"Just open-source it" is not realistic
rachelbythebay.com
"Just open-source it" is not realistic
1–10 of 68 posts
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#2Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#3Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."
Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#4Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#5Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."
Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
You're both right, that's what the blog seems to be saying to me. Can't argue with either. I think this is also a not-so-hidden hint of 'if you wanted this open source, you should have paid more attention to that kickstarter!'
I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most purposes? The market for this stuff is so incredibly over saturated as it is. Rather make something new and different if you're going to do a kickstarter.
[1] http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-r...
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
You're both right, that's what the blog seems to be saying to me. Can't argue with either. I think this is also a not-so-hidden hint of 'if you wanted this open source, you should have paid more attention to that kickstarter!' I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most pur…
> different
That's the key, rule 1 for introducing a product is someone has probably already done it, so make sure you provide some value that your existing competition doesn't have. After playing with 'fred' for a few minutes, I don't see how I would care to use this over any of the alternatives.
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#7Tell that to Acquia.
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#8At my company we've open sourced a ruby gem for an elastic search client but kept the rails integration closed for some of the same reasons. I just don't have time to write a version that runs with vanilla rails. Our gem relies on a bunch of conventions and libs that are not standard for a rails app. Sure we could extract it, but we would have to rewrite parts that depend on other tools. Sure they could be open sourced as well, but we've hardly got the time to do that. The reality is that most oss projects are small and are maintained by one person with occasional patches from others. Without that one person most die.
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#9Can anyone explain/summarize what this is? I gather it was/is feed reader, but I can't find much more and she (?) is very vague. Or I don't know how to navigate her blog.
Re: "Just open-source it" is not realistic
#10"I might make myself look a bit messy by releasing this. I also imagine that some other people might have to put in some amount of work (much less than the work I put into writing this in the first place) to get this to work, so I'll make them rewrite it all from scratch if they are in need of this functionality." I don't believe this person understands empathy.
I realize if you want your project to flourish as an open source project, you need to make it palatable. However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. This person isn't even deluding themselves by saying they'll "get around to open sourcing it." You won't do the world a disservice by releasing working code. Seriously, just come out and be honest and say "I don't want to open source it because I don't wanna."