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Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

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Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#12

You're doing a great thing by making your platform open source. Even though you make it incredibly easy to get set up with a well written readme, I'd much rather purchase this service because it's not expensive and I know I'm supporting good people that care about contributing to the open source community. Plus, your product is awesome.

Thanks, we were a bit worried that people will stop using the site but we hope everyone is wise like yourself! I think overall the main people who will set up there own versions are those who want to work on a private network which is an group of people we have been unable to help so far.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#13
post #6
post #5

This is really great. Thank you! What made you decide to open source it?

Basically, we wanted to! We've benefited hugely from open source projects ourselves, and have always enjoyed being part of the community surrounding them. It seems like the default state is to not be open source, but we realised that since we own and run the business behind ShareLaTeX, we had the freedom to play by our own rules. We also think it makes sense from a business point of view as well, since it will (hopef…

I (and I suspect many others here) would be very interested to know what effect this will have on your turnover. I guess you will get some increased revenue as others have indicated in this thread, but also loose some for those who just fire up their own installation.

Presumably you won't really know until your try it, but do you have any data to support that it might increase your revenue (assuming of course that is a goal here - rather than just growth of the number of users of your software - I realise that the two can go hand-in-hand!).

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#14
post #6
post #5

This is really great. Thank you! What made you decide to open source it?

Basically, we wanted to! We've benefited hugely from open source projects ourselves, and have always enjoyed being part of the community surrounding them. It seems like the default state is to not be open source, but we realised that since we own and run the business behind ShareLaTeX, we had the freedom to play by our own rules. We also think it makes sense from a business point of view as well, since it will (hopef…

Good luck, i'm actually curious about a follow up on what opensourcing the app did with your business in an analystic way.

(more visitors, more income, ...)

Could be a next HN thread ;)

Edit: the thread above mine didn't exist when i read the comments :P

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#16
post #2

James from ShareLaTeX here. I'm hanging around all day today ready for the barrage of pull requests that we're about to receive(!) so feel free to ask me any questions.

Thank you for a great product. We have been using it in my university to take collective notes during winter schools, it's been incredibly helpful!

Basically, we are able to produce at the end of the conference a pdf with all the course notes, illustrations and links; it's like writing the book in real time.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#17

is there any consistent way to turn LaTeX into HTML?

There isn't a perfect way that I'm aware of. In LaTeX, the commands end up translating to direct formatting commands that only make sense in a fixed layout document, so HTML conversion will be an approximation at best. I think Pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) does a reasonable job though.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#19
Brilliant! I used ScribTex (which I believe has now merged into ShareLaTex) a few years ago for my dissertation and it was brilliant! So much easier than maintaining a local LaTeX installation, plus being computer agnostic when working on my disseration was a huge bonus.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#20

You're doing a great thing by making your platform open source. Even though you make it incredibly easy to get set up with a well written readme, I'd much rather purchase this service because it's not expensive and I know I'm supporting good people that care about contributing to the open source community. Plus, your product is awesome.

@beck5: Your post is dead. are you banned? Think you should contact a mod, this seems to be an error.

Sharelatex is really awesome. It works well and makes it so much easier to just start writing latex. And with the preview it is even more comfortable than my desktop workflow before, which is the best compliment I can make for a web-based UI.

So, great. I used sharelatex for some really important documents, and I plan to use it for quite some more. And having it opensourced makes it more future-proof, so thanks for that.

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