6 ms·

Ay chance of open sourcing it? Maybe the community can carry the torch forward?

by nilsbunger 14y ago

andrewfelix 14y ago
You'll be needing centralised scalable servers to make it work :(
- jarin 14y ago
  If it's open-sourced, shouldn't everyone be able to (eventually) just toss it up on their own personal Linode VPS and use it for themselves?
mmahemoff 14y ago
This request happens for every startup that closes. I don't think it's realistic most of the time, because projects like this are heavily tied to specific infrastructure and the optimum level of technical debt for a startup is much higher than the optimum level for an open source project whose survivorship depends on the community picking it up and taking it over (because it's unlikely the founders will spend much time working with it). Furthermore, the team would need to devote time to auditing the security aspects (e.g. looking for sensitive data that might have been in the code base, by accident at best, sheer ignorance at worst) before releasing it, which takes further time. So I think it's more important to ask for user data to be handed over cleanly and securely, and for certain data to be made public if it's of general interest (though again, that requires diligent security auditing). Anyway, it would be good to have some evidence that this common call for open source has actually paid off in the past. Closest I can think of is Firefox, but the circumstances were very unique - for one thing, it rose from the ashes of a project had at one point been wildly successful.
- mceachen 14y ago
  Firefox was not an open-source version of Navigator. It was a complete rewrite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite#Rewriting_from_scratch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_...
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    AOL released Mozilla as an independent project, which morphed into the stripped down version, Phoenix. Anyway, it was already open source by the time it was released, so it's a very different situation to this startup-releasing-open-source wish, but still the closest example I can think of, when considering only successful projects.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Phoenix only became Firefox thanks to Google's support, otherwise it would have eventually died.
    - Joeri 14y ago
      Netscape committed to spinning off mozilla prior to the AOL deal. Also, mozilla is an example of how releasing a closed source codebase often doesn't work, because the mozilla project ended up throwing away the old code and rewriting the engine and user interface. A better example is blender, whose source was bought out and open sourced through a community effort.
      - ldng 14y ago
        The Mozilla Foundation choose the rewrite path, it's true. Yet, the Sea Monkey project [1] is still alive. It's not like the code base vanished in thin air. [1] http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
        Joeri 14y ago
        IIRC seamonkey is a rewrite of the netscape communicator codebase. The seamonkey code was what firefox grew out of (firefox itself was not a rewrite, just a refactoring).

Ay chance of open sourcing it? Maybe the community can carry the torch forward?

andrewfelix 14y ago

You'll be needing centralised scalable servers to make it work :(

jarin 14y ago
If it's open-sourced, shouldn't everyone be able to (eventually) just toss it up on their own personal Linode VPS and use it for themselves?

mmahemoff 14y ago

This request happens for every startup that closes. I don't think it's realistic most of the time, because projects like this are heavily tied to specific infrastructure and the optimum level of technical debt for a startup is much higher than the optimum level for an open source project whose survivorship depends on the community picking it up and taking it over (because it's unlikely the founders will spend much time working with it). Furthermore, the team would need to devote time to auditing the security aspects (e.g. looking for sensitive data that might have been in the code base, by accident at best, sheer ignorance at worst) before releasing it, which takes further time. So I think it's more important to ask for user data to be handed over cleanly and securely, and for certain data to be made public if it's of general interest (though again, that requires diligent security auditing). Anyway, it would be good to have some evidence that this common call for open source has actually paid off in the past. Closest I can think of is Firefox, but the circumstances were very unique - for one thing, it rose from the ashes of a project had at one point been wildly successful.

mceachen 14y ago
Firefox was not an open-source version of Navigator. It was a complete rewrite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite#Rewriting_from_scratch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_...
- mmahemoff 14y ago
  AOL released Mozilla as an independent project, which morphed into the stripped down version, Phoenix. Anyway, it was already open source by the time it was released, so it's a very different situation to this startup-releasing-open-source wish, but still the closest example I can think of, when considering only successful projects.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Phoenix only became Firefox thanks to Google's support, otherwise it would have eventually died.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    Netscape committed to spinning off mozilla prior to the AOL deal. Also, mozilla is an example of how releasing a closed source codebase often doesn't work, because the mozilla project ended up throwing away the old code and rewriting the engine and user interface. A better example is blender, whose source was bought out and open sourced through a community effort.
    - ldng 14y ago
      The Mozilla Foundation choose the rewrite path, it's true. Yet, the Sea Monkey project [1] is still alive. It's not like the code base vanished in thin air. [1] http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
      - Joeri 14y ago
        IIRC seamonkey is a rewrite of the netscape communicator codebase. The seamonkey code was what firefox grew out of (firefox itself was not a rewrite, just a refactoring).