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Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

ternjs.net

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Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#51
post #47
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that trust is not at stake, but the implication bothers some people because it cuts against the culture of OSS (rightly or not). You may just be one of the early pushers of a profit model that hasn't had time to normalise. I'll be interested to see. EDIT: cut down for brevity

The point is, this is not a model at all IMHO, since a model requires the ability to work in the long run. So you know wrote code for 1 month, and you want to be crowdsourced. Ok, what's the plan for the continued development of the project? Code as it is is worth zero without bugfixes, evolution, and a community.

I'm sorry, I laid my sentiment over your point and ended up missing the argument. Bad conversation on my part.

You're saying, A value proposition worth paying for would focus on support, not software availability. Yeah?

I'm unsure whether that's always the case. And as the OP is pointing out, support is implicitly included by his need to maintain a reputation. I'm not sure the profit model has to explicitly include it.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#52

I find most of these attempts to code-completion in JS to be annoying, like bad speech recognition, if the accuracy is poor, it becomes frustrating. Not to knock their attempt, but I find that if codeassist isn't like 98% accurate, it often becomes more work to step through all of the wrong entries and not find what I want, then to just type it out. The closest I've seen to something that works well is IntelliJ IDEA…

I disagree, I believe TypeScript/VisualStudio provides a closer experience than AS/IntelliJ. The inference and refactoring work quite well. And they are in their infancy, generics are coming very soon.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#53
post #48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, this is not a model at all IMHO, since a model requires the ability to work in the long run. So you know wrote code for 1 month, and you want to be crowdsourced. Ok, what's the plan for the continued development of the project? Code as it is is worth zero without bugfixes, evolution, and a community.

A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works…

I agree with antirez point of vue. To write a software is one thing, you can be crowd funded for that, no problem. What Antirez is saying, as far as I understand it, is that your software is not valuable if you don't have a sustainable model in the long run. You'll still have to pay your bill the day the software will be released open source. In that perspective, crowd funding might not be a solution. So in the end, I think what Antirez is saying is that you probably should choose between releasing open source (and find something else to pay the bills) or go and make your project sustainable by making it something like licensed closed sources.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#54
post #36
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean?

I mean that from my point of view "gimme money if you want that open sourced" is very bad approach. Either build your closed source business, or try to earn from an open source product to pay the bills. 1) What is the current state of the source code? It could be a mess. 2) The value of open source is mostly in continued developments, support, community, not just in releasing the code itself. 3) If you have this mind…

What does it matter?

Does it harm you in some way?

If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And either way, we've learned something. There's one one approach or set of approaches that are blessed and known to work 100% of the time.

I was more than happy to support it given the fine work that he's done in the past and how easy it has been to get answers from him about CodeMirror.

If this helps him produce more software or release some of what he's already written, then great. I'd rather he do this than get a more traditional job and have the fruits of his labor locked up.

But either way... what's the harm in trying a different approach? What's the harm in (potentially) giving him the opportunity to continue doing what he enjoys and does well?

If you don't want to give him that opportunity, that's fine. But there's little need to cast aspersions, right?

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works…

I agree with antirez point of vue. To write a software is one thing, you can be crowd funded for that, no problem. What Antirez is saying, as far as I understand it, is that your software is not valuable if you don't have a sustainable model in the long run. You'll still have to pay your bill the day the software will be released open source. In that perspective, crowd funding might not be a solution. So in the end,…

I'll point out again that launching by crowd-funding is in no way incompatible with being sustainable. It just eases the burden of the initial investment.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#57
To be clear the author of this IS the author of code mirror! That should be in large bold letters on that first page (it is on the crowd sourcing page). My first thought was "really? this is just code mirror with added cleverness, sort of lame to profit from it" - totally different story when it's the author adding value to something he has already contributed to the community. In that case this is the "premium" plan for code mirror.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#58
post #56

Marijn Haverbeke has a stellar track record of work in this area, so this should be taken more seriously than usual.

Just to lend some more credence to this statement, we (LightTable) have actually contracted him to work on CodeMirror and have been nothing but happy with the results. He runs a tight ship and the output is great. CodeMirror is a fantastic editor (I say this as an ex PM on the Visual Studio editor) that continues to get better every day, it has been invaluable to our work.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#59

To be clear the author of this IS the author of code mirror! That should be in large bold letters on that first page (it is on the crowd sourcing page). My first thought was "really? this is just code mirror with added cleverness, sort of lame to profit from it" - totally different story when it's the author adding value to something he has already contributed to the community. In that case this is the "premium" plan…

Note that Tern's core is editor-independent. I made the demo on top of CodeMirror, obviously, since I know it very well. But the meat of this project does not have anything to with the editor that's used to interact with it.
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