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

Kickstarter: rails.app

kickstarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 175 posts

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#111

Post by tzumby »

jacobian wrote: post #97
blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are…

The problem here is the ego, you have to notice how Yehuda put an accent on how important his contributions to rails 3 were. I'm not arguing they're not, but as Plato put it, when you think you reached the absolute wisdom you couldnt be further from it

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#112

Post by jacobian »

tzumby wrote: post #111
jacobian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are…

The problem here is the ego, you have to notice how Yehuda put an accent on how important his contributions to rails 3 were. I'm not arguing they're not, but as Plato put it, when you think you reached the absolute wisdom you couldnt be further from it

Oh, I see. So the problem isn't that Yehuda's asking for money, but that he had the temerity to state his qualifications.

Again, we gotta grow up. Yehuda's contributions to Rails 3 were important. What's wrong with taking credit for that? I'm often critical of the Rails community for an excess of ego, but this is not one of those cases.

It seems pretty clear that the idea of an open source developer asking for money seems vaguely filthy to a bunch of people. I think this is unhealthy and poisonous. It condemns open source to be the provence of academics, the unemployed, those able to snatch free time away from their friends and familier, or those working at the largess of their corporate employers. That's a shitty limit on the scope of free software.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#113

Post by matt_yoho »

tzumby wrote: post #111
jacobian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are…

The problem here is the ego, you have to notice how Yehuda put an accent on how important his contributions to rails 3 were. I'm not arguing they're not, but as Plato put it, when you think you reached the absolute wisdom you couldnt be further from it

I read the accent as being on his track record of delivering on open source software efforts. In other words, he's demonstrating the soundness of investing your money toward his goal. Regardless, count me in.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#114

Post by matt_yoho »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #107
nikcub wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies hire people to work on open source projects. It is how most of it gets written. He could probably get a job where working on this is part of it in a heartbeat. (not that I disagree with this project or method, I think he should do the same as what Google Appengine does with its installer - it is seriously awesome)

He did, actually. Much of the work he did on Merb and Rails 3 was generously funded by Engine Yard.

Though I'm quite thankful Engine Yard chose to fund his work, I'd categorize doing so as an investment than a generous act. Nothing wrong with either, of course.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#115

Post by ignorethat »

I tried the locomotive solution back in the day and there was a reason it died. It sucked. Installing Rails was not the problem. Learning it was.

And again, the problem with Rails 3 today isn't the install. Instead it's that:

1. There is a shit-ton of old Ruby/Rails documentation out there that confuses the living shit out of people, and this is a duck-typed language, which is fine, but it means that people are even less likely to know what the fuck is going on when the code they are trying to use from someone's blog doesn't work.

2. Most of those using Ruby on Rails are not new as they once were, so since the majority know a little more about what the fuck they are doing, they are less likely to write things for those that don't know what the fuck they are doing.

But, writing an .app won't solve that. Instead, spend that time trying to take bundler, Gemfiles, rvm, the more complex Rails directory structure, asset pipeline, etc. and simplify the whole damn thing to create Rails 4, and chalk 3 up to an oops. A lot of the changes in Rails 3 were warranted, but the additional complexity will drive people away, and that is against the soul and original intent of Rails.

Want something that people would be really interested in? A framework that makes both development and scaling EASY. Development was easy with Rails years ago, but scaling was nearly impossible because that wasn't the intent. Now people scale Rails, but it is still hard, and development has gotten much harder. That's bad, because there are already ways to learn to develop quickly, and other solutions for scaling well. Being halfass at both is a sure way to fail miserably over the long-term, and Ruby and Rails is awesome; it shouldn't fail like this.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#116

Post by matt_yoho »

lukeholder wrote: post #76
iamgilesbowkett wrote: post #52

I have several problems with this. The first, and most important, is here: http://xkcd.com/927/ The second is personal, so please take it with a grain of salt. I pointed out that Yehuda's Bundler gem has an automated condescension feature; if you try to use it without saying 'source :rubygems,' it heckles you and mockingly asks you 'did you mean to say source :rubygems? if so please go back and type it in.' this is p…

I think you are missing the reason for the project. In the php world, MAMP on osx is one of the reasons so many newbie jump into php. a simple app, abstracting away apache, php and mysql. you simply create a new vhost and click start. This is the target audience - not the people who know how to clone a git repo and run a script in terminal. He is trying to make it easy for new users and programmers. I know high schoo…

Right, this would be very valuable as a teaching resource, and thus indirectly valuable to the, I believe, sizable chunk Ruby/Rails community at large who enjoy doing it as their "day job".

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#117

Post by [deleted] »

jacobian wrote: post #97
blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are…

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#118

Post by tlianza »

ceol wrote: post #79
iamgilesbowkett wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually I hate to say it but one of the early (2006? 2005?) blog posts about the diff between Python and Ruby was that in Python's console, if you hit "q" or escape or ctrl-C or something, you get an error message like the 'source :rubygems' error message, which says "hit ctrl-D to escape." the blog post was saying this is basically the diff between the two languages, that Python would correct you if it knew what yo…

> in Python's console, if you hit "q" or escape or ctrl-C or something, you get an error message like the 'source :rubygems' error message, which says "hit ctrl-D to escape." Ah, I think I know what you're talking about. I wasn't using Python back then, and I know exit() was added after that (the only way to leave the console before that was to Ctrl-D), but when you type "exit" in the console, Python responds: Use ex…

Anyone ever hit up Linus to add the 'git statsu' command? That would really help me out.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#119

Post by dailyllama »

mattetti wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this is is Yehuda Katz, who has built a reputation with contributions to open source products over many years, realizing that his market value is better than "kudos" on some website. The alternative to stuff like this is Yehuda Katz writing code for some startup that you will never see. Here's Katz finding a way to make a business out of writing open source... ... and this is a bad thing? What's wrong with you ?

You seem to forget that he has almost always be paid for his contribution: * Merb / Rails - EngineYard * Sproutcore / Ember - Strobe (and via contract work) I myself struggle with the concept of asking $25k to build what he wants to build. But at the end of the day what I think doesn't matter what I think or how many people disagree. If enough people agree with him and support him, then the project will happen. If yo…

All the biggest open-source contributors I know made many of their contributions while collecting a paycheck. That doesn't make the work less valuable.

I kicked in a few bucks to the project because just earlier today I wanted to run a small sintra project and had to be walked through a complicated toolchain installation that wasted time and caused frustration.

Here's to hoping he can make it legitimately simple again!

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#120

Post by tptacek »

philwelch wrote: post #110
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this is is Yehuda Katz, who has built a reputation with contributions to open source products over many years, realizing that his market value is better than "kudos" on some website. The alternative to stuff like this is Yehuda Katz writing code for some startup that you will never see. Here's Katz finding a way to make a business out of writing open source... ... and this is a bad thing? What's wrong with you ?

If Yehuda Katz' market value is too high to build this kind of thing without sponsorship, then maybe someone else can build it gratis and he can save his time and energy for paying work.

Nobody's stopping them. Why is Yehuda Katz working for people at large somehow better than him working for giant faceless companies?
Post reply on HN