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Gumroad’s source is available

github.com

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Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#161
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gumroad became my cautionary tale for startup equity for early engineers. I remember excitedly following the story from start. It was fun to follow along. Then around 2015 things weren’t working well, so they laid off most of the team. Investors sold the company back to the founder at a steep discount. As I recall, a major investor sold their ownership for $1. Just like that, the founding engineers who worked so hard…

How did lose all their equity? You can’t declare equity is worthless. You can raise new rounds with different valuations and dilute previous investors/employees but they would also dilute themselves.

Google 'drag along rights'.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#162
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's risky if you have any chance of ever crossing $1M in company revenue because the license will terminate as soon as you reach that and you'll have to rewrite everything. > The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright, but only as long as you meet all the conditions below. > You may use the softwa…

You are not required to rewrite everything if you exceed $1million in annual revenue. You are required to get a commercial license from them, which costs money. That's not the same thing. And quite frankly, if you're making over $1 million in annual revenue you should be able to afford the license fee for the most important part of your company.

There's no guarantee that a commercial license will be available at a reasonable fee, or available at all. You'll have nothing to negotiate with because the alternative is to rewrite or shut down immediately.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#163

What a joke of a license. This is not open source. Why the fuck is everyone in VC land trying to change the true definition of open source?

I think this reaction is misdirected. Yes, the license is restrictive, but Gumroad doesn't seem to be claiming themselves that the code is open source. I think OP made a mistake out of ignorance and said that it was open source.

The founder of Gumroad is claiming that [1].

> 14 years ago, Gumroad launched

> Today, Gumroad goes open-source

[1]: https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#164
post #48

The Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.

[deleted]

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#165
post #48

The Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.

Did you open a PR or something?

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#166
post #158
post #48

The Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.

god we are so spoiled. this is a successful, pretty well known commercial project. it's now source available. you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. lets appreciate the big stuff, have some agency for the rest. usually if the project comes with a big lengthy beautiful readme thats actually a contra indicator that the thing is a production repo

>god we are so spoiled.

Is it really "spoiled" to say it'd be convenient for maybe a one-liner at the top of the file that's supposed to explain stuff about the project?

>you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes.

I always laugh a little bit at this line of thinking. Whoever wrote the readme can spend 2 minutes to write a line or two about the project, or the potentially thousands of people who want information about the project can spend 2 minutes to look it up. It makes a lot more sense to spend 2 minutes vs. 2000 minutes.

In the end, for me, it's not a big deal to spend the 2 minutes. But sometimes I like to think a little bit bigger than just myself.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#167
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

god we are so spoiled. this is a successful, pretty well known commercial project. it's now source available. you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. lets appreciate the big stuff, have some agency for the rest. usually if the project comes with a big lengthy beautiful readme thats actually a contra indicator that the thing is a production repo

> god we are so spoiled. Is it really "spoiled" to say it'd be convenient for maybe a one-liner at the top of the file that's supposed to explain stuff about the project? > you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. I always laugh a little bit at this line of thinking. Whoever wrote the readme can spend 2 minutes to write a line or two about the project, or the potentially thousands of people who want…

Top right of the page it says

> About

> gumroad.com

pretty much sums up the contents of the repo. If someone can't be bothered to check out gumroad.com there's no amount of documentation that will help them.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> god we are so spoiled. Is it really "spoiled" to say it'd be convenient for maybe a one-liner at the top of the file that's supposed to explain stuff about the project? > you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. I always laugh a little bit at this line of thinking. Whoever wrote the readme can spend 2 minutes to write a line or two about the project, or the potentially thousands of people who want…

Top right of the page it says > About > gumroad.com pretty much sums up the contents of the repo. If someone can't be bothered to check out gumroad.com there's no amount of documentation that will help them.

gumroad.com does not say what it does. It's a list of products being sold. You have to navigate to the About page, then scroll about 1/4 of the way until you can get an idea of what it is.

Is it hard? No, of course not. It's like a minute or two. But it's a minute or two for lots of people vs. a minute or two for one person, once.

But yeah, I totally get it, why would I waste 2 minutes of my time when I can have a bunch of other people waste 2 minutes of their time instead.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not pedantry, this is adhering to the actual definition of open source that is generally accepted in our community: https://opensource.org/osd > Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code

Opensource.org doesn't get to redefine what words mean to the rest of us. They should have chosen words that weren't already being used with common meanings if they wanted to be the say in what those words meant.

Feel free to make an industry friendly version of the organization then, otherwise it seems like a lot of devs are extremely passionate about open source not just in usage but a movement that literally allowed them to carve out careers from it.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#170
post #158
post #48

The Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.

god we are so spoiled. this is a successful, pretty well known commercial project. it's now source available. you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. lets appreciate the big stuff, have some agency for the rest. usually if the project comes with a big lengthy beautiful readme thats actually a contra indicator that the thing is a production repo

I was also wondering what this was about. Should I care and why?

It's not only that I don't want to, but literally can't use extra 2 minutes for _every_ link I open while browsing news sites. And that attention span window is only getting shorter.

It's definitely not the first or last time for github repo not using the best real estate they have in "selling" their product.

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