Update on Heml.is • Hacker News Board

Re: Update on Heml.is

#31

Post by flurp » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

For those asking/wishing for open source, according to the comments section[1] they will.

"We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/#comment...

[Sorry for the multiple comment replies, I realized a top-comment might be better]

Re: Update on Heml.is

#32

Post by _cpancake » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

> I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with another project – The Pirate Bay.

That's called "being arrested for breaking the law."

Re: Update on Heml.is

#33

Post by derefr » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 8:24 PM UTC

mhomde wrote: post #27

Confusion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else [..] People like this will cause crowdfunding to mature. It would be good if we got to the point where you will only get funded if you first demonstrate you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. There's currently a lot of money going to doomed projects, initiated by people with only an idea. That money would be better spent on similar projects by people with a co…

Couldn't you have a kickstarter where you only get part of a lump sum in the beginning for investments, and then minimum-wage for each employee each month? Keep the start-up lean and hungry and perhaps intrinsically motivated. I guess there's many problems and ideas that couldn't be funded this way but for those that can maybe they'd stand a higher chance of succeeding. Even better was if you had a startup mentor tha…

I presume that the kind of people needed to do most of these things won't work for minimum wage. And, make no mistake, Kickstarter is mostly about hiring people to do the things promised using the money, not about the people pitching the idea doing it themselves.

Re: Update on Heml.is

#34

Post by derefr » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 8:27 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #11

ryanisinallofus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is almost as if not every single project is a success.

It's almost as if you have project masterminded by "idea guys" without any regard for its technical, or even physical feasibility, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator to attract people with little experience in investing, it is likely to end up being either a scam or a total failure.

It's almost as if Kickstarter's business model optimizes for "idea guys." If a particular set of economic incentives creates a particular kind of parasite, the problem is the ecology of the niche, not the parasite. You can't make con-artists cease to exist; you have to change the game so it's not one con-artists want to play.

Re: Update on Heml.is

#35

Post by orthecreedence » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 8:38 PM UTC

I have a similar project I'm working on, and have thought about going after crowdfunding, but decided not to. It came down to a) not having any mentionable competitors in the space and b) not wanting to be one of those people who takes other people's money and ends up wasting it. So I am still working on it, as a side project, a few years later. Sometimes I wish I could devote myself full-time, but providing an open-source privacy app for the fun of it and for its own utility without thinking about paying the bills has made the project a lot more inspiring for me. I don't have to think about the bottom line, just "what would be useful to build next?"

This is what people did before crowdfunding. Maybe we all don't need $100K just to start and publish something useful.

Re: Update on Heml.is

#36

Post by orthecreedence » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

dates wrote: post #16

i feel like a secure messaging app should be OS in the first place though ?! textsecture / smssecure has been walking a slow and steady pace forward for years now, to me it seems like a project with vision/smart people that is worth putting resources into in wake of this one dying, if the product is something you are interested and believe in.

There's no excuse not to open source an app if it's privacy oriented. It's not enough to open source the part that does the crypto either, because how do you know it isn't accidentally logging plaintext data to a file somewhere before the crypto happens?

There are other ways to do lock-in besides closed-source clients. If it has "private" or "crypto" anywhere in the title, it needs to be open source.

Re: Update on Heml.is

#37

Post by rvschuilenburg » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 12:11 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #17

Gurrewe wrote: post #7

So, whats to say that they didn't take the 100 000 USD and gave to themselves the first day and barely haven't cared about Hemlis since then?

It seems like it would be better if crowdfunding sites didn't give you the entire lump-sum up front but instead gave it to you incrementally as you completed pre-defined milestones. So if you have 8 milestones you get 1/8 of the money up-front and then each time you achieve a milestone. If you take twice as long to achieve that first milestone and run out of your initial payment.... welp then you have to go back to t…

Sounds like a solid plan. The backers could be given the option to vote if a certain milestone is met or not.