Open Sourcing a Failed Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#31

Post by tptacek » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #29

tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That objection is a form of entitlement.

No, it's not. Some of us actually believe that the advance of humanity comes from the reuse of its own previous work.

You're not rebutting my argument; you're merely saying that the "entitlement" isn't in this case negative. You've confounded a positive argument with a normative one.

Either way: it clearly is entitlement. Someone writes something, conjuring something new out of thin air. An unrelated person believes they have a moral claim to that thing. QED.

I do happen to think this entitlement is negative, if for no other reason than that it prevents people from publishing or even talking about publishing for fear of having to deal with entitled strangers arguing with them about what to do with their work. Whatever "good" that sense of entitlement does is, I think, outweighed by the bad.

You obviously disagree.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#32

Post by wonjun » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

This is a great post, thanks for sharing!

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#33

Post by brador » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:01 PM UTC

There needs to exist a place to simply dump code with no obligations.

One of his minor arguments against open sourcing was having to maintain the code base, and i've heard this from others too. With a dumping ground there would be no such obligation.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#34

Post by jrochkind1 » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

xpto123 wrote: post #12

hw wrote: post #2

most of the time it's extremely hard to just go open source when a startup dies. There's issues of ownership and also the amount of work needed to get a typical startup codebase clean, refactored and open source ready is difficult. It's kinda like having a garage sale and giving everything away - it's hard to give away or sell every single thing, but parts of it might be useful to the community.

AFIK, AngularJS was the result of improving and open-sourcing the code of a failed startup, after taking it to Google, adding a tone of features to the codebase and using it in internal projects before open sourcing it.

If this is true, then still:

> after taking it to Google, adding a tone of features to the codebase and using it in internal projects before open sourcing it.

Are pretty unique circumstances, that don't really show that it's an easy thing to do usefully/succesfully, for projects that aren't taken into Google, have a ton of features added by paid Google engineers, and then are used by internal projects at google to work out further kinks and cow paths.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#35

Post by zwetan » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

johncoltrane wrote: post #4

Open source… the dumpster of the startup world.

wow, take a good hard look at what would be the software world without OSS

I don't want to go into a rant or anything but really your comment is wrong at so many level

dumpster ? as if open source could only result from some failed attempt

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#36

Post by brianwawok » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #33

There needs to exist a place to simply dump code with no obligations. One of his minor arguments against open sourcing was having to maintain the code base, and i've heard this from others too. With a dumping ground there would be no such obligation.

Why? Dump it in github with the right license, and anyone can fork it.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#37

Post by nirvdrum » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #11

I really feel for nirvdrum here, we had exactly the same hard process with Microcosm. We were somewhat better placed to open it up, we had separated various parts more completely, hadn't put in the full billing engine, and had no third party code or other things that we were distributing that might be an issue. But... one of the things nirvdrum didn't touch upon was that we just hadn't designed it to be a single-serv…

Thanks. That's another excellent point. I think I had it in my post outline and just forgot to put it in here. The Mogotest application is complex to set up. For each version of IE you want to test, you need a separate Windows installation with that version of IE. To test Safari and iOS requires provisioning Macs (we used leased minis running VMs on ESXi). And the code itself runs on a Linux cluster.

Since our cluster provisioning and deployment was encoded in the project rubber [1] configuration, that complication is somewhat mitigated. But the point remains: the application requires multiple machines across platforms to be remotely useful.

[1] -- https://rubber.io/

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#38

Post by brudgers » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:07 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #10

maaaats wrote: post #7

What I hate is that some people feel entitled to getting one's hard work for free.

No, that's not the issue. People object to useful IP rotting in the back of a filing cabinet, unused. It's not about getting it free, it's about being able to get it at all. (Some people may want things for free but that's a different issue.)

I think there's a distinction between possibly useful and probably useful.

My old business records might be made into useful scratch pads by developmentally challenged individuals undergoing vocational training at the local GoodWill Industries. But where theory meets reality, donating twelve banker's boxes of paper is neither in my interest nor those creating the training program.

People who save empty shampoo bottles and mayo jars and used condoms because they might be useful someday are the subject of the reality show 'Hoarders'. Some things are not worth preserving.

And discarded code doesn't take up space in a landfill.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#39

Post by nirvdrum » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #36

brador wrote: post #33

There needs to exist a place to simply dump code with no obligations. One of his minor arguments against open sourcing was having to maintain the code base, and i've heard this from others too. With a dumping ground there would be no such obligation.

Why? Dump it in github with the right license, and anyone can fork it.

One reason is because you'll invariably be criticized for not merging some pull request.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#40

Post by brudgers » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #33

There needs to exist a place to simply dump code with no obligations. One of his minor arguments against open sourcing was having to maintain the code base, and i've heard this from others too. With a dumping ground there would be no such obligation.

There is.

The null device.