6 ms·

Why would you not opensource it? This way, your work won't go to waste, and maybe the community can continue it.

timr 10y ago
Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually. And in this kind of situation, you're committing to publicly maintaining the thing that you're trying to shut down. If there isn't enough interest at the start, it's just prolonging the pain of failure. It's better to rip the bandage off and move forward with your life.
- nebabyte 10y ago
  > They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually Not necessarily - just mention that the project is abandonware/looking for a new maintainer. Having access to the code will be helpful to anyone looking to move forward or build on it without tying you down, and anyone who finds a workable model can benefit from your fork.
  - nstart 10y ago
    Just want to throw in some support for what nebabyte said here. The community can be super kind towards this kind of thing. Also, I'm guessing you already have documentation on usage a plenty that you created via the original site so it wouldn't be unusable. I know this also might be too soon to think about so do take your time to come to a better place mentally before considering it :). Good luck with whatever the future holds! I sincerely hope things get better for you
- hashhar 10y ago
  I agree. It has started to kind of happen to OpenLiveWriter [1]. [1]: https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/ https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/
- sytse 10y ago
  I totally agree that maintaining it as open source will take a lot of time and effort. What platform is Omniref written in? I'm interested in exploring adding it as a feature of our GitLab. But there has to be enough interest and the tooling should match (we use Ruby, Go, and elastic search). We can pay for the effort required. And the lessons you learned will live on. Although I would totally understand if your priorities are different.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Hey, I hope you have been able to get in touch directly - I don't often see offers to front up cash in situations like this. Respect.
    - sytse 10y ago
      I reached out. But I'm not offering a ton of cash, it will be paying for work to integrate it.
      - voltagex_ 10y ago
        Yep, understood.
  - sfix 10y ago
    That would be awesome! How to let GitLab-user show interest?
    - sytse 10y ago
      Commenting here helps. Did you know GitLab the company grew out of a Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278
    - zegerjan 10y ago
      Not sure if this is the right issue tracker, but GitLab has an organization issue tracker[1]. Creating an issue there would also enhance discussion because of notifications etc. [1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues
- angersock 10y ago
  >Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. This might sound mean, but I don't intend it that way: you've already "failed" as a business, so there's no reason to hold yourself to a high standard in the open-source department. You can totally just drop a code blob on Github and let folks fork it and start organizing to maintain it themselves--it's not like you have anything to lose, and somebody might even find it useful some day. It's weird to me that people have that hangup about releasing code...if people don't like it, they just won't use it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    Have you done this yourself? I'm curious whether it's something that sounds good in theory until you've been up against the decision yourself, or if it's just a "different strokes for different folks" situation. It isn't weird to me at all. I would much rather move on with my life than constantly feel bad about the unusable state of a blob of yucky never-designed-to-be-open-source code I just dumped on GitHub.
    - angersock 10y ago
      Yep! Almost all the code I write is up on my Github with an appropriate license. Almost all of it nobody really cares about, barring a couple of projects with forks and even some pull requests which I get to as I have time. The thing is that, for products, abandoned code is strictly better than no code. We see this all the time with games--classic games only get supported once their source is released. The same is true for non-game software. People who turn up their nose at "yucky" code that works or shipped are not worth considering in the same league as the folks that actually built something. Real artists ship, everything else is just people wanking about best practices.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I don't understand why. Strip credentials from your source, dump it on GitHub. It may or may not get picked up by someone else, but this in itself is already better than having the project die. It also doesn't make you committed to anything. So honest question - even if you don't feel like maintaining it later, why not open source anyway?
  - buro9 10y ago
    + Licenses + Documentation + Structure and organisation + Time and effort I shut my startup and open-sourced our code. But it was hard, very hard. It takes a significant effort at a time when you've just expended all the effort you have in trying to get funding or a future. First you need to go through your entire code and ask: What code or assets were acquired under a license that prohibits open-sourcing or re-licensing? This may be a library, or it may be a paid-for webfont, or it may be licensed photos or UI packages. For every one identified, you now need to find an alternative that can be used and implement it before you can open source and remove reference to the old before you open source. Then there is the documentation, whilst you have a small team of a couple of people who intimately know the code you probably focused more on shipping than documenting. To open source really asks for the documentation more than the shipping... the ability to survive as an open source project isn't just about providing value it is to deliver that value in a way that people can access which means documentation. Then there is the structure and organisation of the code. The finest example of this is that you probably aimed at the sky and have built a multi-tenant SaaS platform in which most components can scale independently of the others. This stuff is complex to deploy and run, but that's OK as you're probably running only 1 to 3 instances in total. But someone who is a user of your software cares not about this, and just wants it to work for a single tenant with a super-simple deploy process to get started. It is really hard to take a "built for SaaS in a single environment (AWS)" and make it a "built for someone to deploy wherever" thing. All of the above add up to months worth of time and effort. Time when you're looking at your bank balance and realising that you need a job to avoid being homeless. Time that you simply don't have, and effort that is best focused on finding a job. When your startup dies, there is certainly a lot that could be open-sourced, but unless you spent the last few months of the startup life working towards that... it is the lowest priority thing you can do. What you should do when your startup fails: #1 Focus on you, your health and state of mind. See friends, eat well, exercise, get out of the city if you can. #2 Get a job. You're super valuable right now and you're in demand. You can build product, manage a team, probably code, and you really should get money in so that you have security and stability you probably haven't had for a while. Take time, recover. Worry about open-sourcing, or starting the next new thing, in the future. When your startup fails, now is for you to recover. Edit: And open-sourcing makes a huge assumption that your investors (who own the rights to a chunk of this stuff) even agree that you can just give away what they invested in.
- discordianfish 10y ago
  While it would be great if you continue to maintain it, just releasing it and not supporting it any further would be still great.
- webmaven 10y ago
  Similar to sytse, I'd be interested in an open source release as well, especially if it's in Python (with an eye toward possibly integrating it into the open source annotation server http://hypothes.is http://hypothes.is), though unlike sytse I don't have any funds to spend on it, so would be satisfied with a clean code release.

timr 10y ago

Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually. And in this kind of situation, you're committing to publicly maintaining the thing that you're trying to shut down. If there isn't enough interest at the start, it's just prolonging the pain of failure. It's better to rip the bandage off and move forward with your life.

nebabyte 10y ago
> They're kind of like startups in themselves, actually Not necessarily - just mention that the project is abandonware/looking for a new maintainer. Having access to the code will be helpful to anyone looking to move forward or build on it without tying you down, and anyone who finds a workable model can benefit from your fork.
- nstart 10y ago
  Just want to throw in some support for what nebabyte said here. The community can be super kind towards this kind of thing. Also, I'm guessing you already have documentation on usage a plenty that you created via the original site so it wouldn't be unusable. I know this also might be too soon to think about so do take your time to come to a better place mentally before considering it :). Good luck with whatever the future holds! I sincerely hope things get better for you
hashhar 10y ago
I agree. It has started to kind of happen to OpenLiveWriter [1]. [1]: https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/ https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/
sytse 10y ago
I totally agree that maintaining it as open source will take a lot of time and effort. What platform is Omniref written in? I'm interested in exploring adding it as a feature of our GitLab. But there has to be enough interest and the tooling should match (we use Ruby, Go, and elastic search). We can pay for the effort required. And the lessons you learned will live on. Although I would totally understand if your priorities are different.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Hey, I hope you have been able to get in touch directly - I don't often see offers to front up cash in situations like this. Respect.
  - sytse 10y ago
    I reached out. But I'm not offering a ton of cash, it will be paying for work to integrate it.
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      Yep, understood.
- sfix 10y ago
  That would be awesome! How to let GitLab-user show interest?
  - sytse 10y ago
    Commenting here helps. Did you know GitLab the company grew out of a Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278
  - zegerjan 10y ago
    Not sure if this is the right issue tracker, but GitLab has an organization issue tracker[1]. Creating an issue there would also enhance discussion because of notifications etc. [1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues
angersock 10y ago
>Open-source projects take a lot of time and effort to do well. This might sound mean, but I don't intend it that way: you've already "failed" as a business, so there's no reason to hold yourself to a high standard in the open-source department. You can totally just drop a code blob on Github and let folks fork it and start organizing to maintain it themselves--it's not like you have anything to lose, and somebody might even find it useful some day. It's weird to me that people have that hangup about releasing code...if people don't like it, they just won't use it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sanderjd 10y ago
  Have you done this yourself? I'm curious whether it's something that sounds good in theory until you've been up against the decision yourself, or if it's just a "different strokes for different folks" situation. It isn't weird to me at all. I would much rather move on with my life than constantly feel bad about the unusable state of a blob of yucky never-designed-to-be-open-source code I just dumped on GitHub.
  - angersock 10y ago
    Yep! Almost all the code I write is up on my Github with an appropriate license. Almost all of it nobody really cares about, barring a couple of projects with forks and even some pull requests which I get to as I have time. The thing is that, for products, abandoned code is strictly better than no code. We see this all the time with games--classic games only get supported once their source is released. The same is true for non-game software. People who turn up their nose at "yucky" code that works or shipped are not worth considering in the same league as the folks that actually built something. Real artists ship, everything else is just people wanking about best practices.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I don't understand why. Strip credentials from your source, dump it on GitHub. It may or may not get picked up by someone else, but this in itself is already better than having the project die. It also doesn't make you committed to anything. So honest question - even if you don't feel like maintaining it later, why not open source anyway?
- buro9 10y ago
  + Licenses + Documentation + Structure and organisation + Time and effort I shut my startup and open-sourced our code. But it was hard, very hard. It takes a significant effort at a time when you've just expended all the effort you have in trying to get funding or a future. First you need to go through your entire code and ask: What code or assets were acquired under a license that prohibits open-sourcing or re-licensing? This may be a library, or it may be a paid-for webfont, or it may be licensed photos or UI packages. For every one identified, you now need to find an alternative that can be used and implement it before you can open source and remove reference to the old before you open source. Then there is the documentation, whilst you have a small team of a couple of people who intimately know the code you probably focused more on shipping than documenting. To open source really asks for the documentation more than the shipping... the ability to survive as an open source project isn't just about providing value it is to deliver that value in a way that people can access which means documentation. Then there is the structure and organisation of the code. The finest example of this is that you probably aimed at the sky and have built a multi-tenant SaaS platform in which most components can scale independently of the others. This stuff is complex to deploy and run, but that's OK as you're probably running only 1 to 3 instances in total. But someone who is a user of your software cares not about this, and just wants it to work for a single tenant with a super-simple deploy process to get started. It is really hard to take a "built for SaaS in a single environment (AWS)" and make it a "built for someone to deploy wherever" thing. All of the above add up to months worth of time and effort. Time when you're looking at your bank balance and realising that you need a job to avoid being homeless. Time that you simply don't have, and effort that is best focused on finding a job. When your startup dies, there is certainly a lot that could be open-sourced, but unless you spent the last few months of the startup life working towards that... it is the lowest priority thing you can do. What you should do when your startup fails: #1 Focus on you, your health and state of mind. See friends, eat well, exercise, get out of the city if you can. #2 Get a job. You're super valuable right now and you're in demand. You can build product, manage a team, probably code, and you really should get money in so that you have security and stability you probably haven't had for a while. Take time, recover. Worry about open-sourcing, or starting the next new thing, in the future. When your startup fails, now is for you to recover. Edit: And open-sourcing makes a huge assumption that your investors (who own the rights to a chunk of this stuff) even agree that you can just give away what they invested in.
discordianfish 10y ago
While it would be great if you continue to maintain it, just releasing it and not supporting it any further would be still great.
webmaven 10y ago
Similar to sytse, I'd be interested in an open source release as well, especially if it's in Python (with an eye toward possibly integrating it into the open source annotation server http://hypothes.is http://hypothes.is), though unlike sytse I don't have any funds to spend on it, so would be satisfied with a clean code release.