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And I just want to remind the technical crowd here that NewsBlur is 100% open-source: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay I've been asked

by conesus 14y ago

And I just want to remind the technical crowd here that NewsBlur is 100% open-source: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay I've been asked quite a few times why I open-source the code. The answer is simple. Let me use an example from Joel Spolsky. (From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html) The dominant spreadsheet, with 100% market share, is Lotus 123. You're the product manager for Microsoft Excel. Ask yourself: what are the barriers to switching? What keeps users from becoming Excel customers tomorrow? ... <snip: barriers to entry> ... That's the barrier to entry. Not how hard it is to switch in: it's how hard it might be to switch out. And this reminded me of Excel's tipping point, which happened around the time of Excel 4.0. And the biggest reason was that Excel 4.0 was the first version of Excel that could write Lotus spreadsheets transparently. Yep, you heard me. Write. Not read. It turns out that what was stopping people from switching to Excel was that everybody else they worked with was still using Lotus 123. They didn't want a product that would create spreadsheets that nobody else could read: a classic Chicken and Egg problem. When you're the lone Excel fan in a company where everyone else is using 123, even if you love Excel, you can't switch until you can participate in the 123 ecology. If you know that in the absolute worst case that you can still use the product even if it's shut down, then by golly, you have even less of a reason to not switch to it.

mynegation 14y ago
I tried to install NewsBlur, but instructions were not very helpful. I tried to get as far as I can, editing fabfile and installing gajillions of new python modules, but still failed. Don't get me wrong, it is wonderful and very commendable of you to open source NewsBlur! Nor do I feel entitled to the source code or free ride (I will probably end up paying for the hosted solution). Just providing some feedback, given that you indicated that low barriers to entry are important to you. I am not a web developer so that can partially explain my struggle with fabric, Django and multitude of webdev and devops modules that you use. I wish you good luck and I hope that you take this wonderful product even further.
- conesus 14y ago
  This is something I'll be working on soon enough. There are many, many dependencies (not only for the web app, but there are three DBs that you have to have installed as prerequisites - mongo, postgres/mysql, and redis). The real problem with setting up your own instance of NewsBlur is that you'll have to do your own feed fetching. This is effectively what you're paying for when you pay for NewsBlur. Let me break it down. 500 feeds updated once every five minutes is 144,000 feed fetches a day. Couple that with the original page and icon fetches, you're looking at almost two feeds every second just to keep your feeds up to date. And the average feed takes 5 seconds to completely update (feed, page, differences in stories, updating unread counts). So you have to run 10 processes in parallel, and that's already beyond the capabilities of most single machines. Then good luck keeping your DBs running clean and backed up. Or you could pay $2 / month and never have to worry about setting up a very big stack. And you get the social community of shared stories on newsblur.com.
  - georgeoliver 14y ago
    Does NB fetch feeds that have no new articles?
    - UberMouse 14y ago
      Doesn't it have to fetch feeds to determine there are no new articles?
      - tcwc 14y ago
        Feed readers can send If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match as part of the request so the server only sends back the full feed if there's something new (Otherwise a 304 Not Modified)
        mikro2nd 14y ago
        Assuming that the feed implementer bothered... many news CMSs don't bother. The world of RSS is a horrorshow of standards noncompliance; Atom only somewhat better. (My experience is, admittedly,a couple of years out of date, but feed generation tends to be a minimum spend item for news organisations.)
codexon 14y ago
This analogy seems to be describing a different principle. Microsoft was trying to break the network effect that Lotus had.
- conesus 14y ago
  I agree it's not a 1-to-1 analogy, but the idea is the same. Knowing you're free to come back to Lotus by using Excel frees you from the chicken-and-egg constraint of waiting until your entire office is on Excel. With NewsBlur you know that you can host your own instance if your dependency on the newsblur.com hosted instance breaks.
  - codexon 14y ago
    I see what you mean by that, but open-sourcing all your software instead of just having an export function seems risky to me. In our area of business, our features get copied really quickly.
    - boyter 14y ago
      You can still copy the feature without looking at the code. Sometimes its even preferable.
    - vineet 14y ago
      It might be risky, but there are a lot of other companies that are doing exactly the same thing and and have shown a great path for newsblur.... (for example, wordpress, sugar-crm, etc).
    - roc 14y ago
      An export function is hardly the same thing. We're not talking about the concern that an RSS client might go away. There's no shortage of clients. No-one worries too much about those. The concern is what happens when the service goes away.
  - micshasan 14y ago
    This analogy only helps for developers that would be comfortable installing and operating their own instance. I don't see many folks being excited about the opportunity for personal use. For other folks hoping to build their own service, commercially or otherwise, having access to your code provides a huge savings in time to market.
jscn 14y ago
Just wanted to say, NewsBlur and Pinboard are both big inspirations for me. It's awesome to see people making money off of open source software.
- rb2k_ 14y ago
  pinboard isn't open source?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ergo14 14y ago
Hello Samuel, I'm sure you will need all the help you can get with upcoming traffic so I've tried contacting you recently about helping you scale better with https://errormator.com https://errormator.com, but I somehow miss you when you are online on IRC, so I've sent you mail to the mailbox i've found. Its great since your app is python based and we maintain an awesome python client. Drop me a line if you are interested, we love open-source at Errormator so you would get a completly free plan for non-profits :-) I could also help you personally if you have any integration questions, you can find me on #errormator on Freenode IRC server.
- dpcx 14y ago
  How does this compare to [1]? [1]: https://github.com/errbit/errbit https://github.com/errbit/errbit
  - ergo14 14y ago
    Hey, you could use airbrake/errbit compatible client to stream errors to errormator by changing the endpoint, but it is 30% of what errormator provides (just exceptions), we aim to be a lot more than that. Please see this inteview with us that was posted recently, the article is in polish but the screenshots should give you a better overview of what errormator can do: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.megiteam.pl%2Fblog%2F2013%2F03%2F12%2Fpolacy-nie-gesi-czyli-o-monitoringu-aplikacji-made%2F&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js... In short: - exception monitoring - performance metrics - slow request and slow call aggregation - log aggregation We def. need a new index page and a features page to show all the functionality in a nice way.
  - ergo14 14y ago
    Errormator launched its new index page yesterday - some things are still missing, but the images should give you a better overview of what to expect vs. other solutions. Cheers!

by conesus 14y ago

mynegation 14y ago

I tried to install NewsBlur, but instructions were not very helpful. I tried to get as far as I can, editing fabfile and installing gajillions of new python modules, but still failed. Don't get me wrong, it is wonderful and very commendable of you to open source NewsBlur! Nor do I feel entitled to the source code or free ride (I will probably end up paying for the hosted solution). Just providing some feedback, given that you indicated that low barriers to entry are important to you. I am not a web developer so that can partially explain my struggle with fabric, Django and multitude of webdev and devops modules that you use. I wish you good luck and I hope that you take this wonderful product even further.

conesus 14y ago
This is something I'll be working on soon enough. There are many, many dependencies (not only for the web app, but there are three DBs that you have to have installed as prerequisites - mongo, postgres/mysql, and redis). The real problem with setting up your own instance of NewsBlur is that you'll have to do your own feed fetching. This is effectively what you're paying for when you pay for NewsBlur. Let me break it down. 500 feeds updated once every five minutes is 144,000 feed fetches a day. Couple that with the original page and icon fetches, you're looking at almost two feeds every second just to keep your feeds up to date. And the average feed takes 5 seconds to completely update (feed, page, differences in stories, updating unread counts). So you have to run 10 processes in parallel, and that's already beyond the capabilities of most single machines. Then good luck keeping your DBs running clean and backed up. Or you could pay $2 / month and never have to worry about setting up a very big stack. And you get the social community of shared stories on newsblur.com.
- georgeoliver 14y ago
  Does NB fetch feeds that have no new articles?
  - UberMouse 14y ago
    Doesn't it have to fetch feeds to determine there are no new articles?
    - tcwc 14y ago
      Feed readers can send If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match as part of the request so the server only sends back the full feed if there's something new (Otherwise a 304 Not Modified)
      - mikro2nd 14y ago
        Assuming that the feed implementer bothered... many news CMSs don't bother. The world of RSS is a horrorshow of standards noncompliance; Atom only somewhat better. (My experience is, admittedly,a couple of years out of date, but feed generation tends to be a minimum spend item for news organisations.)

codexon 14y ago

This analogy seems to be describing a different principle. Microsoft was trying to break the network effect that Lotus had.

conesus 14y ago
I agree it's not a 1-to-1 analogy, but the idea is the same. Knowing you're free to come back to Lotus by using Excel frees you from the chicken-and-egg constraint of waiting until your entire office is on Excel. With NewsBlur you know that you can host your own instance if your dependency on the newsblur.com hosted instance breaks.
- codexon 14y ago
  I see what you mean by that, but open-sourcing all your software instead of just having an export function seems risky to me. In our area of business, our features get copied really quickly.
  - boyter 14y ago
    You can still copy the feature without looking at the code. Sometimes its even preferable.
  - vineet 14y ago
    It might be risky, but there are a lot of other companies that are doing exactly the same thing and and have shown a great path for newsblur.... (for example, wordpress, sugar-crm, etc).
  - roc 14y ago
    An export function is hardly the same thing. We're not talking about the concern that an RSS client might go away. There's no shortage of clients. No-one worries too much about those. The concern is what happens when the service goes away.
- micshasan 14y ago
  This analogy only helps for developers that would be comfortable installing and operating their own instance. I don't see many folks being excited about the opportunity for personal use. For other folks hoping to build their own service, commercially or otherwise, having access to your code provides a huge savings in time to market.

jscn 14y ago

Just wanted to say, NewsBlur and Pinboard are both big inspirations for me. It's awesome to see people making money off of open source software.

rb2k_ 14y ago
pinboard isn't open source?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

ergo14 14y ago

Hello Samuel, I'm sure you will need all the help you can get with upcoming traffic so I've tried contacting you recently about helping you scale better with https://errormator.com https://errormator.com, but I somehow miss you when you are online on IRC, so I've sent you mail to the mailbox i've found. Its great since your app is python based and we maintain an awesome python client. Drop me a line if you are interested, we love open-source at Errormator so you would get a completly free plan for non-profits :-) I could also help you personally if you have any integration questions, you can find me on #errormator on Freenode IRC server.

dpcx 14y ago
How does this compare to [1]? [1]: https://github.com/errbit/errbit https://github.com/errbit/errbit
- ergo14 14y ago
  Hey, you could use airbrake/errbit compatible client to stream errors to errormator by changing the endpoint, but it is 30% of what errormator provides (just exceptions), we aim to be a lot more than that. Please see this inteview with us that was posted recently, the article is in polish but the screenshots should give you a better overview of what errormator can do: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.megiteam.pl%2Fblog%2F2013%2F03%2F12%2Fpolacy-nie-gesi-czyli-o-monitoringu-aplikacji-made%2F&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js... In short: - exception monitoring - performance metrics - slow request and slow call aggregation - log aggregation We def. need a new index page and a features page to show all the functionality in a nice way.
- ergo14 14y ago
  Errormator launched its new index page yesterday - some things are still missing, but the images should give you a better overview of what to expect vs. other solutions. Cheers!