Was this a Patch competitor?
Patch was a competitor to Everyblock. EB pretty much pioneered this space.
Farewell, neighbors
91–100 of 101 posts
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that's why you should use the Affero GPL for web services. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html MSNBC really screwed the pooch on this one, from their initial "open source" via zipfile, to the zero-day shutdown. Not what the Knight Foundation intended to fund with their open source requirements.
Per another thread of discussion, apparently the rules of the GPL do not apply to the licensor, only the licensee. If MSNBC accepted OSS community contributions to the Everyblock codebase, they might be in violation. But if it was a one-way offering, they can apparently still retain full rights. I imagine the initial Mozilla-Knight foundation grant makes this a bit more complex, but IANAL.
As a follow-up to myself, if you are the copyright holder you can do whatever you'd like with the code including, for example, dual licensing.
Many, many years ago (I'm not sure if this is still true (I doubt it)), MySQL was dual-licensed. It was free for personal use, for example, but if you wanted to 1) use it commercially or 2) run it on Windows, you had to pay.
Perl, AFAIK, is still dual-licensed under the GPL and the Artistic License.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
The source was dumped with no version history once in 2009. So, yes, out of date. That said, I know nothing of the conditions around this, what their plans were, and so on - so not judging. And a site like EveryBlock is less about source code and more about execution and moderation, which they did quite well for a time.
But this code is GPLV3. It's really curious how the source code became out-of-date. Isn't that a violation of the license?
Copyright licenses apply to third parties, not owners.
The GPLv3 compels entities other than the copyright holder to make available source code to those who receive non-source code versions of software, if they are actually distributing the software or "offer access" to the work (e.g.: as a Web app). The copyright holder him or herself, whether by authorship or assignment, has no such obligations. Third parties would, as would the project maintainer if that maintainer accepted third-party contributions without assignment.
If the Knight Foundation grant required continual availability in open source form, that would be a different contractual obligation under the grant.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#94I am super bummed about this. :-( I wrote some thoughts on my blog: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/rip-everyblock/ Adrian (EveryBlock founder)
So where to from here Adrian? Do you know whether the current team is staying on at NBC or are they looking for new gigs? And it'd be interesting to hear what you and the other founders have been working on as well.
I've been working on Soundslice full time since I left EveryBlock at the end of August 2012: http://www.soundslice.com/ (blog post: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/)
It has nothing to do with local news or journalism -- it's a music thing. The main thing it has in common with EveryBlock is that it's fundamentally about creating structure from chaos, which is what I like to do.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has Adrian written on why he left possibly as soon as he was able (assuming that Everyblock was acquired in "summer 2009", and many founders are tied to two year agreements to stay, and he left in August two years later)?
Yes, he blogged about his leaving: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ FWIW, he left in August 2012, which would be three years after a summer 2009 acquisition. Also, he founded it back in July 2007...so when he says he "developed an uncontrollable itch to do something new", he probably meant it. Before Everyblock, he's been a pioneer in utilizing data and non-traditional journalism with news sites, m…
Yes, I don't mess around or BS on my blog. Take it at face value, cause that's how I meant it.
I'd been working on EveryBlock full-time for five years, and I'd maintained chicagocrime.org (the precursor) for two years before that, so I was ready to do something not related to local data or news. My new thing (Soundslice) is completely different.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#96I'm curious how many of the people reading this thread have ever actually used Everyblock (and if so how often)?
Today is the first I've heard of it.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users, please don't become highly dependent on "free" sites with no obvious or proven business model.
Getting tired of this response. I'm dealing with this issue right now with Snip.it. They were clearly in talks with Yahoo! about being purchased (and potentially others as they were putting out surveys every few months about usage and purpose that I filled out each and every time), but didn't inform any of us that the site would literally be shut off late one day and we would be unable to retrieve (or even look at in…
> Getting tired of this response.
Respectfully, stop putting yourself in a position to keep hearing it? You can't control others' actions, only your own.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting tired of this response. I'm dealing with this issue right now with Snip.it. They were clearly in talks with Yahoo! about being purchased (and potentially others as they were putting out surveys every few months about usage and purpose that I filled out each and every time), but didn't inform any of us that the site would literally be shut off late one day and we would be unable to retrieve (or even look at in…
> Getting tired of this response. Respectfully, stop putting yourself in a position to keep hearing it? You can't control others' actions, only your own.
Yeah, I'll just stop using your products and let your shareholders know it was because people on HackerNews knew better than to build solutions people will use.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Getting tired of this response. Respectfully, stop putting yourself in a position to keep hearing it? You can't control others' actions, only your own.
Yeah, I'll just stop using your products and let your shareholders know it was because people on HackerNews knew better than to build solutions people will use.
I'm simply trying to point out that there are decisions you can control and decisions you can't. You can control what your life takes a dependency on, and how tightly coupled you are to particular products and services.
For different types of products and services, you have more or less control and confidence about the future of those products and services. For software that you own and run on your box, that control and confidence is higher. For services on which you are completely dependent on software running on someone else's box for which you have no contract or service level agreement, that confidence and control is lower.
You have control over whether you want to complain and whine when a service you've tightly coupled yourself to makes a change you find objectionable. You don't have control over that change. Understanding which decisions you do and don't have control over is useful.
Re: Farewell, neighbors
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'll just stop using your products and let your shareholders know it was because people on HackerNews knew better than to build solutions people will use.
I'm simply trying to point out that there are decisions you can control and decisions you can't. You can control what your life takes a dependency on, and how tightly coupled you are to particular products and services. For different types of products and services, you have more or less control and confidence about the future of those products and services. For software that you own and run on your box, that control…
There's a deep irony in telling people on a site like this not to use the tools that we all put our blood, sweat and tears into every day.
If onboarding wasn't such a big deal and something people needed in order to prove the market exists and there's money to be made, we wouldn't see a good portion of the posts here about it and we wouldn't see so many ShowHNs with people asking for advice on how to make it more clear for their target demographic.
At the end of the day this hurts everyone; dropping users with no where to go and with a fraction of the effort they put into your tool to begin with causes them to question how much they can trust new companies and services. It makes it harder for others to make the case that they are worth using at all, no less long-term.
To turn around and blame users for their so-called ignorance on the matter is ignorant itself. We beg them to sign on with us and then expect them to know that's what they were in for when we kick them to the curb? This problem isn't exclusive to freemium models, either, which is even worse.