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%^@&&(*%^@%@! pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was sc

%^@&&(*%^@%@! pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was scared they would get bought and vanish. My fear came true. EDIT: Half true. No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them. Congrats to the 280 Norths, YC, and their other investors. Let's all join hands and pray that Motorola allows development on Cappuccino et al to remain public.

js4all 16y ago
I also wondered about the future of Cappuccino. The current version is LGPL licensed, but they may rerelease future versions under a different license.
saikat 16y ago
Don't be too worried. I'm pretty sure they are still going to work on Cappuccino, and the community is still very active and helpful.
dstein 16y ago
There will be competitors. I can assure you of that.
- ynniv 16y ago
  SproutCore for one: http://www.sproutcore.com/demos/ http://www.sproutcore.com/demos/
- samratjp 16y ago
  There's also Sencha and in a way jQuery Mobile (I am sure there will be a desktop suite to follow as well).
asnyder 16y ago
There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Worst of all the attention that one development tool or team gets, reduces the attention that other teams get. As a competitor (former competitor?), I sincerely congratulate 280North, but to suggest that they're the only ones building awesome tools is the furthest from the truth. Edit: No reason to down-vote this. No animosity should be read here. I was just saying there are other cool development tools. I congratulate 280North.
- chc 16y ago
  "There are other cool development tools" is a pretty empty statement. Not only is it completely subjective, but it doesn't even make a subjective claim that has any bearing on anything. So what if there are other tools you personally feel are cool? What does that imply for Cappucino developers?
  - asnyder 16y ago
    My interpretation of the original poster's comment was that they were suggesting that it was a shame that 280North was bought, rather than becoming profitable, thus possibly ending the development of a cool development tool. To me the post sounded as if the poster was suggesting they're were no other cool development tools that were on-par with Cappuccino, thus we should all mourn if they stopped developing. The poster if you recall was not a Cappuccino developer. It's in my opinion, and I'm sure in many others, that there are many other cool development tools, some of which are on-par, if not better in various ways than Cappuccino, many of which don't get the attention or appreciation they should get.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      I think that's one of the reasons why VC (from a good 'name') is useful, it gets you press, lots of it. Instantly you're news worthy because the press somehow sees you as 'validated', which means they're no longer going out on a limb in writing about you, everybody will be writing about you so they can't be seen as missing the boat. Don't underestimate this effect.
    - chc 16y ago
      If there are many superior tools that don't get the attention they deserve, it doesn't help the situation to hide them behind vague terms like "cool development tools." I stand by what I said: Merely stating that there are "other cool tools" is empty. Somebody else may as well respond, "Nah, other tools suck." Since we're not talking about anything in reality, nobody will be right or wrong, and nobody benefits from reading any of it. I really don't know of any comparable tools that are on par with Cappuccino. There's SproutCore, but at least last time I checked, it seemed to be the lesser in every way except not being dependent on that beast called Objective-J.
kneath 16y ago
At it's core, YCombinator is a Venture Capital firm. A very different one, but still — they give money, advice and connections for equity in hopes of a return on their investment. You make returns on your investment by companies getting acquired (other methods are extremely rare). I can't see why a VC firm would argue against a huge exit that makes everyone a ton of money and leaves the founders working on the same product they built and love.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  I know, I know, I know. I don't begrudge anyone their well-deserved rewards in this exit. I just don't like seeing awesome stuff go away, which is what I fear will happen here.
  - 10ren 16y ago
    IIRC pg has somewhere said that it would be in YC's interest for their startups to become massively profitable (and IPO or whatever), instead of getting bought out early. That is, YC's slice of $20 million is a fantastic outcome for YC... but a slice of $200 million etc would be even better. This led into a discussion that YC's policy is to just do what is in the startup's interest - if they want an exit, then YC will support that. And after slaving your guts out, pretty soon $20 million in the hand is starting to look pretty dang good! pg mentioned that instead of trying to calculate exactly what is in YC's interest, with so many startups going, the simplest approach is just to do what's in the startup's interest. I think everyone - including pg and future candidates - also feel a lot more comfortable with this approach. But I have to say: $20 million! That's freakin awesome! It's presumptuous of me, but I feel really proud of you guys. Go go go! And thanks also for posting a figure; that's usually secret.
  - andreyf 16y ago
    which is what I fear will happen here I have little doubt that it will. Will Motorola ever care as much about their platform as Apple does?
    - fragmede 16y ago
leej 16y ago
it seems like getting founders to Motorola and Wufoo is ridiculously profitable? really? i'm surprised.
andreyf 16y ago
No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them. I don't get it: what could they do with them? 280North's main product is Atlas, a development platform that creates applications that run on Motorola's Droids, but on an OS that's not developed at Motorola... someone please convince me this isn't a desperate attempt for Motorola to appear somehow competitive.
- samratjp 16y ago
  I don't get why Apple didn't buy them. If anything, 280 North's strongest suit is Objective-J, which borrows heavily from Cocoa (obviously) and that should make iOS developers feel at home especially with Atlas's x(n)ib files. But, yeah, I don't know why Motorola? It does seem desperate, but it's a good buy nonetheless cuz Capuccino is pure js (it's a superset of js after all) goodness.
  - aaronbrethorst 16y ago
    At least as far as Me.com goes, Apple made a bet on Sproutcore.
    - samratjp 16y ago
      I just commented about it here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631336 (sorry about the separate threads)
  - andreyf 16y ago
    I don't get why Apple didn't buy them. Read point six in Steve's "Thoughts on Flash". Apple isn't interested in actively developing web platforms because, as Jobs said, We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. [...] This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool.
    - 16y ago

js4all 16y ago

I also wondered about the future of Cappuccino. The current version is LGPL licensed, but they may rerelease future versions under a different license.

saikat 16y ago

Don't be too worried. I'm pretty sure they are still going to work on Cappuccino, and the community is still very active and helpful.

dstein 16y ago

There will be competitors. I can assure you of that.

ynniv 16y ago
SproutCore for one: http://www.sproutcore.com/demos/ http://www.sproutcore.com/demos/
samratjp 16y ago
There's also Sencha and in a way jQuery Mobile (I am sure there will be a desktop suite to follow as well).

asnyder 16y ago

There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Worst of all the attention that one development tool or team gets, reduces the attention that other teams get. As a competitor (former competitor?), I sincerely congratulate 280North, but to suggest that they're the only ones building awesome tools is the furthest from the truth. Edit: No reason to down-vote this. No animosity should be read here. I was just saying there are other cool development tools. I congratulate 280North.

chc 16y ago
"There are other cool development tools" is a pretty empty statement. Not only is it completely subjective, but it doesn't even make a subjective claim that has any bearing on anything. So what if there are other tools you personally feel are cool? What does that imply for Cappucino developers?
- asnyder 16y ago
  My interpretation of the original poster's comment was that they were suggesting that it was a shame that 280North was bought, rather than becoming profitable, thus possibly ending the development of a cool development tool. To me the post sounded as if the poster was suggesting they're were no other cool development tools that were on-par with Cappuccino, thus we should all mourn if they stopped developing. The poster if you recall was not a Cappuccino developer. It's in my opinion, and I'm sure in many others, that there are many other cool development tools, some of which are on-par, if not better in various ways than Cappuccino, many of which don't get the attention or appreciation they should get.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    I think that's one of the reasons why VC (from a good 'name') is useful, it gets you press, lots of it. Instantly you're news worthy because the press somehow sees you as 'validated', which means they're no longer going out on a limb in writing about you, everybody will be writing about you so they can't be seen as missing the boat. Don't underestimate this effect.
  - chc 16y ago
    If there are many superior tools that don't get the attention they deserve, it doesn't help the situation to hide them behind vague terms like "cool development tools." I stand by what I said: Merely stating that there are "other cool tools" is empty. Somebody else may as well respond, "Nah, other tools suck." Since we're not talking about anything in reality, nobody will be right or wrong, and nobody benefits from reading any of it. I really don't know of any comparable tools that are on par with Cappuccino. There's SproutCore, but at least last time I checked, it seemed to be the lesser in every way except not being dependent on that beast called Objective-J.

kneath 16y ago

At it's core, YCombinator is a Venture Capital firm. A very different one, but still — they give money, advice and connections for equity in hopes of a return on their investment. You make returns on your investment by companies getting acquired (other methods are extremely rare). I can't see why a VC firm would argue against a huge exit that makes everyone a ton of money and leaves the founders working on the same product they built and love.

pchristensen 16y ago
I know, I know, I know. I don't begrudge anyone their well-deserved rewards in this exit. I just don't like seeing awesome stuff go away, which is what I fear will happen here.
- 10ren 16y ago
  IIRC pg has somewhere said that it would be in YC's interest for their startups to become massively profitable (and IPO or whatever), instead of getting bought out early. That is, YC's slice of $20 million is a fantastic outcome for YC... but a slice of $200 million etc would be even better. This led into a discussion that YC's policy is to just do what is in the startup's interest - if they want an exit, then YC will support that. And after slaving your guts out, pretty soon $20 million in the hand is starting to look pretty dang good! pg mentioned that instead of trying to calculate exactly what is in YC's interest, with so many startups going, the simplest approach is just to do what's in the startup's interest. I think everyone - including pg and future candidates - also feel a lot more comfortable with this approach. But I have to say: $20 million! That's freakin awesome! It's presumptuous of me, but I feel really proud of you guys. Go go go! And thanks also for posting a figure; that's usually secret.
- andreyf 16y ago
  which is what I fear will happen here I have little doubt that it will. Will Motorola ever care as much about their platform as Apple does?
  - fragmede 16y ago

leej 16y ago

it seems like getting founders to Motorola and Wufoo is ridiculously profitable? really? i'm surprised.

andreyf 16y ago

No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them. I don't get it: what could they do with them? 280North's main product is Atlas, a development platform that creates applications that run on Motorola's Droids, but on an OS that's not developed at Motorola... someone please convince me this isn't a desperate attempt for Motorola to appear somehow competitive.

samratjp 16y ago
I don't get why Apple didn't buy them. If anything, 280 North's strongest suit is Objective-J, which borrows heavily from Cocoa (obviously) and that should make iOS developers feel at home especially with Atlas's x(n)ib files. But, yeah, I don't know why Motorola? It does seem desperate, but it's a good buy nonetheless cuz Capuccino is pure js (it's a superset of js after all) goodness.
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago
  At least as far as Me.com goes, Apple made a bet on Sproutcore.
  - samratjp 16y ago
    I just commented about it here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631336 (sorry about the separate threads)
- andreyf 16y ago
  I don't get why Apple didn't buy them. Read point six in Steve's "Thoughts on Flash". Apple isn't interested in actively developing web platforms because, as Jobs said, We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. [...] This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool.
  - 16y ago