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Joel is giving away his software to Y Combinator startups
- arockwell 18y agoThere's also a new student and startup version that is free to use for up to two people (the YC version is the same deal, but unlimited people).
- kaiserama 18y agoScore!...now to get accepted by Y Combinator...:-\
- t0pj 18y agoBravo.
- kirubakaran 18y agoWow text book example of win-win.
- fallentimes 18y agoGod damn it - we already paid for it. Seriously though, FogBugz has been awesome and well worth the one time charge.
- bestes 18y agoThis is for the "On-Demand" version, which is hosted and costs $25/user/month, not the standalone version.
- fallentimes 18y agoOh oops - good catch.
- apgwoz 18y agoSo, really what your saying is that Joel is giving away his software so he can keep tabs on what YC Startups are doing? Suddenly, the idea seems more evil. :)
- dustineichler 18y agoThis is astounding. Another reason I respect this guy so much.
- jonnytran 18y agoYes, it's really an ingenious marketing scheme on Joel's part.
- whatusername 18y agoit worked. We're all talking about it on here.
- tomjen 18y agoNot really - Joel is smart. He knows that the marginal cost of a frogbuz account is almost nothing but that the price - if the company is acquired - is an entire company that use his software.
- sanj 18y agoBummer. Not a YCombinator company, but in a startup and attempting to contribute to this community. Hey Joel, any chance of a HN-karma-based lifting of the 2-person limit? Say >1000 Karma and you can use more people?
- Alex3917 18y agoThat would actually be an interesting idea for a social news site, partnering with companies to give away schwag to users who hit certain karma thresholds. I wonder what would happen.
- jcl 18y agoMore "Make Karma Fast" schemes?
- ph0rque 18y agoOr "buy my karma" offers on ebay...
- preetam 18y agothis is a hilarious thread...SOMEONE keep this going!! we need more ideas.
- netcan 18y agoSeriously though, you could probably do it without karma farmers if you announced a free X for all users currently over a karma threshold. Could be a cool tool for building social news sites & there are all sorts of companies that want to give away their stuff - magazines.
- whatusername 18y agoIsn't that kinda what Calacanis did at Netscape? ie - Free Money for the top contributers at Digg / Reddit?
- xg 18y agoSolid of them to do that, but FogBugz is terrible. Our dev team found it to be tedious (4 developers). We've switched to Pivotal Tracker (also in free beta) and find it much more suited to rapid development and "agile" practices. In particular, we find the predictive tools actually useful.
- johnrob 18y agoMore tedious than bugzilla? Or were you just expecting more because it is not free.
- modoc 18y agoCan anyone compare FogBugz with Jira (my current fav)?
- cstejerean 18y agoIf you like Jira you might not like the simplicity and clean UI of FogBugz. We switched from FogBugz to Jira at my last job and I personally didn't like it very much. But management liked the flexible reporting and complicated workflows they could invent. Personally I think Jira looks like it was written 10 years ago and can get quite slow at times, which together with the fact that there's no AJAX and every click reloads an entire page means it can be a very unpleasant experience.
- modoc 18y agoI haven't gotten to use FogBugz so I can't compare the use of the UIs. AJAX would be really nice, although I haven't had any performance issues. We replaced Mantis and Bugzilla with Jira at one place I was at, and it was significantly faster than either of them. I'm in love with the ability to very easily create different issue types with different attributes, states, and work flows. That lets us use the same system as a project management tool with release schedules, features, sub-tasks, reporting on hours breakdown by resource etc..., and a customer facing issue reporting/tracking system, and an internal bug tracker, etc... edit--- Also love the great integrations with Confluence, Eclipse, SVN, Hudson, etc....
- comatose_kid 18y agoI've never used FogBugz. Why would a hacker choose it over the usual open source stuff (Trac, bugzilla)?
- cstejerean 18y agoI would choose an open source product, but trac and bugzilla are both terrible. hopefully some better options emerge (or I become aware of them).
- kirubakaran 18y agoHow about Mantis? http://www.mantisbt.org/ http://www.mantisbt.org/ Demo: http://demo.mantisbt.org/my_view_page.php http://demo.mantisbt.org/my_view_page.php
- tomjen 18y agoMantis is okay - we used it for a (school) project last year, but for what we needed it for it was overkill.
- kirubakaran 18y agoI use a plain text file.
- modoc 18y agoMantis is an improvement over Bugzilla, for sure. However we saw huge performance problems once we hit the 50k issue level. It was also much more difficult to modify than Jira (which we moved to). Although I guess among free options Trac and Mantis would be my top two.
- modoc 18y agoJira is fantastic, but not open source (although you do get a copy of the source when you buy it).
- tjpick 18y ago
- ii 18y agoFogBugz integrates with VSS, SVN, Mercurial, CVS, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Perforce, Vault and SnagIt. No Git support makes it unusable for me.
- mhp 18y agohttp://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git-Integration.aspx http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git-Integration.as...
- nickb 18y agoWe've been using http://Acunote.com http://Acunote.com for agile issue tracking and it's been performing well. But going forward we're looking at Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/ http://www.mantisbt.org/) and Jira. Jira's very expensive and Mantis is GPL and does most of what Jira does. Could someone, in a sentence or two, explain how FogBugz compares to Mantis or Bugzilla?
- SwellJoe 18y agoWe've been giving away our software to YC startups for nearly two years now. I never thought to make a website about it, though. I guess that's what sets the folks like Joel apart from the rest of us. That's a guy who knows how to give away software with style. Seriously, though, it's cool and really good marketing. I've only seen Fogbugz in passing (it was trialed at a Python shop I worked in a few years back, but wasn't adopted), but I've heard good things.
- 13ren 18y agoThis differential pricing helps satisfy demand (like student movie tickets). Most of the poor students/startups could not afford to buy anyway, so you lose little by giving it away. But you gain potential customers, like MacDonalds targetting children: "get 'em while they're young [and poor]". Lock-in is stronger with software: UI familiarity (e.g. vi vs. emacs); data on their server. If you had a dominant market position, this differential pricing can help a scorched-earth policy: by denying no-one, you don't start the seeds of copy-cat competitors - they have no fuel to burn (i.e. no customers, no interest). The danger with copy-cat competitors is that as they grow, they often differentiate into genuine alternatives in their own right. Better to nip 'em in the bud (or not enable the bud to grow in the first place). Joel isn't in that position (there are several bug-trackers): here, it's just an earlier arena for the fight for customers (like employers interviewing earlier and earlier at university). For example, the Jira people offer free products for open source projects. The above is a business interpretation, based on cynical self-interest, but I think the result is healthy: customers get high-quality yet affordable products; you get customers - to each according to his need; from each according to his ability (to pay). Meeting needs is a good thing. But for customers, it's just as important to evaluate what they are getting, even though it's free. Otherwise, you watch free TV, browse free websites, and buy supermarket "specials" without making a decision about what you're really buying. You might have chosen to buy it anyway; you might not. There are vulnerabilities with hosted data; e.g. if Joel had to change his policy, how would customers get their data out? These are questions common to all vendors, and it's not just because it's free - it's just then when it's free, it's easier to not consider these questions properly. It's up to customers to do their due diligence. All Joel can do is work hard to create something useful, and let you know about it. He can't tell if it's right for you and your specific needs or not. Note: I think it's great Joel is doing this, and it's beneficial all round.
- babakian 18y agoTo the point about getting your data out. FogBugz On Demand lets you download a snapshot of your database, at any time, in three different formats: MS SQL Server, Access, and MySQL. The FogBugz database schema is open and fully documented here: http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.html http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.htm...
- hooande 18y agoThanks, Joel!
- subbu 18y agoGive us something casual. Bug tracking need not be painful.
- dchest 18y agoScrew it, use Redmine.