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I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've long been as baffled as you are about why there aren't more. I pitched this idea to a bunch of people at Rai
by mhartl 19y ago
I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've long been as baffled as you are about why there aren't more. I pitched this idea to a bunch of people at RailsConf last year, and got a lot of yawns. I even pitched it to Peter Norvig of Google, who checked his watch and then "had to go". :-) But I predict open-source webapps will be big.
What's your contact info? I couldn't find it in your HN profile. (Mine's in mine.)
- axod 19y agoHow can they be big? What's the revenue model for an open source webapp? I don't get it... You create some cool app, then some big player takes it as it's open source, installs it, and laughs in your face :/ Once you've established your own site as 'the leader' like wikipedia, then open sourcing would probably work fine. But open sourcing from the start seems a bad idea...
- mhartl 19y agoMaybe, but the same argument could be used for other open-source apps. "Oracle could just grab the source code for MySQL", etc. Incidentally, this is one reason the GPL can be a big win. What you described happened to X, which was under the MIT license. It worries me that so many web technologies are MIT; it's so much easier to co-opt them. There is a web version of the GPL called the AGPL (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html). It's a pity it's not more widely known.