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Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

openship.org

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Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#91

Post by bookofjoe »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #88
jpatt wrote: post #24

A few points I'm skeptical of: simply connect to the seller’s infra instead of locking them in. One of the value-adds of Amazon is there's a whole bunch of tech sellers don't need to know how to write, run, and maintain. You'd need to understand how big the niche "technically literate to run their own e-commerce business, but selling on Amazon for other reasons" is, then how your operation would answer those "other r…

It's the word "simply" that usually raises all the red flags :-)

"just" is another red flag word

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#94

Post by theturtletalks »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #51

This seems like a reseller's dream. If you're lucky enough to find an untapped resource on Etsy, Shopify, eBay, etc and you think you can market it better and flip it for a profit - create your own stores, route the orders through OpenShip and have the lesser-known seller fulfill them for you. I didn't dig in, but in that above scenario, does the "supplier" dropship directly to my buyer or does it come to me and I re…

It goes directly to your buyer. Once you start getting a lot of orders, you can private label, order in bulk, and ship it yourself by just changing the channel. You can become the supplier people dropship from.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#95

Post by theturtletalks »

qabqabaca wrote: post #52

On your deployment page[0], it says you can deploy the entire thing to Vercel or Netlify and pass in the postgres connection string to the frontend directly. Am I understanding this correctly? Is the connection string for the database readable from the front end? [0] https://docs.openship.org/deployment

It uses Next.js API routes as the backend which is all server-side.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#96

Post by maxloh »

eastbayjake wrote: post #30

Love open source projects in the eCommerce domain, especially ones that are JavaScript instead of PHP! Two pieces of feedback: - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. - You've really built an Order Management System for marketplace us…

AGPL by default with a paid, non-copyleft license would be a good business model.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#97

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

You'll definitely need inventory (if it's not already a part of your other packages). Seems like great fun!

My advice would be to actually integrate with Amazon as much as possible. I'm not sure what's involved there, if Amazon provides a bunch of proprietary tools or what. But you don't want people to make the hard choice between your project and Amazon. Help them do both!

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#98

Post by ReedJessen »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #82
swyx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the branding "open source Amazon" is just way too ambitious/big. invites a lot of confusion/criticism if Amazon is different things to different people.

should start small, like an open source Google, then work your way up to an open source Amazon.

literal LOL

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#99

Post by okyanusoz »

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #49
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #44

Those efforts look impressive but no service will be a version (open source or otherwise) of Amazon until it can place a single tube of toothpaste in my garage 18 hours after I ordered it, which it just did thirty minutes ago. Amazon’s “tech” stack, both consumer- and seller-facing is horrible and borderline irrelevant. Their fleet of trucks and aircraft is not.

Amazon.com is likely the most a/b tested piece of software on the planet. It is ugly and clunky because that's what _works_ - same with Alibaba and Yahoo JP.

They could make the UI better if they wanted to, but they don't, because of reliability.

For most enterprises, if it works, don't touch it.

Re: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

#100

Post by nonameiguess »

ryan29 wrote: post #46
eastbayjake wrote: post #30

Love open source projects in the eCommerce domain, especially ones that are JavaScript instead of PHP! Two pieces of feedback: - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. - You've really built an Order Management System for marketplace us…

> - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license. What makes the AGPL unattractive? I thought it was basically just the GPL with a limitation on using the software to provide a SaaS product. You don't even have to contribute unpublished chang…

In this case, there is nothing at all wrong with a GPL license. Everyone is answering from the perspective of a software company. That isn't who this product seems to be targeting. It's targeting businesses that sell physical goods and need a virtual storefront to do that. They aren't looking to fork this and repackage it as a different product. The purpose of it being open source at all is so they can more easily self-host it. If you self-host an application you don't fork and modify, there is nothing for you to publish. The source was already published by the person you got the code from in the first place.
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