5 ms·

Little incentive? Even assuming sociopathic tendencies, it doesn't make sense to renege on the pledge and be branded a money-grubbing liar. The internet has a l

by ggreer 12y ago

Little incentive? Even assuming sociopathic tendencies, it doesn't make sense to renege on the pledge and be branded a money-grubbing liar. The internet has a long memory, and people would not trust you in the future.

baddox 12y ago
> Even assuming sociopathic tendencies, it doesn't make sense to renege on the pledge and be branded a money-grubbing liar. But that's just the same incentive for a company to continue providing the same level of service after being acquired.
sliverstorm 12y ago
How about the pain-in-the-butt that is organizing, packaging, and releasing an organic network & development environment when you have other bigger things on your plate? I'm sure there are a few companies here and there with everything already nicely packaged. Yet, most places I've worked, it would be a herculean effort to pull the tangled jungle that is the internal network & development environment into one halfway-functional package. It's less than ideal, but it is usually extremely low on the list of priorities as well as virtually untestable, unless the business model involves a large number of functionally identical VLAN's. Also, names of people are usually not very strongly attached to products.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Who said anything about organizing or packaging? Just put the code up on Github with a reasonable license and walk away. Running and maintaining is of course still a problem, but you can hardly expect a company that is out of business to do that.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    "Just put the code up" isn't always that easy.
  - ufmace 12y ago
    You may have the code, but there might still be a huge pile of problems. Such as: How many application variables are hard-coded to your company's specific network and server configuration? Have you fully documented the configuration of every related server, checked that in, and kept it up to date? Are the required versions of every dependency well documented? Does it use any third-party packages that you have modified, but never checked into your source control? Is any part of it dependent on some massively expensive piece of software or data set that you happen to have easy access to for some reason?
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      I completely agree that open sourcing the project does not guarantee that the project will continue to function. I also think that after a company goes out of business they have no responsibility to keep their project functioning. Once they open source it, anyone is free to put in the work to keep it going and I can't think of a better guarantee a company could reasonably give.
dhimes 12y ago
Not to be a dick, but "One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939934 And as dotBen posted, from their blog: "One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day" And if you follow the comments you'll see that some believe that these promises aren't even meant to be long term. So, simply, we would be stupid to bank on it. Congratulations to the team, though! It shows a great and determined effort, something I greatly admire. And hopefully a means of maintaining trust will emerge.

by ggreer 12y ago

baddox 12y ago

> Even assuming sociopathic tendencies, it doesn't make sense to renege on the pledge and be branded a money-grubbing liar. But that's just the same incentive for a company to continue providing the same level of service after being acquired.

sliverstorm 12y ago

How about the pain-in-the-butt that is organizing, packaging, and releasing an organic network & development environment when you have other bigger things on your plate? I'm sure there are a few companies here and there with everything already nicely packaged. Yet, most places I've worked, it would be a herculean effort to pull the tangled jungle that is the internal network & development environment into one halfway-functional package. It's less than ideal, but it is usually extremely low on the list of priorities as well as virtually untestable, unless the business model involves a large number of functionally identical VLAN's. Also, names of people are usually not very strongly attached to products.

seanflyon 12y ago
Who said anything about organizing or packaging? Just put the code up on Github with a reasonable license and walk away. Running and maintaining is of course still a problem, but you can hardly expect a company that is out of business to do that.
- danielweber 12y ago
  "Just put the code up" isn't always that easy.
- ufmace 12y ago
  You may have the code, but there might still be a huge pile of problems. Such as: How many application variables are hard-coded to your company's specific network and server configuration? Have you fully documented the configuration of every related server, checked that in, and kept it up to date? Are the required versions of every dependency well documented? Does it use any third-party packages that you have modified, but never checked into your source control? Is any part of it dependent on some massively expensive piece of software or data set that you happen to have easy access to for some reason?
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    I completely agree that open sourcing the project does not guarantee that the project will continue to function. I also think that after a company goes out of business they have no responsibility to keep their project functioning. Once they open source it, anyone is free to put in the work to keep it going and I can't think of a better guarantee a company could reasonably give.

dhimes 12y ago

Not to be a dick, but "One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939934 And as dotBen posted, from their blog: "One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day" And if you follow the comments you'll see that some believe that these promises aren't even meant to be long term. So, simply, we would be stupid to bank on it. Congratulations to the team, though! It shows a great and determined effort, something I greatly admire. And hopefully a means of maintaining trust will emerge.