7 ms·

Sentry: From the Beginning

199 points by ellieh 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago
A jealousy-inducing OSS fairy tale :) > 2x the pain when you’re also on call at your day job I know this is a side point, but I imagine people might be interested in the challenges of being able to work a second job while not annoying your employer. How did you manage it?
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  I’m not David but in the same situation before and there are from my experience two important parts: 1) having a good relationship and 2) setting clear boundaries. It’s not a given that it will work out but good faith negotiations are an important start. It will be close to impossible in a mega corp with strict rules. For instance doing this at Apple is from what I have heard effectively impossible. On the other hand I know folks who left to a smaller startup and they took that job under the precondition that they can bootstrap their side hustle alongside.
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  One option (the one that I took) was to own both companies - in this case an agency that gave birth to the side project that became Flagsmith.
- spacecadet 3y ago
  and without burning ones self out? or crossing ethical/personal boundaries? I love side projects so much and hate the grind of day-in-day-out repetition, I just became a contractor. One thing you can do is try and find AOR clients. For example, I have a very strong relationship with several other agencies and one even keeps a desk for me. Which at times feels like Im just working for them. Then I can bail or chose to work on whatever. 2 years ago I joined a start up for some time. etc.
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    AOR?
    - bartkappenburg 3y ago
      Perhaps “At Own Risk”, “Agent Of Record” or “Authorized Organizational Representative”?
      - kevindamm 3y ago
        or Available on Retainer?
    - spacecadet 3y ago
      Usually Agency of Record. But anything that says "long term contract".
- codegeek 3y ago
  Don't get jealous. Get inspired :). I do understand what you mean though.
- jmduke 3y ago
  > I know this is a side point, but I imagine people might be interested in the challenges of being able to work a second job while not annoying your employer. How did you manage it? I ran my company (https://buttondown.email/ https://buttondown.email/) as a side project for ~three or so years before taking it full time and it was _similarly_ in a position where I could get paged for downtime or plumbing-related issues. My suggestions: 1. Honestly, choose a project where downtime or operational issues are less prevalent. This is a cop-out answer, but when you're evaluating potential projects it should be top of mind. 2. Be very up-front and honest with yourself and your employer about your commitments and your priorities. My personal rule was to only ever look at Buttondown-related stuff outside of what I considered my "core" working hours unless I was getting paged, and even then responding to pages would wait until my meetings or time-sensitive work was finished. 3. Set a schedule and rely on the schedule. For me this ended up being "side project hours are from 7-9pm M-F and 3-8pm Sat"; at times I wanted to do more and at times I wanted to do less, but the former path leads to burnout and the latter path leads to languishing.
  - zeeg 3y ago
    I wasn't as rigorous about it as you around having a fixed schedule, but I applied similar principles: Avoid doing any work on my side project while at my regular job (unless it was needed by my regular job, e.g. on the open source front), and never let my responsibilities of my regular job slip or become a lesser priority. The real challenge here: running an infrastructure service as a side project is what nightmares are made of.
- zeeg 3y ago
  Will add to the list of potential topics. Its definitely a challenge, and does require personal sacrifice (e.g. its really hard to balance the demands of both jobs). I wanted to go deeper on so many things, but I also didn't want this post to be 5,000 words long :s My cofounder was in a similar but different position at the time. He was at GitHub and also had two young kids. I'm happy the outcomes are looking good for us, because damn was that period of life painful for all.
s_severus 3y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I'm in quite a similar situation with my own OSS project - it is about 5 years old now, and was started to scratch my own itch. It has naturally gained significant traction - fortune 500s building on it, startups basing their platform on it, etc. and last year I founded a company around it, and we've been making some income selling enterprise support and some paid plugins. My co-founder and I also faced a similar decision to what David describes in the earlier post about seed funding: From the start I was very much into the indie hacker mindset, but we came to recognize that there's an opportunity to make a significant impact beyond my initial ambitions, and so we are currently navigating the process of raising a seed round.
elAhmo 3y ago
I didn’t know about Sentry origins as django-db-log. This was a good read, I had the pleasure of interacting from a few people and Sentry and they really seem like a cool group of people. Building stuff for primarily developers is not easy, and I think they are doing great in that front.
- tclancy 3y ago
  Oh man, finding django-db-log was a game changer for me. The "errors as emails" was nice, but it didn't scale well when you had a number of Django sites to support. Having historical data about errors made my code so much tighter. Plus it reminded me of something I had built in ASP (god help us all) years before but hadn't figured out how to replicate well in Django.
matsemann 3y ago
> So how do you replicate that? I don’t have an answer I like when a founder is realistic about things. Nice read.
- codegeek 3y ago
  But he did add that perhaps the best way is to solve your own problem. As a founder, I also can only think of my own problems that I faced while working on projects and businesses.
ensignavenger 3y ago
The article doesn't appear to mention that Sentry abandoned open source. If anyone is looking for an open source fork of sentry, there is https://glitchtip.com/ https://glitchtip.com/
- jordigh 3y ago
  OpBeat was another Sentry fork I remember, but they've been long gone too.
  - jordigh 3y ago
    Just wanted to make sure I remembered right. Maybe only the client was based on Sentry, but I'm not sure. https://github.com/opbeat/opbeat_python/blob/master/CHANGES.md#01 https://github.com/opbeat/opbeat_python/blob/master/CHANGES....
- infecto 3y ago
  Is sentry.io no longer open source? Have not followed it as closely since its so cheap.
  - easton 3y ago
    It's source available under the BSL: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry https://github.com/getsentry/sentry. After four years it becomes open source (probably to prevent "AWS Elastic Error Handling service(tm)" from becoming a thing) You can still run it for your company for free, if you feel like managing all of the infra it requires.
    - kevincox 3y ago
      This strikes me as a poor choice (moreso than other BSL adopters) since there are many other error-handling SaaS companies available. It seems like it is better for people to be using your tool hosted by someone else than using a different tool with a different API so that migrating to your offering (hosting or support) is more difficult.
sirine1706 3y ago
cec
manicennui 3y ago
The ~15 year old application that I work on had functionality to record errors to its database and a dashboard in the admin tool. We eventually moved to Sentry.
sir_eliah 3y ago
That's both positive and inspiring for people working on open source projects. Thanks for sharing!
ludwigvan 3y ago
Congrats on the wonderful journey. Wondering how come Disqus allowed this to spin off into another company? Could they not claim that the code add belonged to them? Was it that everything was open source licensed that they could not claim rights, or were they just nice people?
- zeeg 3y ago
  I started Sentry before Disqus, and even if it wasnt disclosed as prior invention (PIIA might be something youve seen), I had the support of the founders to continue to develop on open source. Its also impotant to note that all the code is governed by the LICENSE, which was BSD-3. I think you've just gotta find companies that recognize the value things create. I will say I drew a line personally: I only ever worked on projects that helped Disqus during working hours, so if I wanted to just build fun unrelated features (even on Sentry) I did it in my evenings/weekends. Sometimes that did mean contributing to Sentry, but it was to fix things that specifically helped Disqus (such as overloading the production services when we had an outage).
  - ludwigvan 3y ago
    Thanks for the explanation!
hoten 3y ago
Looking forward to reading more of these, thanks for writing them! Sentry has exceptional customer service (reached out multiple times and always get a prompt useful response or bug fix), and I'm happy to be a customer. I rely on their crash reporting for native programs for an open source game engine I work on (see profile), and without that observability resolving user crashes would be 1000x harder. And it couldn't have been simpler to integrate. Such a good service.

199 points by ellieh 3y ago

A jealousy-inducing OSS fairy tale :) > 2x the pain when you’re also on call at your day job I know this is a side point, but I imagine people might be interested in the challenges of being able to work a second job while not annoying your employer. How did you manage it?

the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
I’m not David but in the same situation before and there are from my experience two important parts: 1) having a good relationship and 2) setting clear boundaries. It’s not a given that it will work out but good faith negotiations are an important start. It will be close to impossible in a mega corp with strict rules. For instance doing this at Apple is from what I have heard effectively impossible. On the other hand I know folks who left to a smaller startup and they took that job under the precondition that they can bootstrap their side hustle alongside.
dabeeeenster 3y ago
One option (the one that I took) was to own both companies - in this case an agency that gave birth to the side project that became Flagsmith.
spacecadet 3y ago
and without burning ones self out? or crossing ethical/personal boundaries? I love side projects so much and hate the grind of day-in-day-out repetition, I just became a contractor. One thing you can do is try and find AOR clients. For example, I have a very strong relationship with several other agencies and one even keeps a desk for me. Which at times feels like Im just working for them. Then I can bail or chose to work on whatever. 2 years ago I joined a start up for some time. etc.
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  AOR?
  - bartkappenburg 3y ago
    Perhaps “At Own Risk”, “Agent Of Record” or “Authorized Organizational Representative”?
    - kevindamm 3y ago
      or Available on Retainer?
  - spacecadet 3y ago
    Usually Agency of Record. But anything that says "long term contract".
codegeek 3y ago
Don't get jealous. Get inspired :). I do understand what you mean though.
jmduke 3y ago
> I know this is a side point, but I imagine people might be interested in the challenges of being able to work a second job while not annoying your employer. How did you manage it? I ran my company (https://buttondown.email/ https://buttondown.email/) as a side project for ~three or so years before taking it full time and it was _similarly_ in a position where I could get paged for downtime or plumbing-related issues. My suggestions: 1. Honestly, choose a project where downtime or operational issues are less prevalent. This is a cop-out answer, but when you're evaluating potential projects it should be top of mind. 2. Be very up-front and honest with yourself and your employer about your commitments and your priorities. My personal rule was to only ever look at Buttondown-related stuff outside of what I considered my "core" working hours unless I was getting paged, and even then responding to pages would wait until my meetings or time-sensitive work was finished. 3. Set a schedule and rely on the schedule. For me this ended up being "side project hours are from 7-9pm M-F and 3-8pm Sat"; at times I wanted to do more and at times I wanted to do less, but the former path leads to burnout and the latter path leads to languishing.
- zeeg 3y ago
  I wasn't as rigorous about it as you around having a fixed schedule, but I applied similar principles: Avoid doing any work on my side project while at my regular job (unless it was needed by my regular job, e.g. on the open source front), and never let my responsibilities of my regular job slip or become a lesser priority. The real challenge here: running an infrastructure service as a side project is what nightmares are made of.
zeeg 3y ago
Will add to the list of potential topics. Its definitely a challenge, and does require personal sacrifice (e.g. its really hard to balance the demands of both jobs). I wanted to go deeper on so many things, but I also didn't want this post to be 5,000 words long :s My cofounder was in a similar but different position at the time. He was at GitHub and also had two young kids. I'm happy the outcomes are looking good for us, because damn was that period of life painful for all.

s_severus 3y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I'm in quite a similar situation with my own OSS project - it is about 5 years old now, and was started to scratch my own itch. It has naturally gained significant traction - fortune 500s building on it, startups basing their platform on it, etc. and last year I founded a company around it, and we've been making some income selling enterprise support and some paid plugins. My co-founder and I also faced a similar decision to what David describes in the earlier post about seed funding: From the start I was very much into the indie hacker mindset, but we came to recognize that there's an opportunity to make a significant impact beyond my initial ambitions, and so we are currently navigating the process of raising a seed round.

elAhmo 3y ago

I didn’t know about Sentry origins as django-db-log. This was a good read, I had the pleasure of interacting from a few people and Sentry and they really seem like a cool group of people. Building stuff for primarily developers is not easy, and I think they are doing great in that front.

tclancy 3y ago
Oh man, finding django-db-log was a game changer for me. The "errors as emails" was nice, but it didn't scale well when you had a number of Django sites to support. Having historical data about errors made my code so much tighter. Plus it reminded me of something I had built in ASP (god help us all) years before but hadn't figured out how to replicate well in Django.

matsemann 3y ago

> So how do you replicate that? I don’t have an answer I like when a founder is realistic about things. Nice read.

codegeek 3y ago
But he did add that perhaps the best way is to solve your own problem. As a founder, I also can only think of my own problems that I faced while working on projects and businesses.

ensignavenger 3y ago

The article doesn't appear to mention that Sentry abandoned open source. If anyone is looking for an open source fork of sentry, there is https://glitchtip.com/ https://glitchtip.com/

jordigh 3y ago
OpBeat was another Sentry fork I remember, but they've been long gone too.
- jordigh 3y ago
  Just wanted to make sure I remembered right. Maybe only the client was based on Sentry, but I'm not sure. https://github.com/opbeat/opbeat_python/blob/master/CHANGES.md#01 https://github.com/opbeat/opbeat_python/blob/master/CHANGES....
infecto 3y ago
Is sentry.io no longer open source? Have not followed it as closely since its so cheap.
- easton 3y ago
  It's source available under the BSL: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry https://github.com/getsentry/sentry. After four years it becomes open source (probably to prevent "AWS Elastic Error Handling service(tm)" from becoming a thing) You can still run it for your company for free, if you feel like managing all of the infra it requires.
  - kevincox 3y ago
    This strikes me as a poor choice (moreso than other BSL adopters) since there are many other error-handling SaaS companies available. It seems like it is better for people to be using your tool hosted by someone else than using a different tool with a different API so that migrating to your offering (hosting or support) is more difficult.

sirine1706 3y ago

cec

manicennui 3y ago

The ~15 year old application that I work on had functionality to record errors to its database and a dashboard in the admin tool. We eventually moved to Sentry.

sir_eliah 3y ago

That's both positive and inspiring for people working on open source projects. Thanks for sharing!

ludwigvan 3y ago

Congrats on the wonderful journey. Wondering how come Disqus allowed this to spin off into another company? Could they not claim that the code add belonged to them? Was it that everything was open source licensed that they could not claim rights, or were they just nice people?

zeeg 3y ago
I started Sentry before Disqus, and even if it wasnt disclosed as prior invention (PIIA might be something youve seen), I had the support of the founders to continue to develop on open source. Its also impotant to note that all the code is governed by the LICENSE, which was BSD-3. I think you've just gotta find companies that recognize the value things create. I will say I drew a line personally: I only ever worked on projects that helped Disqus during working hours, so if I wanted to just build fun unrelated features (even on Sentry) I did it in my evenings/weekends. Sometimes that did mean contributing to Sentry, but it was to fix things that specifically helped Disqus (such as overloading the production services when we had an outage).
- ludwigvan 3y ago
  Thanks for the explanation!

hoten 3y ago

Looking forward to reading more of these, thanks for writing them! Sentry has exceptional customer service (reached out multiple times and always get a prompt useful response or bug fix), and I'm happy to be a customer. I rely on their crash reporting for native programs for an open source game engine I work on (see profile), and without that observability resolving user crashes would be 1000x harder. And it couldn't have been simpler to integrate. Such a good service.