Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
indiegogo.com
Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#2Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects.
It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation suggests, perhaps, that there was more intrinsic motivation for developing and releasing those projects?
I think it's great if proven projects take donations or sponsorship to kick things up another notch or to support full time developers, but merely to start a project? I'm on the fence about that, and will be interested to see how it plays out as a model.
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#3Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects. It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation sugg…
For those not a part of the Django community: Toastdriven is not new, Daniel Lindsley is a staple for us. Haystack and Tastypie on their own are wonderful projects with untold hours of unpaid OSS. This is more of a full-stack project than either of those, but I have a huge amount of faith in their ability to execute, given the time required. I would much rather see them working on OSS than consulting, it's better for everybody (except maybe clients who can't have them exclusively)
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#4Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects. It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation sugg…
I would agree if it was an unknown entity or lesser known developer starting this. However Daniel has created two very heavily used Django libraries Haystack (http://haystacksearch.org/) and Tastypie (http://tastypieapi.org/) so that should reduce the worry of being able to deliver.
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#5Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects. It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation sugg…
Understandable. For us, if it were just a library or an extraction, we wouldn't be trying to fund it. However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product, essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it.
Because of the time commitment involved, we're trying to fund it so we can work on it (as well as the software we'll be building on top of) full-time from the start.
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#6Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects. It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation sugg…
For those not a part of the Django community: Toastdriven is not new, Daniel Lindsley is a staple for us. Haystack and Tastypie on their own are wonderful projects with untold hours of unpaid OSS. This is more of a full-stack project than either of those, but I have a huge amount of faith in their ability to execute, given the time required. I would much rather see them working on OSS than consulting, it's better for…
Just so it's clear, I don't question the sincerity, stature or trustworthiness of these guys. They come across well in their video. My lines of thought are about the project, not them personally.
What I find confusing is why a big upfront investment is necessary merely to start the project and, perhaps more importantly, why it wouldn't be a true open source project and only open sourced at the end. Why not open source what they have already and see if it sells itself by attracting collaborators?
It's not clear from the page or the video if they've open sourced the work done on the prototype already, but if they have and people are already playing with it and seeing promise, it becomes a much easier sell. Many good open source projects got significant sponsorship or raised money for people to work on them after initially proving itself, and that's great.
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#7Interesting times! It seems to be increasingly popular that developers are trying to raise money so they can start open source projects. It's impossible to say how this trend will work long term but I suspect a lot of the open source software I love today wouldn't exist if it had relied upon raising $50k up front.. not only because of the likelihood of raising the cash but because the lesser extrinsic motivation sugg…
Understandable. For us, if it were just a library or an extraction, we wouldn't be trying to fund it. However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product , essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it. Because of the time commitment involved, we're trying to fund it so we can work on it (as well as the software we'll be building on top of) full-time from the start.
However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product, essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it.
I think the part of this that got me pondering is that typically a basic prototype or initial version would be open sourced, people would play with it, and then funding or sponsorship would come along. Projects like Redis, WordPress, TravisCI, jQuery, Node.js, Ruby, Phusion Passenger, and PHP come to mind.
Your approach is different in asking for money up front and then promising to open source only when the project is finished.
While it seems you are awesome guys, much loved, and do good work, it's that leap from the previously established model that gets me wondering if it's a good approach. Maybe it is and I just don't realize it yet. Maybe I'm being nostalgic. But if this project were already open sourced and you were asking for funding to make a serious go of it, it would, to me, seem an easier sell than "we want to build X, give us the $ we need, and we'll open source it when we're done."
I suspect I'm just being a bit of an old fogey, but without questions come no answers.. ;-)
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#8I just finished installing helm in emacs. Of course its something completely different. Always confusing when something open source appears that has the same name as something else entirely. Not that it matters overall.
http://emacs-helm.github.com/helm
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#9Hmm. I already built something similar at chatfor.us
I used tornado load balanced by haproxy for the Web servers instead of Django. Backend is mongodb and I use a small tornado driven zeromq to manage passing updates between the front ends real time. That router also does all the db writes.
I built it in my spare time (and it shows) just to have a place to take twitter conversation to get around the 140 character limit
Not sure why you would need to seek funding to open source something like this. Today's frameworks make it pretty easy. Is there really enough need for another chat server? One motivation for me was to play with zeromq and tornado together. There are already other more robust and stable chat solutions out there. I never even considered there would be enough interest in it to open source my app.
Re: Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Understandable. For us, if it were just a library or an extraction, we wouldn't be trying to fund it. However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product , essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it. Because of the time commitment involved, we're trying to fund it so we can work on it (as well as the software we'll be building on top of) full-time from the start.
However, what we're trying to build is more like an open-source product, essentially an entire service made public so anyone can use it. I think the part of this that got me pondering is that typically a basic prototype or initial version would be open sourced, people would play with it, and then funding or sponsorship would come along. Projects like Redis, WordPress, TravisCI, jQuery, Node.js, Ruby, Phusion Passenge…
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself. The goal was to spur more/better discussions (than what private chat or crappy forums currently do).
We could certainly open up the code sooner, it just won't be polished enough to use from the get-go.
Most of all, it's an experiment for us. Do other people want this service as much as we do? Is this a valid way to try to bootstrap something? Can a service 100% (K, so 95%) open-source itself & still make ends meet?