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Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

openship.org

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Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#181

Post by appleflaxen »

eastbayjake wrote: post #30

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

Completely disagree. It protects the end user, and if another license is absolutely necessary, they can negotiate for it or create a different service tier.

AGPL with paid alternative licensing is strictly superior to MIT for start-ups.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#182

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

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.

The best part is that there are a bunch of people that are willing to help. You just need to create a project where people can contribute to move it forward.

Good job and good luck.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#183

Post by lelanthran »

egypturnash wrote: post #128
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody ever wants to open source Pornhub. Wide consumer interest, no physical products to worry about, lots of advertising potential - and your not competing with Amazon, Wal-Mart, Google, Apple, or Target. Sounds like a better deal to me.

Constant hassle with payment processors deciding to ban smut once you get too big, though.

> Constant hassle with payment processors deciding to ban smut once you get too big, though.

Not doing something because you might get too big is not sound reasoning.

When you get too big, that's the time to worry about it.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#185

Post by vegetablepotpie »

ryan29 wrote: post #46
eastbayjake wrote: post #30

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…

As someone working on a product that uses open source, GPL makes development more complex.

With a permissive license, I can make a decision, with my manager, to use a technology based on its merit.

Office bureaucrats get weird when you talk about the GPL. When using it, I have to involve lawyers in the company, they don’t understand why the technology is important, but they have a bunch of questions, and to answer them it takes up time from my team. Upper management is involved and wants to know if we can use anything else, or they’ll phrase it as a question like: why can’t you use anything else? You have to deal with a lot more office politics when you use GPL instead of doing development work. So I’d say that’s the biggest downside for developers is that it wastes their time.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#188

Post by dougabug »

So would this be something like OCP, but at the level of an entire eCommerce marketplace? If so, that sounds pretty awesome.

Main pitfall would seem to be free riders cloning the system, stealing what works, creating closed source improved versions and killing the upstream.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#189

Post by Thorentis »

jannes wrote: post #155
swyx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the branding "open source Amazon" is just way too ambitious/big. invites a lot of confusion/criticism if Amazon is different things to different people.

They previously submitted the same link with a different title and got... 3 upvotes. The Amazon comparison clearly helped to get on the HN front page. > Show HN: I'm building an open-source order management system and marketplace API https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=openship.org

Just goes to show that for all of HN's hyper ad awareness, we still fall for basic click bait in our own territory.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#190

Post by bbatchelder »

I happen to be building this exact same product, but closed source, and somewhat attached at the hip to my company's 3PL WMS product.

One thing I did not see in your demo, is inventory synchronization. I'm guessing thats because your first use-case is drop shipping.

I'd also disagree that you're open-source Amazon. You're more like open-source DropStream or maybe Boomi.

If I were you, I'd do this:

1) Pick an open-source WMS and write a channel for it. 2) Make it dead easy to write ad-hoc channels. 3) Quickly implement shop connectors for BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.

Good luck!

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