Gumroad’s source is available • Hacker News Board

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#21

Post by StrandedKitty » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 10:55 AM UTC

ErrorNoBrain wrote: post #16

I love how nothing in the readme tells me what it actually is.

> Sell your stuff. See what sticks.

Presumably an online shop with smart analytics.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#22

Post by soco » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 10:59 AM UTC

_joel wrote: post #19

An ecommerce platform designed to allow creators to sell to users.. apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumroad

Which also dropped Android support, so I dropped them.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#23

Post by verghese » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:02 AM UTC

noname120 wrote: post #7

Any idea what the motivation could be?

Gumroad's journey has been interesting: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting -> Billion dollar journey with VC backing to Kleiner selling back their stake to Gumroad for $1, which enabled Sahil to steer the company in a different direction.

Perhaps the shift to making the source available has more to do with work culture: https://sahillavingia.com/work

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#24

Post by clcaev » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:04 AM UTC

Could we please change the title to say : "Gumroad is source available"?

This license is clearly fails OSD and is not open source by the industry standard; perpetuating a false statement is unhelpful.

https://opensource.org/osd

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#25

Post by notpushkin » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

graemep wrote: post #11

arielcostas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's more of a "source available" than Open Source in its definition. I'd rather they use AGPL or something like that.

To put it another way they want to call it open source without actually being open source.

I don’t think they actually call it open source themselves – rather, the HN poster made a (probably benign) mistake.

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#26

Post by lionkor » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

Time to train an "LLM" on it and have it reproduce the source code 1-to-1, so I can use it without a license!

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#27

Post by omnimus » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

niklasbabel wrote: post #9

psnehanshu wrote: post #2

It's Rails!

i believe Sahil mentioned they’re moving away from Rails soon, as he sees it as technical debt.

Drama creation for marketing?

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#28

Post by input_sh » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:13 AM UTC

StrandedKitty wrote: post #21

ErrorNoBrain wrote: post #16

I love how nothing in the readme tells me what it actually is.

> Sell your stuff. See what sticks. Presumably an online shop with smart analytics.

I wouldn't really call it a traditional online shop, more like a file shop. They don't sell anything physical, only digital. If you've created a file on your computer that other people want, you can sell it on Gumroad. Depending on what you're trying to sell, there might be a better platform for the purpose (like Bandcamp for music), but Gumroad is the only one I'm aware of that's intentionally generic to fit many purposes (even if imperfectly).

They also don't do shit like putting DRM on ebooks and you can set the minimum price to zero to turn it into a tipping platform (free download, but with an optional payment).

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#29

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:15 AM UTC

fbn79 wrote: post #8

License is very limiting for Business

[deleted]

Re: Gumroad’s source is available

#30

Post by ecedeno » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 11:19 AM UTC

notpushkin wrote: post #25

graemep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it another way they want to call it open source without actually being open source.

I don’t think they actually call it open source themselves – rather, the HN poster made a (probably benign) mistake.

The founder does. See: https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227