3 ms·

>One of those was learning about the xray project. I probably shouldn’t have taken this personally, ... I've run into that phenomenon a lot with various startu

by rl3 6y ago

>One of those was learning about the xray project. I probably shouldn’t have taken this personally, ... I've run into that phenomenon a lot with various startup projects over the years. It's soul crushing, and often an immediate reaction is to assume certain projects are direct competition, rendering your project fruitless. In retrospect, this ends up almost never being the case. In a way, you become your own worst enemy. The correct solution is to simply ignore it and press on, but this is certainly easier said than done—especially when morale is already low, and without the benefit of hindsight. >Perhaps more important, because these projects are more ambitious than one person could really take on, the community started around xi-editor is evolving into one that can sustain GUI in Rust. In the end, I still think that counts as a success. Perhaps it will prove to be an even greater success than the original goal. Thanks for all these write-ups, they're excellent. Like other commenters, I've been watching at a distance for years now. Your work is much appreciated.

smichel17 6y ago
It's not a startup and the alternatives are not competitors, but I've had a similar experience affecting my motivation to work on Red Moon. There's two other screen filter apps on F-Droid, and at one point I proposed that we [work together], either merging our apps or creating shared libraries. While the other devs initially expressed some interest, they weren't willing/able to put in the effort and nothing came of it. This has killed my motivation to work on Red Moon. It feels like a waste of time, duplicating other people's efforts. That's not intrinsic to other people working separately to solve the same problem. If Red Moon were an educational project, or if it took a unique approach to screen filtering (like the other project I'm part of and [crowdfunding]), then I'd feel differently. But my main motivation was creating a FLO screen filter app, since previously I depended on the proprietary Twilight. And while there's a handful of valid approaches to screen filtering, the bulk of the effort is on UX, state transitions, and working around the kinks of Android, all of which are shared. Note: I don't bear any hard feelings towards the other devs, genuinely -- the most frustrating bit was [lack of communication], and even that is totally understandable; it's hard to say no to something you like the idea of, even to yourself (eg, acknowledging you'll never get to that project near the bottom of your list). [work together]: https://github.com/LibreShift/red-moon/issues/222 https://github.com/LibreShift/red-moon/issues/222 [lack of communication]: https://github.com/LibreShift/TransitionScheduler/issues/14 https://github.com/LibreShift/TransitionScheduler/issues/14 [crowdfunding]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi...

by rl3 6y ago

smichel17 6y ago

It's not a startup and the alternatives are not competitors, but I've had a similar experience affecting my motivation to work on Red Moon. There's two other screen filter apps on F-Droid, and at one point I proposed that we [work together], either merging our apps or creating shared libraries. While the other devs initially expressed some interest, they weren't willing/able to put in the effort and nothing came of it. This has killed my motivation to work on Red Moon. It feels like a waste of time, duplicating other people's efforts. That's not intrinsic to other people working separately to solve the same problem. If Red Moon were an educational project, or if it took a unique approach to screen filtering (like the other project I'm part of and [crowdfunding]), then I'd feel differently. But my main motivation was creating a FLO screen filter app, since previously I depended on the proprietary Twilight. And while there's a handful of valid approaches to screen filtering, the bulk of the effort is on UX, state transitions, and working around the kinks of Android, all of which are shared. Note: I don't bear any hard feelings towards the other devs, genuinely -- the most frustrating bit was [lack of communication], and even that is totally understandable; it's hard to say no to something you like the idea of, even to yourself (eg, acknowledging you'll never get to that project near the bottom of your list). [work together]: https://github.com/LibreShift/red-moon/issues/222 https://github.com/LibreShift/red-moon/issues/222 [lack of communication]: https://github.com/LibreShift/TransitionScheduler/issues/14 https://github.com/LibreShift/TransitionScheduler/issues/14 [crowdfunding]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi...