Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 131 posts

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#81

Post by eastbound »

rkuodys wrote: post #73

I cannot quickly find the answer so maybe the project owner can share - I have a need for which apparently there is no ready-to-use product - I need to have form which is anonymous, but at the same time it should be one-time-only submit. (Like voting system). My ideal solution would be to send unique link to each recipient and limit one submission per link. However, I as a purchaser should not be able to see who got…

Even if it were anonymous, your recipients wouldn’t trust it. Everyone knows anonymous polls get you fired (which is still proof that some people still trust anonymity, but those people are usually not working here anymore).

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#82

Post by p_l »

frabcus wrote: post #77
snvzz wrote: post #74

Huge Affero (AGPL) warning. Do not touch unless you understand how the license works and want to do so anyway.

I see this as huge Affero (AGPL) praise! It would be great if the license was used more. I'd much rather contribute to something where sharealike extends in some way across networks - software doesn't link in binaries, as the GPL does cover, as much these days.

GPL never talked about linking, it's probably the single most misunderstood aspect of GPL.

You can in fact have GPL bw applied over network IPC even

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#83

Post by winrid »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #28
la64710 wrote: post #25

What is the reason for “open sourcing” this , when any meaningful implementation is locked away behind services and is closed source. I just think these kind of use cases confuses users. There is no problem in being closed source and proprietary (unless you are using preexisting open source code and open sourcing those parts of your code makes it legally compliant) . In any case it is confusing at best and misleading…

Free advertising on Haker News. 10 bucks net profit without any grows is also profitable. Getting to the main page of HN was worth open sourcing what had no potential anyway. This is my reasoning, I'm not the creator of this.

As someone that built a 20m ARR survey product... The only difference between this and something making millions is a sales team.

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#84

Post by jraph »

flavaz wrote: post #40
jraph wrote: post #18

I'm secretly and slowly building a form building application. The idea is that in my association we don't want to rely on Google Forms. And we only want to use open source software. We are using FramaForms which is a bit clunky and doesn't have this feature that updates a spreadsheet automatically. I thought that I could just create something that would answer both concerns. But a good open source forms app would pro…

Limesurvey is “good enough” for most applications and is open source- any reason why that wouldn’t work for your use case?

As far as I know, LimeSurvey can't auto update a spreadsheet with the answers.

But LimeSurvey has its advantages:

- it's in PHP, and our whole infra is already using it (WordPress and Nextcloud). So it's easier to setup and if we want bridges between these tools, it'll be easier.

- AFAIR, it doesn't require JS when filling a form and in particular, it's not a React app.

We have used LimeSurvey in the past, we got rid of it but I don't remember why, I should look into it another time.

Two other big requirements we have is solid conditional field support and easy to use form builder.

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#85

Post by jraph »

krisoft wrote: post #59
blowski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a good open source forms app would probably change everything Can you go into that a bit more, I'm interested what you would see changing. Why do you think it hasn't been done already?

My understanding of the comment is that “changing everything” should be understood in the context described by the begining of the comment. That is their organisation would stop using FramaForms, and the commenter would stop working on their replacement skunk project. That is all of those mentioned plans/activities would change drastically. It wouldn’t change literally everything. The Sun and the Earth will continue…

Yep, I meant this indeed.

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#86

Post by jraph »

dearroy wrote: post #47
jraph wrote: post #18

I'm secretly and slowly building a form building application. The idea is that in my association we don't want to rely on Google Forms. And we only want to use open source software. We are using FramaForms which is a bit clunky and doesn't have this feature that updates a spreadsheet automatically. I thought that I could just create something that would answer both concerns. But a good open source forms app would pro…

Thank you for sharing your experience and insights. It would be fantastic if we could collaborate to make HeyForm better suited to your needs, as well as the needs of many others. > Would an integration with Nextcloud be considered? We are definitely interested in exploring this possibility. However, since I am not personally familiar with Nextcloud, it would be helpful if you could provide more details. Could you pl…

Sure, I'll take the time.

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#88

Post by effluvium »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #39
jraph wrote: post #18

I'm secretly and slowly building a form building application. The idea is that in my association we don't want to rely on Google Forms. And we only want to use open source software. We are using FramaForms which is a bit clunky and doesn't have this feature that updates a spreadsheet automatically. I thought that I could just create something that would answer both concerns. But a good open source forms app would pro…

Grist has the ability to create forms that are automatically connected to their spreadsheets [1]. Though it doesn't seem like you can create sophisticated forms (with some logic in them for example) just yet. I am thinking of moving my volunteer org away from Google forms towards Grist. [1] https://support.getgrist.com/widget-form/

FYSA

https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/LEAF

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#89

Post by mufeng »

izwasm wrote: post #16

I really like that you are using nestjs, idk why some devs hate it, IMHO its the best node framework that can be used to build production ready apps, i started using it a month ago at work and it was my first time using it, and it already made so productive

Why not use NestJS, a framework that solves the engineering problems you encounter in other Node.js frameworks?

Re: Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced

#90

Post by mufeng »

thih9 wrote: post #10

Congrats on open sourcing your project! I see that it relies on mongodb, at a first glance this seems a good fit for a forms oriented product - looks like using a document db for actually dealing with documents. How did it work out for you? Would you choose it again?

Maybe not. MySQL and PostgreSQL are both capable of performing this task effectively.
Post reply on HN