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

A Sad Announcement

omniref.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

Re: A Sad Announcement

#51

Post by voltagex_ »

sytse wrote: post #23
timr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually. And in this kind of situation, you're committing to publicly maintaining the thing that you're trying to shut down. If there isn't enough interest at the start, it's just prolonging the pain of failure. It's better to rip the bandage off and move forward with your life.

I totally agree that maintaining it as open source will take a lot of time and effort. What platform is Omniref written in? I'm interested in exploring adding it as a feature of our GitLab. But there has to be enough interest and the tooling should match (we use Ruby, Go, and elastic search). We can pay for the effort required. And the lessons you learned will live on. Although I would totally understand if your prio…

Hey, I hope you have been able to get in touch directly - I don't often see offers to front up cash in situations like this. Respect.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#53

Post by [deleted] »

timr wrote: post #36
wasd wrote: post #2

Would you consider open sourcing some of your work on Ruby analysis?

Unfortunately, the docs site code is...elaborate, and I don't think anyone could replicate the current site without a ton of effort from us. I don't see us open-sourcing that.

[deleted]

Re: A Sad Announcement

#54

Post by jordigh »

timr wrote: post #36
wasd wrote: post #2

Would you consider open sourcing some of your work on Ruby analysis?

Unfortunately, the docs site code is...elaborate, and I don't think anyone could replicate the current site without a ton of effort from us. I don't see us open-sourcing that.

I don't understand this. It's not like anyone's asking you to make it easier. A code dump, useless as it may seem, is better than no code than at all. A code dump doesn't mean you owe anything to anyone.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#55

Post by throwaway161220 »

sapeien wrote: post #47

Stupid question: what does Omniref do that can't be done with source code comments? Comments are readable by anyone in any editor and do not require external tools. They are co-located to the relevant lines of code by being part of the source, and are as portable as the code itself. My first impression is that it is a solution seeking a problem.

The problem seems to be post-commit code review or something like that. I don't know if they did, but I hope they used git-notes which has been in git core for a while now.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#56

Post by sfix »

sytse wrote: post #23
timr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually. And in this kind of situation, you're committing to publicly maintaining the thing that you're trying to shut down. If there isn't enough interest at the start, it's just prolonging the pain of failure. It's better to rip the bandage off and move forward with your life.

I totally agree that maintaining it as open source will take a lot of time and effort. What platform is Omniref written in? I'm interested in exploring adding it as a feature of our GitLab. But there has to be enough interest and the tooling should match (we use Ruby, Go, and elastic search). We can pay for the effort required. And the lessons you learned will live on. Although I would totally understand if your prio…

That would be awesome! How to let GitLab-user show interest?

Re: A Sad Announcement

#57

Post by wott »

buro9 wrote: post #41
TeMPOraL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why. Strip credentials from your source, dump it on GitHub. It may or may not get picked up by someone else, but this in itself is already better than having the project die. It also doesn't make you committed to anything. So honest question - even if you don't feel like maintaining it later, why not open source anyway?

+ Licenses + Documentation + Structure and organisation + Time and effort I shut my startup and open-sourced our code. But it was hard, very hard. It takes a significant effort at a time when you've just expended all the effort you have in trying to get funding or a future. First you need to go through your entire code and ask: What code or assets were acquired under a license that prohibits open-sourcing or re-licen…

Except for the licenses (and in a perfect world, most of the work about them should have been done already while the project was private), you don't have to do any of these things, they are just bonuses. What do you think many open-source projects look like? and most of those personal but open-source projects which are on Github?

Re: A Sad Announcement

#58

Post by [deleted] »

angersock wrote: post #24
timr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually. And in this kind of situation, you're committing to publicly maintaining the thing that you're trying to shut down. If there isn't enough interest at the start, it's just prolonging the pain of failure. It's better to rip the bandage off and move forward with your life.

> Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. This might sound mean, but I don't intend it that way: you've already "failed" as a business, so there's no reason to hold yourself to a high standard in the open-source department. You can totally just drop a code blob on Github and let folks fork it and start organizing to maintain it themselves--it's not like you have anything to lose, and somebody m…

[deleted]

Re: A Sad Announcement

#59

Post by niij »

jordigh wrote: post #54
timr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the docs site code is...elaborate, and I don't think anyone could replicate the current site without a ton of effort from us. I don't see us open-sourcing that.

I don't understand this. It's not like anyone's asking you to make it easier. A code dump, useless as it may seem, is better than no code than at all. A code dump doesn't mean you owe anything to anyone.

He doesn't owe anyone a code dump either.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#60

Post by sanderjd »

buro9 wrote: post #45
a3_nm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: And open-sourcing makes a huge assumption that your investors (who own the rights to a chunk of this stuff) even agree that you can just give away what they invested in. Interesting point. Is it really accurate? I mean, if investors to a company literally have partial ownership of the company's IP, does it also mean that the company cannot decide to open-source part of its code (i.e., license away part of the…

Shareholders own the assets at the time the company is wound-up, those assets include the code and IP. It may be that as a founder and at an early stage, that you own the majority of those assets but you are still exposing yourself to a bit of a legal nightmare if you assume that majority ownership gives you the right to dispose of it as you see fit. If any investor could argue that you can sell the IP for any price…

I totally agree with your posts here (and thank you for writing up so many details on this!), but you probably have to do due-diligence on selling the IP for some return for your investors anyway, so I think we're really talking about the situation where that has already come up zeros.
Post reply on HN