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

61–70 of 78 posts

Re: A Sad Announcement

#61

Post by sanderjd »

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…

Have you done this yourself? I'm curious whether it's something that sounds good in theory until you've been up against the decision yourself, or if it's just a "different strokes for different folks" situation.

It isn't weird to me at all. I would much rather move on with my life than constantly feel bad about the unusable state of a blob of yucky never-designed-to-be-open-source code I just dumped on GitHub.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#62

Post by ci5er »

a3_nm wrote: post #43
buro9 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ 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…

> 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…

Disposing of the property of a company requires management, then board, then shareholder consent. According to provisions set out in a company's bylaws or operating agreement. Or maybe a court order in a bankruptcy proceeding.

Think of it this way...

Setup: An investor bought 20% of the shares of your company. You and a co-founder have 30% each and the employees have 20% in semi-vested stock options. You have $10,000 in vendor-related debt, a lease on your space, some computers, some software, and $2500 in the bank. You are not going to make another payroll.

Under no circumstances can you, as the founder, with all these people who have various claims on the company can go give that $2500 in the bank to a homeless person you just met on the street. Or to a church. Or, if you already know you are hitting the wall, throwing a big going-away party for the employees.

Software is the same. It's a company asset. You are not a solo flier. It belongs to the company - not to you. You are only one of the several (or many) stakeholders -- including the landlord!

Re: A Sad Announcement

#63

Post by sytse »

voltagex_ wrote: post #51
sytse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I reached out. But I'm not offering a ton of cash, it will be paying for work to integrate it.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#64

Post by sytse »

sfix wrote: post #56
sytse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Commenting here helps. Did you know GitLab the company grew out of a Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278

Re: A Sad Announcement

#65

Post by karmicthreat »

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…

If gitlab.com had something like this as a paid tier and I could do annotations on basically everything in the repo (directories etc). I'd pay for my team to use it. I say gitlab.com because I just don't want to deal with hosting right now.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#66

Post by zegerjan »

sfix wrote: post #56
sytse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not sure if this is the right issue tracker, but GitLab has an organization issue tracker[1]. Creating an issue there would also enhance discussion because of notifications etc.

[1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues

Re: A Sad Announcement

#67

Post by angersock »

sanderjd wrote: post #61
angersock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Have you done this yourself? I'm curious whether it's something that sounds good in theory until you've been up against the decision yourself, or if it's just a "different strokes for different folks" situation. It isn't weird to me at all. I would much rather move on with my life than constantly feel bad about the unusable state of a blob of yucky never-designed-to-be-open-source code I just dumped on GitHub.

Yep!

Almost all the code I write is up on my Github with an appropriate license. Almost all of it nobody really cares about, barring a couple of projects with forks and even some pull requests which I get to as I have time.

The thing is that, for products, abandoned code is strictly better than no code. We see this all the time with games--classic games only get supported once their source is released. The same is true for non-game software.

People who turn up their nose at "yucky" code that works or shipped are not worth considering in the same league as the folks that actually built something. Real artists ship, everything else is just people wanking about best practices.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#68

Post by jordigh »

niij wrote: post #59
jordigh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but he seems to not want to do it because it involves work. It doesn't involve work[1]. Just dump it, in whatever state it is.

--

[1] Well, other than perhaps and upload to bitbucket or github and slapping a LICENSE file on it, probably. It shouldn't involve any maintenance or development work, is what I mean.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#69

Post by niij »

jordigh wrote: post #68
niij wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't owe anyone a code dump either.

Sure, but he seems to not want to do it because it involves work. It doesn't involve work[1]. Just dump it, in whatever state it is. -- [1] Well, other than perhaps and upload to bitbucket or github and slapping a LICENSE file on it, probably. It shouldn't involve any maintenance or development work, is what I mean.

As discussed in other threads, he would have to go through the entire code base and determine licensing of all code he was using, talk to investors about being allowed to release, and strip out any confidential information. I honestly wouldn't hassle with it if my company just went belly-up, but it would be nice if it happened :)

I did find out about Git notes through this thread, which seems interesting.

Re: A Sad Announcement

#70

Post by wasd »

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 understand timr. Sorry for your lose. For what it's worth, I found omniref to be very cool. Good luck on whatever you decide to do next.
Post reply on HN