but not the other. We really need "LAGPL" to parallel LGPL, to make it clear that there is a clear and well defined way to stop the "remote access" part of AGPL from propagating accidentally into proprietary code.
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getting stuff that fast is very stupid 98% of the time. people may like it and want it and sing its praises, but its mostly stupid. and i think stupid things generally tend to die out. that is all to say that maybe that edge that amazon has is not that important.
It's not stupid. Unnecessary most of the time but it becomes an expected processing and delivery standard, which makes the experience much more predictable for consumers. Very few can really compete effectively with Amazon on this front. Source: Used to run an e-commerce company that shipped up to 2 million packages annually. Once we optimised shipping and processing, customer service inquiries and complaints dropped…
If I order from Etsy, I will drop $100 on a product and shipping. But when will I get it? I don’t know. Will it even arrive? Who knows?
With Amazon I know what I order is coming this week. That’s why I buy from them and no one else. It doesn’t matter that half their website is styled like it’s 2003 and I’m probably getting a counterfeit product.
Love open source projects in the eCommerce domain, especially ones that are JavaScript instead of PHP! Two pieces of feedback: - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. - You've really built an Order Management System for marketplace us…
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> I admire your ambition, but perhaps rein it in a little ? Maaaan if we were in the same room. Don't belittle someone who's trying to accomplish something (and following through with it).
> Maaaan if we were in the same room. Don't belittle someone who's trying to accomplish something (and following through with it). I'm not belittling. I'm just saying set realistic goals. "Build an open-source Amazon" without the budget or the manpower ? Its simply not realistic unless you have very deep pockets and a team of hundreds of full-time staff. If you think I'm being unduly harsh, what sort of grilling do y…
That "bank of VC fund" you speak probably looks at a startup like this very differently after they've been through YC, not just because of YC's reputation but also because YC can do a lot to help a startup like this after funding it.
Love open source projects in the eCommerce domain, especially ones that are JavaScript instead of PHP! Two pieces of feedback: - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. - You've really built an Order Management System for marketplace us…
> - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. What makes the AGPL unattractive? I thought it was basically just the GPL with a limitation on using the software to provide a SaaS product. You don't even have to contribute unpublished chang…
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It's amazing how many people condescend to others on here and then are surprised when someone else defends them.
I feel like I should bookmark this thread so I can come back in a few years when this dude is huge and say "Geez, I bet you wish you kept your yap shut" to all these people telling him to reel his ambitions in. I still smirk at the chucklehead who dismissed Drew Houston when he "Show HN: Dropbox"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29178442
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293146
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366316
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
Short version, he was genuinely trying to be helpful and that thread has been taken out of context over the years.