How did they get a hold of famous.org? Should startups be spending money on domains like that?
This will fetch something to pay back the lenders and investors if the company is shut down.
Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
71–80 of 154 posts
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#72Hey all. I was the second engineer at famo.us and was later chief architect. I have many stories, but I won't go into any of them :-) If you were interested in the library and are sad that this pivot means it won't be supported, I want to mention there is ongoing work in the OSS community outside the company supporting the pre-pivot vision. I've personally been working on a fork called samsaraJS ( http://samsaraJS.or…
Please write your stories down even if you don't share them with anyone. You may change your mind years later and the brain has a way of blotting the craziest stuff out over time.
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#73> Open Source ≠ Business > Newcomb himself admits it was a “divergent brainstorming process,” saying “We tried everything…we tried everything so we could create a business model around open source. And at the end of the day, we just couldn’t do it.” What a load of shit. This has nothing to do with open source. It's more like people don't want to pay for another JavaScript framework that claims to be better than the c…
Also trying to be faster than HTML/CSS is a hard game, the developers of Chrome and Firefox, etc are constantly optimizing.
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#74As an early intern, I wonder if the stock that I got after being let go from these guys will ever be worth a lick. :-/
Cash out!
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#75> Open Source ≠ Business > Newcomb himself admits it was a “divergent brainstorming process,” saying “We tried everything…we tried everything so we could create a business model around open source. And at the end of the day, we just couldn’t do it.” What a load of shit. This has nothing to do with open source. It's more like people don't want to pay for another JavaScript framework that claims to be better than the c…
Also trying to be faster than HTML/CSS is a hard game, the developers of Chrome and Firefox, etc are constantly optimizing.
Just wait until you see what Servo can do. Parallel layout is sick. https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Design#strategies-for-pa...
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#76Why on Earth would they have a smushed iPhone 6 on that landing page for famous.co?
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#77> Open Source ≠ Business > Newcomb himself admits it was a “divergent brainstorming process,” saying “We tried everything…we tried everything so we could create a business model around open source. And at the end of the day, we just couldn’t do it.” What a load of shit. This has nothing to do with open source. It's more like people don't want to pay for another JavaScript framework that claims to be better than the c…
This is a great point. The model probably could have worked, it's just that the framework isn't very desirable. A really easy to point at example of why this is so hard to do: they implemented their own formula for inertial scrolling, since mobile browsers don't really (or didn't at the time) let you interact with scrolling behavior at all in javascript. So simply scrolling through a site written in famo.us felt _off_. It's a small thing, but emblematic of the problems with their approach, in my mind.
Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#78Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
#79Famo.us’ 15 minutes of open source fame have come to an end. JavaScript rendering engine Famo.us has pivoted away from its hardcore open sourced engineering platform which had raised over $31 million. It’s now refocused on commercializing the idea of powerful mobile web apps with a content management system for branded marketing apps. Yikes. If ever I wanted a paragraph printed on a poster to scare me into working ha…
the bit that made me shudder was "Our mission at Famous is to empower digital marketing professionals to build beautiful branded apps that amplify every aspect of their digital marketing campaigns.". if you believe (as i do) that people just tune out and skim over everything that sounds like "marketese", that says absolutely nothing. surely there are better ways to say the same thing, that actually make people interested in what you have to sell!