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Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

kite.com

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Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#541

Post by origin_path »

newaccount74 wrote: post #507
origin_path wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk a bit more about your success? What does it do, what pricing model do you use, how long did it take you to acquire customers, do you feel it's worth it? Asking for a friend, of course.

I don't want to talk about it in detail, because I am trying to stay anonymous on HN. It's a Mac app, pricing model is perpetual license with paid upgrades for major new versions (every 3-5 years). Customers are roughly 50% individual devs and 50% companies who buy for their employees, and a bunch of educational licenses, but I don't earn much from them. I got initial traction by being mentioned by some popular blogg…

Thanks! Very thought provoking.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#542

Post by qw3rty01 »

UncleEntity wrote: post #539
qw3rty01 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that ruling was overturned and APIs were found to be copyrightable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_...

Which was later overturned by the Supreme Court if you read farther down the article you posted the link for. And was all over the tech news at the time. I kind of suspect you are intentionally trolling…

Incorrect, the case was appealed to the supreme court and the appeal was denied, so the lower court ruling held.

What was ruled by the supreme court was that Google's usage of the API (which had already determined to be copyrighted) fell under fair use in copyright law.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#543

Post by dragonwriter »

qw3rty01 wrote: post #542
UncleEntity wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was later overturned by the Supreme Court if you read farther down the article you posted the link for. And was all over the tech news at the time. I kind of suspect you are intentionally trolling…

Incorrect, the case was appealed to the supreme court and the appeal was denied, so the lower court ruling held. What was ruled by the supreme court was that Google's usage of the API (which had already determined to be copyrighted) fell under fair use in copyright law.

> Incorrect, the case was appealed to the supreme court and the appeal was denied, so the lower court ruling held.

Kind of; the appeal denied was an interlocutory appeal (an appeal before final judgement), so the lower court ruling was left in place until final resolution of the case potentially to be settled in any final appeal.

However, while copyrightability of APIs was raised on the final appeal, the Supreme Court sidestepped it, ruling that because Google’s use was fair use even if the API was copyrightable, it was unnecessary to decide the copyrightability question at all. So the Federal Circuit decision remains in place on copyrightability.

On the gripping hand, though, that decision really doesn't matter much because Federal Circuit decisions on issues outside of those it has unique appellate responsibility aren’t binding precedent on trial courts (it is supposed to apply the case law of the geographic circuit that would otherwise apply, but its rulings don’t have the precedential effect that rulings of that circuit would have.)

So, basically, as far as appellate case law, Oracle v. Google provides no binding precedent on copyrightability of APIs, but precedent that at least one pattern of API copying is fair use if APIs are copyrightable.

Which isn’t encouraging for anyone looking to protect an API with copyrights.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#544

Post by NateEag »

jnwatson wrote: post #538
NateEag wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is weird that software engineers are the only engineer-types that are supposed to be able to do their job with just a computer and a built-in editor. Not really. We aren't actually engineers. Someone appropriated the title and misused it, and now there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.

I would have agreed with you 20 years ago. Now, the cloud architecture stuff is real engineering.

there are genuine software engineers, yes.

I have yet to meet or work with one.

Engineering is expensive, and most software developers rightly default to a pragmatic craftsman's attitude. Build something people can use and iterate on it based on feedback.

When there aren't lives at stake, it's usually the right call.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#545

Post by 1123581321 »

lgas wrote: post #311
qwerty456127 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains is a great example. People pay them because the product is by far the best and the cost is reasonably humble. I think it wouldn't make the same total revenue if they were selling it for twice the price.

> I think it wouldn't make the same total revenue if they were selling it for twice the price. To be fair, that's true of almost everything.

Most software sales are more elastic and would sell closer to half the number of units at twice the price, not meaningfully increasing revenue. (This can be good or bad, depending on the industry and the competition.)

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#546

Post by worldsayshi »

worldsayshi wrote: post #386
mythz wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains IDE's is the most notable exception of dev tools I personally pay for, insane value and productivity makes it a no-brainer purchase given its instant ROI from time saved. Life's too short to not maximize your productivity for a few $'s.

I personally pay for Intellij but lately I've found it harder to motivate when vscode provides a very similar experience and especially since Python is supported out of the box for vscode.

After trying it a bit more I am slightly leaning towards keeping Intellij again. Mostly because of being better at the small things. Like more readable file tree-view and better project search tools.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#547

Post by ignoramous »

oxfordmale wrote: post #53

I disagree with their statement that individual developers do not pay for tools. I have paid for tools out of my own pocket on many occasions. However, being able to deliver code 18% faster isn't enough to fork out $9.99 a month. First of all it is relatively expensive. For that amount I can get a personal license for PyCharm. Secondly coding speed never tends to be a bottle neck for delivering a feature or a product…

> I disagree with their statement that individual developers do not pay for tools.

They were a VC backed start-up and it was indeed go big or go home for them.

As they seem to have identified, enterprise sales is one way to go big. Timing is also crucial. Right now, by iterating relentlessly over a decade on just the models, OpenAI and Cohere have commoditized access to the AI itself via APIs: Perhaps a better go-to-market than Kite's which had to build both the AI (ex: OpenAI Codex) and the end-product (ex: GitHub Copilot).

Even though they had 8 years to execute, they had zero leverage on the kind of network effects and developer mindshare that GitHub has or access to bottomless funding like OpenAI. Hindsight is 20:20.

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