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

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

#211

Post by naasking »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #157
hk__2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty happy to live in world where it’s difficult to build a business where you move trucks around cities to deliver a single tube of toothpaste to someone who ordered it the day before. Yes, it’s hard to do this as fast as Amazon does. But should we really go that way, anyway?

>But should we really go that way, anyway? Yes. It is more efficient from an energy, carbon, land usage, and labor perspective. The bluish-grey van that delivered my toothpaste had several hundred other deliveries on it, and the warehouse it came from stocks the products of hundreds of stores (if not more). How do you think a tube of toothpaste gets to "Ye Olde Mum and Pop's Auntie Emma's Down Home Crunchy Granola Au…

> It is more efficient from an energy, carbon, land usage, and labor perspective

That's very doubtful. Normally you'd get toothpaste along with a bunch of other items. The convenience of delivery means you no longer purchase in batches. Batches is more efficient in every sense.

Maybe the mom and pop's supply chain could be shorter and more efficient, but the OP was talking about whether we should be going down the path of immediate delivery of small orders.

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

#212

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

mentos wrote: post #191
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #182

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.…

You recommend any reading on how Linus achieved that?

I don't but I would start by understanding how the contribution process for Linux works now. You can at least understand what works now. Also, making a plan and making it public will help a lot. You should make it easy to communicate and gather like minded people.

It's a long term project. Remember that what Amazon is was created over 2+ decades. The advantage you have is that you can duplicate what Amazon is without having to try stuff that never worked out.

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

#213

Post by loopdoend »

naasking wrote: post #211
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But should we really go that way, anyway? Yes. It is more efficient from an energy, carbon, land usage, and labor perspective. The bluish-grey van that delivered my toothpaste had several hundred other deliveries on it, and the warehouse it came from stocks the products of hundreds of stores (if not more). How do you think a tube of toothpaste gets to "Ye Olde Mum and Pop's Auntie Emma's Down Home Crunchy Granola Au…

> It is more efficient from an energy, carbon, land usage, and labor perspective That's very doubtful. Normally you'd get toothpaste along with a bunch of other items. The convenience of delivery means you no longer purchase in batches. Batches is more efficient in every sense. Maybe the mom and pop's supply chain could be shorter and more efficient, but the OP was talking about whether we should be going down the pa…

Not to mention the endless packaging these deliveries arrive in.

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

#214

Post by yellowapple »

bloblaw wrote: post #74
ryan29 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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…

Here's Google's stance on why they ban AGPL software: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl... > The primary risk presented by AGPL is that any product or service that depends on AGPL-licensed code, or includes anything copied or derived from AGPL-licensed code, may be subject to the virality of the AGPL license. > This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the pr…

> FWIW, every company I've ever worked at bans AGPL products / code.

Is every company you've ever worked for a software vendor? Because those are the only companies that would be impacted at all by using AGPL products/code.

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

#215

Post by lisper »

What would be an Amazon-killer for me as a consumer -- and just about the only thing that I can imagine that would be -- is something like Amazon that connected me to the inventory of local merchants where I could buy things for same-day or next-day delivery via something like Doordash. There is a ton of inventory within a 30-60 minute drive of my house (in the Bay Area) but no centralized service to connect me to it, so if I want some glassware and some shower cleaner (my actual current use-case) I have to visit two different merchants, place two different orders, set up two accounts, take twice the risk with my credit card number, etc. A centralized order dispatcher that was connected to local inventory and delivery which would let me order everything I needed all in one place and know that fulfillment would come from local merchants that I can trust to vet their suppliers would kick some serious tushy.

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

#216

Post by yrgulation »

No. Build an open source aws and you’ll be better off. It’s easy. Particularly since entire generations dont know that an “object” is a file and that a “lambda” function is just code executed inside a container. As long as you dont charge for … “cold starts” you’ll win at least one client. Thanks ignorance you’ll make a killing! Remember to charge extra for “permissions” (aka iams) to do anything. Easy. Bootcamp programmers will think this is the best thing since sliced bread.

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

#217

Post by margarina72 »

Great idea. Add federation to it (ala mastodon and the like) so that multiple marketplace can communicate (useful for search). Think about the recommendation/comment system to avoid/minimize spam/fake reviews and scam (orders that never arrive) maybe have integration with an escrow payment system.

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

#218

Post by judge2020 »

adavid17 wrote: post #77

So this is really a open-source Shopify replacement, right? An OMS that lets you sell on multiple channels (website, Amazon, Instagram, Etsy…) and manage/fulfill those orders in one location? I was confused at first by your title (open source Amazon) which seemed like it was going to be a e-commerce marketplace like Amazon.com - but it seems like that’s the 2nd step. Why does a new e-commerce marketplace also require…

For reference, Shopify already has https://shop.app/ which does some browsing and recommendations based on your product purchase history, so while it's still "you must use shopify as your storefront", I don't see it as much different from this guy's product.

Perhaps the selling point is "nobody can deplatform you", but chances are not many places have that problem (shopify is against doing it for political content[0]), and if that's the case, all this does for you is force you to hire a team to handle scaling the systems once you need to support tens of thousands of concurrent users.

0: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/shopify-f...

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

#219

Post by anakaine »

johnorourke wrote: post #113

You are trying to solve a real-world problem experienced by a lot of profitable companies, so there is already a market of paying customers waiting for this. One of my clients is actively trying to reduce their dependence on Amazon and instead integrate with other marketplaces. I see it's just Shopify-to-Shopify for now - bravo for starting with probably one of the most costly integrations. I'm working with a client…

Can I ask, out of curiosity, what was the low-code solution they ran with? I've tried a few and been only marginally happy with most.

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

#220

Post by joemi »

melony wrote: post #116
joemi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you know too much about how the book retail industry works. If people are dropshipping from anywhere, they're dropshipping from Ingram, which is in the US. Some of the stuff they carry might be printed in Asia, but it's not shipping directly from there to individual US customers. If I had to guess, this is how I'd expect bookshop.org to be fulfilling orders that they fulfill themselves. I can't remember…

I was referring to OP's product. The non-book part of Amazon sources the majority of their products from asia. Bookshop was just a point of comparison. Their schtick is to complain on media (said media is conveniently on an anti-big tech crusade right now) about small indie book stores being oppressed by Amazon while ignoring the fact that most publishing is centralized upstream.

I see your point, though it wasn't as clear from your first post.

To be fair, publishers being consolidated is much smaller problem for bookstores than Amazon is. While publisher consolidation is real (Penguin Random House is quite a beast!), it is not total; many publishers exist that have not been absorbed by the major publishers. And there are multiple major publishers a tier below the aforementioned PRH. Whereas when it comes to sales, the main competitor for _all_ bookstores is pretty definitively Amazon. So there is some merit to what Bookshop is doing, and it's not quite as hypocritical as you seem to make it out to be.

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