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Beg HN - last day for my open source crowdfunding campaign (neo4django)
- showerst 13y agoWithout following more links, it's completely unclear to me what this project does, who you are, or why I should give you money. Maybe it's just inside-baseball that I don't understand, but I think you need rework your pitch page.
- mhluongo 13y agoSorry! I hadn't expected much non-niche interest in the campaign when I wrote the copy. Neo4django is a Django ORM replacement for the Neo4j graph database. I'm the primary dev, but since our startup supporting the project is on hold, I'm trying to find time to keep up development- this campaign will help me complete the next milestone.
- shmageggy 13y agoYet you promote it on a non-niche forum. What else could you have possibly expected?
- mhluongo 13y agoDo note that I wrote the copy 30 days ago- this is the last day of a month-long campaign. I'd love any actionable advice on the copy.
- leetrout 13y agoIANACW, but for me, something energetic and concise like "Help support bringing the world's leading graph DB to Django" helps me get my head in the game a lot faster. I'm closer to "he's making a DB interface for Django" instead of "what is neo4j". Or even just your opener in your README "neo4django is an Object Graph Mapper that let's you use familiar Django model definitions and queries against the Neo4j graph database" is useful for identifying the players. Considering the HN audience Django would be known but I'm not sure how many people would know about neo4j. (I hadn't heard of it)
- lobotryas 13y agoMaybe I'm a little jaded, but isn't feedback "your copy is confusing, doesn't explain the project or why I should support it" sufficiently actionable advice? If you really care about this project, I recommend taking the initiative on everything instead of waiting for someone to give you the answers.
- Miyamoto 13y agoHe was expecting someone browsing Hacker News, familiar with the content of his software, to gain interest and donate. He was not expecting John Smith the Front End Guru to donate. What else could you have possibly expected?
- mhluongo 13y agoThanks for that.
- OGC 13y agoI still have no idea what it does.
- mhluongo 13y agoDjango has an ORM that works with Postgre, MySQL, and other relational databases. Neo4django mimics the Django ORM, but connects to a graph database- Neo4j. It's a way to use Django with Neo4j, while supporting Django nice-to-haves like the auth library and admin site, in a way that's already familiar to Django developers.
- steve-howard 13y agoGreat. Slap that at the top of the page.
- kanwisher 13y agoI'm really confused why I would want a ORM for a graph database. Seems like its a totally different usecase
- mhluongo 13y agoNot really- objects map better to graphs than relational databases, actually! I typically try to market the project as an OGM - Object Graph Mapper - but there's a bit of confusion there, since it uses the DSL established by the Django ORM. In addition to providing the familiar data-access DSL established by Django for Neo4j, the project also enables auth and admin support atop the graph.
- skrebbel 13y agoIn Neo4J, every node and every edge can have a label and a set of key-value pairs. A label maps very naturally to a class, and its keys map very naturally to fields of that class. Thus, ORM (ehh, OGM really?) makes a lot of sense.
- zeckalpha 13y agoHow does this compare to Bulbflow? http://bulbflow.com/overview/ http://bulbflow.com/overview/
- mhluongo 13y agoBulbflow is great, but a little lower-level and doesn't offer much Django-specific integration (eg auth, admin, signals). It expects you to learn more about Neo4j, for better or worse.
- amirouche 13y agothis is integration with Django, not only an abstraction layer. Also it use Cypher querying language instead of Gremlin.
- mhluongo 13y agoWe use Gremlin for some of the more complicated stuff as well.
- jacquesm 13y agoMaybe instead of begging you could try to find someone that needs it willing to fund development?
- mhluongo 13y agoA number of users have contributed to the campaign so far- this is the last day, thus the begging :)
- Nate75Sanders 13y agoYou're missing his point. Scrap the crowdfunding completely and find SERIOUS (defined as "$1K is nothing") backers for the project -- perhaps a company that wants it.
- mhluongo 13y agoNo, I understood. I chose this format because I'd rather be funded by more, and smaller, contributions than one large sponsor. That might not always be the case, but I think that's where the project is right now.
- jacquesm 13y agoBeing picky about funding is an interesting concept. If one large sponsor picks up the tab why care about the source of the money? Unless it comes with strings attached but that need not be the case. I still don't get it.
- rckclmbr 13y agoMore people giving less money means less pressure for deliverables, and less pressure from a single large entity. He wants to do what he wants to do because he wants it, and as a bonus get paid for it. He's not doing it primarily to make money. That's the way I take it at least.
- bdcravens 13y agoWhat does $1000 get you? Time off to work on the project? In general, I think begging posts are in the best interests of HN.
- civilian 13y agoHere's an idea: Go contact everyone on your stargazers list and ask them if neo4django is used at their company. https://github.com/scholrly/neo4django/stargazers https://github.com/scholrly/neo4django/stargazers
- film42 13y agoI tried pledging like 10 times but bountysource authentication is sucking majorly. Sorry, man.
- rappo 13y agoHey, I'm from Bountysource and saw you're having troubles -- sorry about that. Can you tell me where you're getting stuck? Which method are you using to sign up (or sign in)? What browser/OS?
- nantes 13y agoPersonally, I authed via GitHub, but still got a weird flash message along the lines of "Unable to create new account" and then was redirected to the funding page (the one with amount and rewards, etc) and was able to donate via PayPal without further problems. I wish I could give you better details, but it's Friday night and my attention had wandered before I realized what happened.
- mhluongo 13y agoSorry about the trouble- Thanks for sticking it out!
- aminbandali 13y agoI'm really sorry for not being able to back you. In fact, I don't even have a credit/debit card! Else, I would've helped.. So, sorry about it.. but I tweeted it..
- mhluongo 13y agoThanks so much for the contributions and comments folks. I didn't quite reach the goal for this milestone, but I can now afford to take some time on the project. Updates pending.