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Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

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Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#21

Post by mherrmann »

moconnor wrote: post #18
mherrmann wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We quit our daytime jobs to work on this project and have to live off something... Maybe you have a suggestion as to what we could do to allow us to sustain our development in another way?

This is a really interesting problem. There's the expectation - and desire - for all software, particularly development tools, to be open source. This seems to make it harder for independent developers to devote time to creating great tools. Is the future of software tools in the side-effects of teams at large organizations open sourcing things they needed to solve their own problems?

I agree that it's interesting and that it is a problem. You could see from mapleoin's comment that closed source software is not looked at favorably. I can see why, but as I said if we want to sustain full-time development of this project, we need an income. One approach that's often used with open source projects is to develop the software for free and then charge for consulting. But, with a tool such as Helium that aims to be extremely simple, I don't see much room for such services. I'd be extremely curious to hear if anybody has an answer to this problem.

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#22

Post by rmrfrmrf »

mherrmann wrote: post #13
mapleoin wrote: post #3

Closed source development tools with a EULA? What is this? 1995?

We quit our daytime jobs to work on this project and have to live off something... Maybe you have a suggestion as to what we could do to allow us to sustain our development in another way?

I just want to point out, however, that there are other open source frameworks that do the exact same thing. Utility libraries like this are rarely closed source because the target audience is working in code (and there are also security issues to think about). End-user products can get away with being closed source because non-coders don't give a crap about the nuts and bolts of your program.

Hate to be blunt, but your business model isn't viable. If you want to monetize, you either need to provide a service to developers or a product to end users.

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#24

Post by mherrmann »

hpaavola wrote: post #20
mherrmann wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! For now, it looks by (x, y) position on the web page.

Position of what? Why? Given following markup: Lorem ipsum Does write('omg', 'Lorem ipsum') write into #foobar? Just to clarify since position of those two elements might not be similar at all.

In that case, it will write into #foobar because it is smart enough to understand that s can be written to, and not labels. It works in a way that is very similar to us humans: If someone tells us to "write 'Michael' into the 'First Name' field", we look for the text "First Name" and then to the right and bottom of this text if there is a field that can be written to. So, position in this case is position on the page in (x, y) coordinates.

If there are multiple occurrences (eg. two "First Name" fields) then Helium scans the page top-to-bottom, and closest to the element you last interacted with. Like a human would normally also do.

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#26

Post by rmrfrmrf »

moconnor wrote: post #18
mherrmann wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We quit our daytime jobs to work on this project and have to live off something... Maybe you have a suggestion as to what we could do to allow us to sustain our development in another way?

This is a really interesting problem. There's the expectation - and desire - for all software, particularly development tools, to be open source. This seems to make it harder for independent developers to devote time to creating great tools. Is the future of software tools in the side-effects of teams at large organizations open sourcing things they needed to solve their own problems?

It's a matter of sound business decisions more than anything. This is a classic example of not understanding your target audience. Look at the competition: on one end, you have a flexible, open source web testing framework like CasperJS (targeted at developers); on the other hand, you have end-user oriented products like Fake.app that are paid and closed source. One could even argue that Selenium itself (also free) has a nice enough GUI to be considered power user friendly. When you start charging devs for closed source, paid applications, you're getting into the territories of Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. Is that really how this independent team wants to position itself? Can this team even support the kinds of problems that enterprise clients have every day? Seems like a really terrible segment to target. And if this team was really thinking that indie devs would go and blindly purchase a product like this from an unheard-of company with no established reputation, then, again, they need to go back to the drawing board with their business model and/or hire someone who can provide guidance.

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#27

Post by mherrmann »

devspade wrote: post #23

Trying to figure out what this gives me that Selenium doesn't? If I already have a large code base using Selenium why should I switch?

Good question. It can't do anything that Selenium can't, but it's a lot easier to work with. It's like developing in Assembler vs developing in C: Both are equally powerful in what they can achieve, but the former is much more technical to use than the latter.

The analogy extends further: We were invited to write an article about Helium in the December issue of Professional Tester (professionaltester.com) in which we compared automating Gmail with Helium vs pure Selenium. The code with Helium was 66% shorter, but ran on average 26% slower than an (optimized) Selenium script. You can find a thorough analysis covering the differences between Helium and Selenium here: http://heliumhq.com/AutomatingGmailWithHelium.pdf

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#28

Post by mherrmann »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #26
moconnor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting problem. There's the expectation - and desire - for all software, particularly development tools, to be open source. This seems to make it harder for independent developers to devote time to creating great tools. Is the future of software tools in the side-effects of teams at large organizations open sourcing things they needed to solve their own problems?

It's a matter of sound business decisions more than anything. This is a classic example of not understanding your target audience. Look at the competition: on one end, you have a flexible, open source web testing framework like CasperJS (targeted at developers); on the other hand, you have end-user oriented products like Fake.app that are paid and closed source. One could even argue that Selenium itself (also free) h…

I thank you for your honest and direct feedback. Obviously, it's very interesting for us to hear, and if you are right and we do not understand our target audience or our business model is flawed, then we have a problem that we should find out sooner rather than later.

You have a lot of criticism for how we position ourselves, and our product. I deeply believe that there is a market for a tool such as Helium, be it open- or closed source. Assuming that we have a product that the market wants, can you recommend a way for us to make this product open source, yet generate an income that allows us to sustain its development?

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#29

Post by oblio »

I hope you succeed with your project, but sorry, I feel that your pricing is batshit insane, pardon my French.

$200 per year subscription for 1 machine for the basic license with support only for the installation, basically. And probably bugfixes, I'm guessing.

If for whatever reason I'd like to create a 3-4-5 VM test farm I'd have to pay $600-$800-$1000 per year.

And, again, subscription. If I don't pay after one year I cannot use this anymore.

Combined with the closed source factor, I really don't like it, sorry.

Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation

#30

Post by [deleted] »

mherrmann wrote: post #21
moconnor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting problem. There's the expectation - and desire - for all software, particularly development tools, to be open source. This seems to make it harder for independent developers to devote time to creating great tools. Is the future of software tools in the side-effects of teams at large organizations open sourcing things they needed to solve their own problems?

I agree that it's interesting and that it is a problem. You could see from mapleoin's comment that closed source software is not looked at favorably. I can see why, but as I said if we want to sustain full-time development of this project, we need an income. One approach that's often used with open source projects is to develop the software for free and then charge for consulting. But, with a tool such as Helium that…

[deleted]
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