11 ms·

review

164 points by sqs 11y ago

nanoojaboo 11y ago
How does Sourcegraph plan to enforce that Fair Source license? Do they rely on companies to self report?
sqs 11y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. We have large enterprise customers using Sourcegraph and are excited to release it publicly (with source code) so anyone can start using Sourcegraph for their team's code. Feedback is much appreciated! More info at the announcement blog post (https://sourcegraph.com/blog/133554180524/announcing-the-sourcegraph-developer-release-an https://sourcegraph.com/blog/133554180524/announcing-the-sou...) and at https://sourcegraph.com https://sourcegraph.com.
- trashcan 11y ago
  Do you plan to add support for multiple languages in one repo? Or does that already exist? I tried using it on a project I contribute to (https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform) and it seems to fail to work.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - beliu 11y ago
    Thanks for checking out Sourcegraph! The way most people use Sourcegraph is as a self-hosted git host. It takes about 5 minutes to install: https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/getting-started/ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/getting-starte.... Sourcegraph.com is currently a demo of the product on open-source repositories, and our public code analysis workers are bit backlogged right now due to increased load, though it looks like your project was successfully processed now and it's picking up the Go code: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform.
- billybofh 11y ago
  It seems to want to take my email address so you can email me 'stuff' - and also I need to use OAuth2 via your site for... something? I'm afraid I've given up on it after about three minutes :-/ Our servers aren't connected to the internet so this kinda fails the 'self hosted' test for us...
  - sqs 11y ago
    Sourcegraph CEO here. Check out https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/ for the enterprise capabilities, which include using LDAP for user authentication, etc. Most customers under 50-100 developers prefer the cloud-managed way of storing user accounts in the cloud, but we offer other choices as well. As for asking for your email address, we want to be able to know who is signing up so we can collect better feedback.
  - Gibheer 11y ago
    You may be interested in gogs [1]. When I saw the feature list, it sounded a bit like a gogs clone, but it was missing some features. As for gogs, it is already coming along nicely. It has support for LDAP authentication and has some other nice features. [1]: https://github.com/gogits/gogs https://github.com/gogits/gogs
    - sdesol 11y ago
      It also appears to be consistently worked on as the following shows: http://imgur.com/a/hIest http://imgur.com/a/hIest The last picture shows the commit activity between the various branches. Not sure what the "git" branch, which started to deviate in October, is for though.
- porker 11y ago
  From the examples listed @ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph I'm struggling to 'get' how this differs from GitHub? E.g. the "Better code reviews" example looks very similar to GH. What am I missing?
  - sqs 11y ago
    Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for this feedback. I would recommend watching the demo video at https://sourcegraph.com https://sourcegraph.com. The TLDR is that Sourcegraph has the same understanding of your code that an IDE has, and integrates that into every part of the code host experience. After watching the video (or anyone else following along), what could we say to make that clearer in the README?
    - kh_hk 11y ago
      An idea, maybe it makes sense to cut the key video parts into gifs and put it there to have a visual feedback on what "Code Intelligence" actually means. Just my opinion. Code Intelligence and smart search are just too vague and a bit buzz sounding so my in-brain buzz-blocker ignored it. Once you see the video, all is clear. This looks awesome.
- stygiansonic 11y ago
  Hi, thanks for this - watched the 2-min demo video and was impressed. I understand that Go and Java are currently supported - that's great, two of my favourite languages. Is there any planned support for a dynamically-typed language like Python in the future? Thanks again, best wishes for your company/product/service.
  - pararth 11y ago
    (dev here) Hi, thanks for your comments. Python support is in the pipeline (currently at alpha stage). You can learn more about the status of our language support and ways to contribute here: https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/config/toolchains/ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/config/toolcha...
haosdent 11y ago
Looks awesome!
Somasis 11y ago
What on earth is that license?
- sqs 11y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. :) We released Sourcegraph under the Fair Source License (https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/), which we worked with a well-known open-source lawyer to draft. TLDR is that it lets us create the best product for developers by having a sustainable business. Full info at https://fair.io https://fair.io: > Fair Source allows companies to both share a product’s source code and charge for that product. Releasing a product’s source code makes it more valuable to customers by enhancing extensibility and building trust. With open source, releasing the full source code and charging for the product is virtually impossible. Fair Source makes doing both possible.
  - Somasis 11y ago
    You would be better off selling services akin to what GitLab does for sustenance.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      All evidence is to the contrary. The companies making the most profit on software are licensing it somehow while others that are at least successful are using plenty venture capital with SaaS. So, both are the best choices and the use of a proprietary license preserving FOSS-style freedoms is interesting. Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS gets on HN vs cool, proprietary, closed tech.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS "Proprietary OSS" is an oxymoron, like "four-sided triangle".
        nickpsecurity 11y ago
jayeshsalvi 11y ago
Great stuff. I was hoping somebody would integrate source code cross referencing with Git. Hopefully Github will integrate your tool with all their repos and it will be seamless for end users.
- sqs 11y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. Unfortunately, GitHub makes this impossible. It's closed source and offers limited ways to integrate—primarily via external, rate-limited external API clients on their proprietary platform. It's too bad the most popular code platform is closed. We believe developers deserve to have a hackable, extensible platform for their code, so it can be more deeply integrated with the best other dev tools. That's why we built Sourcegraph and released Sourcegraph's source code. It's also why we're making it easy to build deep integrations into Sourcegraph (see, e.g., https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/platform/apps https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/platfor...).
  - trashcan 11y ago
    Have you considered integrating with Gitlab?
    - sytse 11y ago
      Please let me know if we can help in any way with GitLab integration.
TACIXAT 11y ago
Regarding the semantic search, does this / could this have the capability to do multi instruction queries? Example, show me variables that are incremented, not validated (ie. don't appear in an if statement), and used in an allocation?
- sulam 11y ago
  I think you could do that with srclib, the underlying library that powers the product.
sulam 11y ago
I've been talking to these guys and using their stuff in various forms for over a year now. I worked on developer tooling for years at Twitter, and had been feeling like this space (code discovery / review / nav ) was ripe for an evolutionary leap for a long, long time. I was really excited to meet the team at Sourcegraph and learn they not only had the same vision, they were executing on it at a very high level. I'm really curious to see how the world uses their stuff, and I hope it lights a fire under the asses of all the other people working in this area. :) The fact that the source is publicly available (with a license that, I think, is just as evolutionary in that space as their product is in its space) is the cherry on top of a really tasty sundae. (Full disclosure: I invested in their team as soon as I was able to. So I have a financial interest in the company doing well, although my primary interest is in seeing products of this sort continue to evolve and develop in a direction that will give greater leverage to developers everywhere. I am also a total fanboy, but that follows from the above. ;-0)
- nsm 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, how does sourcegraph compare to something like mozilla's dxr [1][2]. Granted DXR is C++ only, but it is the best tool I know for browsing C++ in a browser while being able to navigate semantically. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/DXR https://wiki.mozilla.org/DXR [2] Actual instance on mozilla code https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/ https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/
  - sulam 11y ago
    I hadn't seen this before, so first off thanks for the pointer. I just spent 15 minutes poking through the instance you mentioned and looking at the project roadmap. That wasn't long enough to really get a feel for how easy it would be to extend to other languages. Based on that (brief) exposure, I'd say this lines up nicely with what Sourcegraph does for other languages. The big difference seems to be srclib, which is the underlying library that allows them to support other languages. I will also mention that the UX for Sourcegraph is more Github-inspired (I could use a word like 'modern', but that might not tell you as much) whereas DXR is a little clunkier.
0x0 11y ago
Is it an unwritten rule that the CEOs of companies focusing on git hosting solutions prefix all their HN posts with "<companyname> CEO here," :)
- stephenitis 11y ago
  I think it's a unwritten courtesy to make sure you attribute yourself to your company/project to better frame your post in the right perspective. Bad reply to undisclosed comment: hey dude, maybe you should disclose that you work on X project in that post where you critize the competitors. Good self: "disclosure I work for X company"
  - detaro 11y ago
    I think 0x0 noticed how @sqs starts his comments with "Sourcegraph CEO here.", just like @sytse nearly always starts his comments with "Gitlab CEO here."
- sqs 11y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. :) I saw the GitLab CEO doing it and liked it a lot! (I hope he doesn't mind.) Of course, I just want to make sure people know I am affiliated with Sourcegraph when I comment on it.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Of course I don't mind! Congrats on the work, there are some awesome idea's in your product. I especially like the create issue from line comments https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3659 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3659
Dangeranger 11y ago
This looks really great, thanks for making it open-source and for releasing https://fair.io https://fair.io as a new license model. One thing that you should know is that your 'appdash' trace links are publicly available. You can see a screenshot here https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfu2sbz2ctlxwsx/Screenshot%202015-11-24%2013.15.11.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfu2sbz2ctlxwsx/Screenshot%202015-...
- Titanous 11y ago
  It's not open source in the traditional sense of the term, though they have published the source code. The license is proprietary.
- slimsag 11y ago
  (dev here) thanks for the heads up! :) I've created an issue[1] so I can fix this soon; it's just a link to the trace served by Appdash[2] and the instance isn't actually public so it's not a security issue (just a broken link). Certainly shouldn't be visible to non-devs who can't access it, though. Really appreciate the feedback, let me know if you have more! :) [1] https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/35 https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/35 [2] https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/appdash https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/appdash
  - Dangeranger 11y ago
    Yeah I noticed that the link directed you to a login page. If I notice anything else I'll send a follow up.
- durin42 11y ago
  So, a question that immediately arose for me out of reading that license: what's the definition of a user? If I wanted to use this to self-host my own projects, is everyone on the internet a user? Am I limited to 15 collaborators on my project unless I pony up? Is that 15 collaborators over all of time, or within some time interval?
  - 11y ago
porker 11y ago
Congrats on launching! I like the idea of code-linked issue tracking and would love to see it taken to the next level, as a reinvention of literate programming.
yarrel 11y ago
Nonfree license. Avoid.
mfburnett 11y ago
Congratulations on launching! Excited to play around with this more, especially for the dynamic intelligence element.
jordanlev 11y ago
I think it's great that there are self-hosted options like this. But what's with the blatant copying of github's design? (Especially the icons... they're not even good icons, just kind of randomly chosen by github for various actions)
achou 11y ago
The Fair Source license is an interesting innovation. Will individuals within large companies try out Fair Source software like they do open source software? Will teams adopt it without knowing whether there are other users at the company, opening themselves to violating the license terms? Will anyone look at the source in depth and contribute back? I’m all for (ethical) innovations that enable companies to be built more efficiently... Ideology aside, it’s often practical matters that attract users and developers to open source software. They've chosen a different point along in the “how much to give away and under what restrictions” space to try out. Thoughtful experimentation = good. That doesn't mean it will succeed. But failing to try new things will lead to less efficient innovation in the long run for our industry.
- davexunit 11y ago
  >it’s often practical matters that attract users and developers to open source software. But the (un)Fair Source License is not an Open Source license.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > A glance at fair.io shows an interesting attempt to provide OSS under a proprietary model. I'm not sure that that is the case: its clearly not Free, but it might be that rare example of a license that meets the OSI Open Source definition but not the FSF Free Software definition. (It clearly violates the spirit of Open Source, and if OSI were to review it, the Open Source definition might be explicitly amended to preclude the kind of use limitation it imposes.)
    - davexunit 11y ago
      I can't speak for the OSI, but this seems in clear violation of the Open Source definition. I'll await their word.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > I can't speak for the OSI, but this seems in clear violation of the Open Source definition. The only part of the definition that seems to be close to being violated is criteria 7 on license distribution (since the license is not sublicensable, but allows redistribution), but since the license from the original copyright holder applies to every recipient of the software, including recipients by redistribution, it seems to be met. EDIT: Actually, I think I may have misread; its not clear that the "Fair Source License" allows redistribution of modified versions (it allows modification and redistribution, but not clearly distribution of modified versions. So that would be fatal.)
davexunit 11y ago
Wow, the "Fair Source License" is just terrible. Please, no one use this license!
- coherentpony 11y ago
  Well, the Sourcegraph page links to another page describing the benefits of a Fair Source Licence. In the interest of a balanced discussion, would you care to provide a list of points describing the drawbacks of using such a licence? As it stands, your comment may successfully describe your opinion but it doesn't attempt to contribute to a healthy discourse.
  - davexunit 11y ago
    It's a sneaky license, and I think deliberately so. It's meant to look as much like a free license while still being proprietary. When you read the title, the "Fair Source License", it's only natural to think that it's a new FOSS license, and then once you start reading the terms you realize that it's misleading. Sure, the authors say that it isn't a free license, but the comments in this thread show that many people are completely confused about it. Many people don't seem to be familiar with the Open Source definition and think that this license is somehow "open." It's yet another case of open-washing and deliberate corporate confusion around Open Source.
    - coherentpony 11y ago
      If I'm understanding you correctly, your only issue is the title?
Titanous 11y ago
This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did this and the "upstream" was open source is that you'd have to do a bit of re-licensing, the worst case scenario here is that every user of the "downstream" project gets sued by SourceGraph. Asking for contributions is also problematic, as you're asking for employers to authorize free contributions including a blanket license and patent grant to a proprietary commercial project. And even after that the contributor doesn't have the right to freely use and distribute the software they modified. I'm all for publishing source code of proprietary projects, but dressing it up as an open source project is not great. I'd suggest adding a license clickwall to avoid accidental IP contamination.
- brentjanderson 11y ago
  The license is interesting - on their [primary website](https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/) (Scroll down to Pricing), the pricing section indicates that teams using the "Core" feature set do not have a set limit. Any number of users can use the core system. Enterprise features appear to revolve around access control and scale.
- bradrydzewski 11y ago
  > I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? Could this also be an issue with the GPL? What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? I wonder if a precedent has been set that could be applied to this Fair Source license.
  - chriswarbo 11y ago
    > What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? In that case it could be argued that your similar code is a "derived work", and hence you are violating the copyright of the original. Whether that original is GPL'd or not doesn't actually matter from a legal point of view; it could be under a different FOSS licence, or proprietary, the result is the same: if you breach the terms, you're in violation. That's the point of copyleft: it's power comes from exactly the same source as that of proprietary licenses. In the particular case that your "non-GPL" license just so happens to be similar to the GPL, e.g. it's FOSS, possibly copyleft, etc. then the original author might be feeling generous and be willing to come to some arrangement, e.g. by retroactively granting you permission for your derived work, or by negotiating a licence change with you (changing the license of either your code, theirs or both). Note that this would be orthogonal to the legalities; it's a matter of whether the owner is willing to cooperate. This might be difficult if there are many owners though (e.g. imagine trying to negotiate a license change for the Linux kernel!)
andrewpriceau 11y ago
I absolutely love this product!!!!!!! Well done - @sourcegraphCEO

164 points by sqs 11y ago

How does Sourcegraph plan to enforce that Fair Source license? Do they rely on companies to self report?

sqs 11y ago

Sourcegraph CEO here. We have large enterprise customers using Sourcegraph and are excited to release it publicly (with source code) so anyone can start using Sourcegraph for their team's code. Feedback is much appreciated! More info at the announcement blog post (https://sourcegraph.com/blog/133554180524/announcing-the-sourcegraph-developer-release-an https://sourcegraph.com/blog/133554180524/announcing-the-sou...) and at https://sourcegraph.com https://sourcegraph.com.

trashcan 11y ago
Do you plan to add support for multiple languages in one repo? Or does that already exist? I tried using it on a project I contribute to (https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform) and it seems to fail to work.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- beliu 11y ago
  Thanks for checking out Sourcegraph! The way most people use Sourcegraph is as a self-hosted git host. It takes about 5 minutes to install: https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/getting-started/ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/getting-starte.... Sourcegraph.com is currently a demo of the product on open-source repositories, and our public code analysis workers are bit backlogged right now due to increased load, though it looks like your project was successfully processed now and it's picking up the Go code: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mattermost/platform.
billybofh 11y ago
It seems to want to take my email address so you can email me 'stuff' - and also I need to use OAuth2 via your site for... something? I'm afraid I've given up on it after about three minutes :-/ Our servers aren't connected to the internet so this kinda fails the 'self hosted' test for us...
- sqs 11y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. Check out https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/ for the enterprise capabilities, which include using LDAP for user authentication, etc. Most customers under 50-100 developers prefer the cloud-managed way of storing user accounts in the cloud, but we offer other choices as well. As for asking for your email address, we want to be able to know who is signing up so we can collect better feedback.
- Gibheer 11y ago
  You may be interested in gogs [1]. When I saw the feature list, it sounded a bit like a gogs clone, but it was missing some features. As for gogs, it is already coming along nicely. It has support for LDAP authentication and has some other nice features. [1]: https://github.com/gogits/gogs https://github.com/gogits/gogs
  - sdesol 11y ago
    It also appears to be consistently worked on as the following shows: http://imgur.com/a/hIest http://imgur.com/a/hIest The last picture shows the commit activity between the various branches. Not sure what the "git" branch, which started to deviate in October, is for though.
porker 11y ago
From the examples listed @ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph I'm struggling to 'get' how this differs from GitHub? E.g. the "Better code reviews" example looks very similar to GH. What am I missing?
- sqs 11y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for this feedback. I would recommend watching the demo video at https://sourcegraph.com https://sourcegraph.com. The TLDR is that Sourcegraph has the same understanding of your code that an IDE has, and integrates that into every part of the code host experience. After watching the video (or anyone else following along), what could we say to make that clearer in the README?
  - kh_hk 11y ago
    An idea, maybe it makes sense to cut the key video parts into gifs and put it there to have a visual feedback on what "Code Intelligence" actually means. Just my opinion. Code Intelligence and smart search are just too vague and a bit buzz sounding so my in-brain buzz-blocker ignored it. Once you see the video, all is clear. This looks awesome.
stygiansonic 11y ago
Hi, thanks for this - watched the 2-min demo video and was impressed. I understand that Go and Java are currently supported - that's great, two of my favourite languages. Is there any planned support for a dynamically-typed language like Python in the future? Thanks again, best wishes for your company/product/service.
- pararth 11y ago
  (dev here) Hi, thanks for your comments. Python support is in the pipeline (currently at alpha stage). You can learn more about the status of our language support and ways to contribute here: https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/config/toolchains/ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.docs/config/toolcha...

haosdent 11y ago

Looks awesome!

Somasis 11y ago

What on earth is that license?

sqs 11y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. :) We released Sourcegraph under the Fair Source License (https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/), which we worked with a well-known open-source lawyer to draft. TLDR is that it lets us create the best product for developers by having a sustainable business. Full info at https://fair.io https://fair.io: > Fair Source allows companies to both share a product’s source code and charge for that product. Releasing a product’s source code makes it more valuable to customers by enhancing extensibility and building trust. With open source, releasing the full source code and charging for the product is virtually impossible. Fair Source makes doing both possible.
- Somasis 11y ago
  You would be better off selling services akin to what GitLab does for sustenance.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    All evidence is to the contrary. The companies making the most profit on software are licensing it somehow while others that are at least successful are using plenty venture capital with SaaS. So, both are the best choices and the use of a proprietary license preserving FOSS-style freedoms is interesting. Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS gets on HN vs cool, proprietary, closed tech.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS "Proprietary OSS" is an oxymoron, like "four-sided triangle".
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago

jayeshsalvi 11y ago

Great stuff. I was hoping somebody would integrate source code cross referencing with Git. Hopefully Github will integrate your tool with all their repos and it will be seamless for end users.

sqs 11y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. Unfortunately, GitHub makes this impossible. It's closed source and offers limited ways to integrate—primarily via external, rate-limited external API clients on their proprietary platform. It's too bad the most popular code platform is closed. We believe developers deserve to have a hackable, extensible platform for their code, so it can be more deeply integrated with the best other dev tools. That's why we built Sourcegraph and released Sourcegraph's source code. It's also why we're making it easy to build deep integrations into Sourcegraph (see, e.g., https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/platform/apps https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/platfor...).
- trashcan 11y ago
  Have you considered integrating with Gitlab?
  - sytse 11y ago
    Please let me know if we can help in any way with GitLab integration.

TACIXAT 11y ago

Regarding the semantic search, does this / could this have the capability to do multi instruction queries? Example, show me variables that are incremented, not validated (ie. don't appear in an if statement), and used in an allocation?

sulam 11y ago
I think you could do that with srclib, the underlying library that powers the product.

sulam 11y ago

I've been talking to these guys and using their stuff in various forms for over a year now. I worked on developer tooling for years at Twitter, and had been feeling like this space (code discovery / review / nav ) was ripe for an evolutionary leap for a long, long time. I was really excited to meet the team at Sourcegraph and learn they not only had the same vision, they were executing on it at a very high level. I'm really curious to see how the world uses their stuff, and I hope it lights a fire under the asses of all the other people working in this area. :) The fact that the source is publicly available (with a license that, I think, is just as evolutionary in that space as their product is in its space) is the cherry on top of a really tasty sundae. (Full disclosure: I invested in their team as soon as I was able to. So I have a financial interest in the company doing well, although my primary interest is in seeing products of this sort continue to evolve and develop in a direction that will give greater leverage to developers everywhere. I am also a total fanboy, but that follows from the above. ;-0)

nsm 11y ago
Out of curiosity, how does sourcegraph compare to something like mozilla's dxr [1][2]. Granted DXR is C++ only, but it is the best tool I know for browsing C++ in a browser while being able to navigate semantically. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/DXR https://wiki.mozilla.org/DXR [2] Actual instance on mozilla code https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/ https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/
- sulam 11y ago
  I hadn't seen this before, so first off thanks for the pointer. I just spent 15 minutes poking through the instance you mentioned and looking at the project roadmap. That wasn't long enough to really get a feel for how easy it would be to extend to other languages. Based on that (brief) exposure, I'd say this lines up nicely with what Sourcegraph does for other languages. The big difference seems to be srclib, which is the underlying library that allows them to support other languages. I will also mention that the UX for Sourcegraph is more Github-inspired (I could use a word like 'modern', but that might not tell you as much) whereas DXR is a little clunkier.

0x0 11y ago

Is it an unwritten rule that the CEOs of companies focusing on git hosting solutions prefix all their HN posts with "<companyname> CEO here," :)

stephenitis 11y ago
I think it's a unwritten courtesy to make sure you attribute yourself to your company/project to better frame your post in the right perspective. Bad reply to undisclosed comment: hey dude, maybe you should disclose that you work on X project in that post where you critize the competitors. Good self: "disclosure I work for X company"
- detaro 11y ago
  I think 0x0 noticed how @sqs starts his comments with "Sourcegraph CEO here.", just like @sytse nearly always starts his comments with "Gitlab CEO here."
sqs 11y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. :) I saw the GitLab CEO doing it and liked it a lot! (I hope he doesn't mind.) Of course, I just want to make sure people know I am affiliated with Sourcegraph when I comment on it.
- sytse 11y ago
  Of course I don't mind! Congrats on the work, there are some awesome idea's in your product. I especially like the create issue from line comments https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3659 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3659

Dangeranger 11y ago

This looks really great, thanks for making it open-source and for releasing https://fair.io https://fair.io as a new license model. One thing that you should know is that your 'appdash' trace links are publicly available. You can see a screenshot here https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfu2sbz2ctlxwsx/Screenshot%202015-11-24%2013.15.11.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfu2sbz2ctlxwsx/Screenshot%202015-...

Titanous 11y ago
It's not open source in the traditional sense of the term, though they have published the source code. The license is proprietary.
slimsag 11y ago
(dev here) thanks for the heads up! :) I've created an issue[1] so I can fix this soon; it's just a link to the trace served by Appdash[2] and the instance isn't actually public so it's not a security issue (just a broken link). Certainly shouldn't be visible to non-devs who can't access it, though. Really appreciate the feedback, let me know if you have more! :) [1] https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/35 https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/35 [2] https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/appdash https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/appdash
- Dangeranger 11y ago
  Yeah I noticed that the link directed you to a login page. If I notice anything else I'll send a follow up.
durin42 11y ago
So, a question that immediately arose for me out of reading that license: what's the definition of a user? If I wanted to use this to self-host my own projects, is everyone on the internet a user? Am I limited to 15 collaborators on my project unless I pony up? Is that 15 collaborators over all of time, or within some time interval?
- 11y ago

porker 11y ago

Congrats on launching! I like the idea of code-linked issue tracking and would love to see it taken to the next level, as a reinvention of literate programming.

yarrel 11y ago

Nonfree license. Avoid.

mfburnett 11y ago

Congratulations on launching! Excited to play around with this more, especially for the dynamic intelligence element.

jordanlev 11y ago

I think it's great that there are self-hosted options like this. But what's with the blatant copying of github's design? (Especially the icons... they're not even good icons, just kind of randomly chosen by github for various actions)

achou 11y ago

The Fair Source license is an interesting innovation. Will individuals within large companies try out Fair Source software like they do open source software? Will teams adopt it without knowing whether there are other users at the company, opening themselves to violating the license terms? Will anyone look at the source in depth and contribute back? I’m all for (ethical) innovations that enable companies to be built more efficiently... Ideology aside, it’s often practical matters that attract users and developers to open source software. They've chosen a different point along in the “how much to give away and under what restrictions” space to try out. Thoughtful experimentation = good. That doesn't mean it will succeed. But failing to try new things will lead to less efficient innovation in the long run for our industry.

davexunit 11y ago
>it’s often practical matters that attract users and developers to open source software. But the (un)Fair Source License is not an Open Source license.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > A glance at fair.io shows an interesting attempt to provide OSS under a proprietary model. I'm not sure that that is the case: its clearly not Free, but it might be that rare example of a license that meets the OSI Open Source definition but not the FSF Free Software definition. (It clearly violates the spirit of Open Source, and if OSI were to review it, the Open Source definition might be explicitly amended to preclude the kind of use limitation it imposes.)
  - davexunit 11y ago
    I can't speak for the OSI, but this seems in clear violation of the Open Source definition. I'll await their word.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > I can't speak for the OSI, but this seems in clear violation of the Open Source definition. The only part of the definition that seems to be close to being violated is criteria 7 on license distribution (since the license is not sublicensable, but allows redistribution), but since the license from the original copyright holder applies to every recipient of the software, including recipients by redistribution, it seems to be met. EDIT: Actually, I think I may have misread; its not clear that the "Fair Source License" allows redistribution of modified versions (it allows modification and redistribution, but not clearly distribution of modified versions. So that would be fatal.)

davexunit 11y ago

Wow, the "Fair Source License" is just terrible. Please, no one use this license!

coherentpony 11y ago
Well, the Sourcegraph page links to another page describing the benefits of a Fair Source Licence. In the interest of a balanced discussion, would you care to provide a list of points describing the drawbacks of using such a licence? As it stands, your comment may successfully describe your opinion but it doesn't attempt to contribute to a healthy discourse.
- davexunit 11y ago
  It's a sneaky license, and I think deliberately so. It's meant to look as much like a free license while still being proprietary. When you read the title, the "Fair Source License", it's only natural to think that it's a new FOSS license, and then once you start reading the terms you realize that it's misleading. Sure, the authors say that it isn't a free license, but the comments in this thread show that many people are completely confused about it. Many people don't seem to be familiar with the Open Source definition and think that this license is somehow "open." It's yet another case of open-washing and deliberate corporate confusion around Open Source.
  - coherentpony 11y ago
    If I'm understanding you correctly, your only issue is the title?

Titanous 11y ago

This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did this and the "upstream" was open source is that you'd have to do a bit of re-licensing, the worst case scenario here is that every user of the "downstream" project gets sued by SourceGraph. Asking for contributions is also problematic, as you're asking for employers to authorize free contributions including a blanket license and patent grant to a proprietary commercial project. And even after that the contributor doesn't have the right to freely use and distribute the software they modified. I'm all for publishing source code of proprietary projects, but dressing it up as an open source project is not great. I'd suggest adding a license clickwall to avoid accidental IP contamination.

brentjanderson 11y ago
The license is interesting - on their [primary website](https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/) (Scroll down to Pricing), the pricing section indicates that teams using the "Core" feature set do not have a set limit. Any number of users can use the core system. Enterprise features appear to revolve around access control and scale.
bradrydzewski 11y ago
> I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? Could this also be an issue with the GPL? What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? I wonder if a precedent has been set that could be applied to this Fair Source license.
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  > What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? In that case it could be argued that your similar code is a "derived work", and hence you are violating the copyright of the original. Whether that original is GPL'd or not doesn't actually matter from a legal point of view; it could be under a different FOSS licence, or proprietary, the result is the same: if you breach the terms, you're in violation. That's the point of copyleft: it's power comes from exactly the same source as that of proprietary licenses. In the particular case that your "non-GPL" license just so happens to be similar to the GPL, e.g. it's FOSS, possibly copyleft, etc. then the original author might be feeling generous and be willing to come to some arrangement, e.g. by retroactively granting you permission for your derived work, or by negotiating a licence change with you (changing the license of either your code, theirs or both). Note that this would be orthogonal to the legalities; it's a matter of whether the owner is willing to cooperate. This might be difficult if there are many owners though (e.g. imagine trying to negotiate a license change for the Linux kernel!)

andrewpriceau 11y ago

I absolutely love this product!!!!!!! Well done - @sourcegraphCEO