6 ms·

I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive. [1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced? Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to

by calgoo 11y ago

I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive. [1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced? Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support." [1] https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/ https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/

adrianmacneil 11y ago
I imagine Mailbox has a heavy server component, which would be non-trivial to get set up and running on your own.
- grinich 11y ago
  If you're looking for an alternative, we built one at Nylas. :) https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine
  - eliotfowler 11y ago
    Nylas looks awesome. Has anyone built a plugin for it that allows for "message snoozing"? That was the real ingenuity with Mailbox IMO.
    - spang 11y ago
      Not yet! Totally something that we'd love to see, though.
- slang800 11y ago
  That's hardly a reason to not open-source. You're not required to provide support just because you release your source code. Even a dump of their repositories would be useful for people who are interested in Mailbox.
  - exelius 11y ago
    No; but often the server components are heavily tied to some other proprietary libraries that they're not ready to open source. They could remove all proprietary code from their codebase, but that costs money - likely more than they were willing to spend on this product. Unless open source is part of your marketing strategy (which means the effort would have a budget), it's really difficult to open source an existing commercial application.
    - joering2 11y ago
      That's a speculation on your part.. and PR spin-off on theirs. Nobody asked them to support it, or whatever. Just dump the damn thing online so others can pick up and continue to "help fight your inbox to zero". Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either. I wanted to get my company (over 3,000 users) off DropBox long time ago after each update comes with new issues. But this just broke camel's back. I will make the switch happen this weekend.
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        "That's a speculation on your part" Whereas your post is speculation on yours. "Nobody asked them to support it" At the same time, if they do open source it, people are going to see that it was once Dropbox, and any issues they see with it are going to be seen as the fault of Dropbox. "Just dump the damn thing online" Far more work than it sounds like. "Clearly their intention here was profits" They are a company with bills to pay and engineers to pay, right? "They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either." I don't see them going around and killing other people's email clients.
      - exelius 11y ago
        > Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either. Um, of course their intentions were profit? Dropbox is a for-profit company, nobody ever questioned their intentions as being anything else. And it's not pure speculation; I've worked on enough internally-developed products to know it's not always feasible to open source an entire service offering after the fact. It's expensive enough to do between code scrubbing, legal reviews, etc. that you're generally only going to do it for strategic reasons (i.e. you know you can never make money doing it but want to commoditize the market space to hamper a competitor's growth, you want the community to help support your infrastructure, or your business model is open source + support).
- burnte 11y ago
  Then OS the previous version that got them purchased by Dropbox.
unfamiliar 11y ago
"We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, and none of that thought will be elaborated on here."
- austenallred 11y ago
  I'll elaborate on their behalf: "That would be hard and expensive and we have money to make."
  - lemevi 11y ago
    God forbid anyone make any money. Where I work we feed our engineers on the appreciation of free users. That's the only way to fly. Self-entitled much?
    - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
      God forbid anyone share abandoned code. Where I work we incinerate anything potentially useful when we're done with it. That way no dirty freeloaders can take advantage of it.
      - jessedhillon 11y ago
        Let Pa be the probability that some piece of your open-sourced codebase reveals an important technique or strategy to your competitor, thus leveling a technological advantage you have, Let Ca be the cost of that lost advantage, Let Cb be the value of good will from the open source community In what case is Cb bigger than (Pa * Ca)?
        jarek 11y ago
        When Pa == 0, so like, most of the time. It's an email app. It talks IMAP^H^H^H^Hto Gmail. It runs on iOS. How many secret, commercially important techniques do you really suppose it contains?
joeblau 11y ago
Someone started a petition in an effort to lobby dropbox to do just that: https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app?recruiter=443062166&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app?rec...
aylmao 11y ago
https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app/sha...

by calgoo 11y ago

adrianmacneil 11y ago

I imagine Mailbox has a heavy server component, which would be non-trivial to get set up and running on your own.

grinich 11y ago
If you're looking for an alternative, we built one at Nylas. :) https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine
- eliotfowler 11y ago
  Nylas looks awesome. Has anyone built a plugin for it that allows for "message snoozing"? That was the real ingenuity with Mailbox IMO.
  - spang 11y ago
    Not yet! Totally something that we'd love to see, though.
slang800 11y ago
That's hardly a reason to not open-source. You're not required to provide support just because you release your source code. Even a dump of their repositories would be useful for people who are interested in Mailbox.
- exelius 11y ago
  No; but often the server components are heavily tied to some other proprietary libraries that they're not ready to open source. They could remove all proprietary code from their codebase, but that costs money - likely more than they were willing to spend on this product. Unless open source is part of your marketing strategy (which means the effort would have a budget), it's really difficult to open source an existing commercial application.
  - joering2 11y ago
    That's a speculation on your part.. and PR spin-off on theirs. Nobody asked them to support it, or whatever. Just dump the damn thing online so others can pick up and continue to "help fight your inbox to zero". Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either. I wanted to get my company (over 3,000 users) off DropBox long time ago after each update comes with new issues. But this just broke camel's back. I will make the switch happen this weekend.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      "That's a speculation on your part" Whereas your post is speculation on yours. "Nobody asked them to support it" At the same time, if they do open source it, people are going to see that it was once Dropbox, and any issues they see with it are going to be seen as the fault of Dropbox. "Just dump the damn thing online" Far more work than it sounds like. "Clearly their intention here was profits" They are a company with bills to pay and engineers to pay, right? "They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either." I don't see them going around and killing other people's email clients.
    - exelius 11y ago
      > Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either. Um, of course their intentions were profit? Dropbox is a for-profit company, nobody ever questioned their intentions as being anything else. And it's not pure speculation; I've worked on enough internally-developed products to know it's not always feasible to open source an entire service offering after the fact. It's expensive enough to do between code scrubbing, legal reviews, etc. that you're generally only going to do it for strategic reasons (i.e. you know you can never make money doing it but want to commoditize the market space to hamper a competitor's growth, you want the community to help support your infrastructure, or your business model is open source + support).
burnte 11y ago
Then OS the previous version that got them purchased by Dropbox.

unfamiliar 11y ago

"We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, and none of that thought will be elaborated on here."

austenallred 11y ago
I'll elaborate on their behalf: "That would be hard and expensive and we have money to make."
- lemevi 11y ago
  God forbid anyone make any money. Where I work we feed our engineers on the appreciation of free users. That's the only way to fly. Self-entitled much?
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    God forbid anyone share abandoned code. Where I work we incinerate anything potentially useful when we're done with it. That way no dirty freeloaders can take advantage of it.
    - jessedhillon 11y ago
      Let Pa be the probability that some piece of your open-sourced codebase reveals an important technique or strategy to your competitor, thus leveling a technological advantage you have, Let Ca be the cost of that lost advantage, Let Cb be the value of good will from the open source community In what case is Cb bigger than (Pa * Ca)?
      - jarek 11y ago
        When Pa == 0, so like, most of the time. It's an email app. It talks IMAP^H^H^H^Hto Gmail. It runs on iOS. How many secret, commercially important techniques do you really suppose it contains?

joeblau 11y ago

Someone started a petition in an effort to lobby dropbox to do just that: https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app?recruiter=443062166&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app?rec...

aylmao 11y ago

https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app/sha...