Ask HN: Is there a ceiling for developers without a degree? - <AUTHOR>

Do developers without a degree have a ceiling in terms of career advancement? Does a degree matter more in some industries than others? Does the size of a company correlate with how much importance is placed on a degree? Also, have developers without a degree been able to transition into technical, product, or business leadership  roles?<p>A lot of questions, I know :). There is a good deal of talk in tech about how to break into a dev position with either no education or from a different background - my question is about how life looks 10,20,30 years from that point. I'm hopeful the HN community can provide valuable insight! <comment><USER2> The opposite - a degree becomes less and less relevant as you gain experience, both in technical skills and management.

<comment><USER3> Yes the degree gets less relevant, but there are companies who will require a degree to get above a certain level. These are probably larger companies where HR sets a lot of requirements. If you want to/end up working at one of these companies, they may offer a degree program.

Smaller companies won't care, or would be able to waive any such requirements they had.

<comment><USER4> I've experienced this before. I was contracting at a senior level for a decent sized company. They tried to hire me a few times and the offer was actually at a lower level of seniority. I asked them about this and their reasoning was that their HR department only lets non-degreed individuals go so high. I wasn't interested in joining full-time anyway, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having a degree is only really relevant to a subset of the industry that revolves around things that are really difficult to learn outside of a university. There are some companies that wont hire you without a degree, but I find they are the minority.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Do developers without a degree have a ceiling in terms of career advancement?_

No, since you can always start your own company and make yourself CEO.

Assuming you legitimately do have the skills, temperament, patience, $WHATEVER, you can literally go as high as you want. That is not, of course, to suggest that it is easy. I know, I went this route myself, and I can definitely attest that it isn't easy.

 _Also, have developers without a degree been able to transition into technical, product, or business leadership roles?_

I think some guy named Bill Gates did OK for himself. And some dude named Zuckerberg...</comment>


Ask HN: Where do deadpool founders go? - <AUTHOR>

Background: Fresh out of college, I cofounded a social media startup with another friend. We've been plugging away at it for the last 2 years making all the conceivable mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make. What finally broke the camel's back was actually not money but my realisation one day that we were not capable of executing the plan. There were many reasons for this but to name a few:
1) We were not end users of our product. Dog fooding felt like a chore
2) We caught on to the lean startup/4 steps schools of thought too late and could have saved ourselves a ton of mistakes by just reading the 4 steps
3) Inexperience all through the board from product management to marketing. Bad mentors giving bad advice exacerbated matters
So the question is for me is really what next?
The context for this question is that I definitely definitely definitely want to be involved in another startup at some point in my life. Call me a masochist but 2 years of microwaveable food and perpetual worry wasn't enough for me. I've been thinking about the question for a while and here's where I'm at:
Door A: Join a marquee name marketing agency and get really good at marketing as I feel this is my primary value add to my future startup. At night, teach myself Python/Django so that I can bust out an MVP and try to use that to get seed funding
Door B: Join an early stage startup that has experienced founders. Learn from them and leech on to the product manager like a bad rash. At night, teach myself to code etc etc
Door C: Do you have another perspective HN? <comment><USER3> I missed this on the first posting, just caught it because you linked it from another thread.

There are lots of possibilities on where you could go from here, for sure you need to work out in detail _why_ you failed, so nuts and bolts items listed which would translate in to "If we had know this we wouldn't have started this particular project" or "If we had known this our chances of success would have been better". What use is time spent if you don't _really_ absorb and integrate the lessons you might learn from failing.

Then, take some time off to recharge your inspirational batteries, and - <USER2> you're going to hate me for this - try again. But this time with a better plan, with a better way to evaluate the people that give you advice, with a product that you yourself will be the first users of, or that you will be able to sell to a paying customer before launching.

Obviously you have skills, now you need to put them to the right use, it's no point trying to use a saw as a hammer or the other way around and it reads to me as though that was what you were trying to do.

Joining an early stage start-up with experienced founders sounds 'easy' but there are not that many 'early stage start-ups with experienced founders' around, most of them are just like the one you yourself ran and you'll end up being the more experienced employee with a bunch of clueless founders if you're unlucky :)

Maybe take on a regular job and use your spare time to get your 'start-up 2.0' off the ground, some fairly dumb day job is an excellent way to keep your head free for the stuff that you want to do while being able to make ends meet. That trick worked wonders for me in the past, I think that it still is applicable today.

Best of luck, whatever path you choose, your other options are not bad but once the start-up virus is in your blood it is very hard to get rid of it ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. You're right, I'm infected. heh.

</comment></comment><comment> clark-kent "1) We were not end users of our product. Dog fooding felt like a chore"

This may have affected your motivation. Its easier to stay motivated when you build a product you want to use. You know this already since its your #1 point.

You can learn marketing by reading books on branding, advertising and marketing. Learning Python/Django for an MVP is also great. Combine that with plan B. But you know the situation better than anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read a fair bit amount of literature on marketing but I've found that a lot of the books on the market are too high level. It was hard to translate them into immediately actionable steps. I think knowing what book to read at the right time is also really important. Also find the reading books can only get me that far but actually working on different campaigns with different clients will give me a wider perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (mentally) Document every point of failure of your startup, if you're fragile document every point of success too. Thinking through this stuff helps, come up with a single sentence as to why you failed. (just to reiterate your learnings, and ensure you don't do same thing again)

Take 3 months out (live with parents or whatever to survive (to clear head etc)) then take Door B.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'm probably going to do that at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Want to cofound a New news startup with me? As a marketing guy who's tasted failure and still breathes, who wouldn't want you?

Why start from the bottom in hacking when you have a lot to offer someone who's inched up that rope over a few years, which is just what they have to offer you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm.. Im not based physically in the states and I dont like long distance relationships much.

I would be more than happy to give my 2 cents if you're interested in listening. Maybe we can bounce ideas off each idea as well.

Is this something you might be interested in?

<comment><USER5> I'm looking for someone to make all sorts of A/V how-to's and be the face of the company. Since I'm looking at small-town America, it would seem unlikely then that we could help each other here. Besides, I contradict myself. I failed at poetry and took up hacking. By my logic I should be writing better poetry :-)

Just don't feel you owe these guys too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure no prob.

BTW, what does your last sentence mean? Owe who?

<comment><USER5> The people with free advices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take some time off, say 1 month to relax and recap about the learning in writing.

Afterward, go with plan B

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why is everyone advocating option B? Is joining a marketing agency that bad an idea?

</comment><comment><USER8> Door D: Figure out what you want to do (or create). Read up on people who did something similar. Follow a similar path/pattern.</comment>


Mike Shroepfer on Engineering at Scale at Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/10/29/FacebookSeattleEngineeringRoadShowMikeShroepferOnEngineeringAtScaleAtFacebook.aspx <comment><USER2> Another great resource are the Velocity Conference videos on Blip.tv Includes Facebook,Twitter and Myspace.</comment>


Man robs bank to get medical care in jail - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110621/ts_yblog_thelookout/man-robs-bank-to-get-medical-care-in-jail#mwpphu-container

<comment><USER2> Bad title.

The man robbed a bank for health care. He only loses if they don't find him guilty.</comment>


Apple and Amazon cut a deal that upended the Mac resale market - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18624846/amazon-marketplace-apple-deal-iphones-mac-third-party-sellers-john-bumstead <comment><USER2> Wow this is nasty stuff.</comment>


Digg This: Deal or No Deal? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2007/tc20071226_842566.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech <comment><USER2> >In 2008, Digg plans to unveil a "story suggest" feature that recommends articles and other content from Digg's vast user-submission pool based on the kinds of stories an individual user has read, rated, or shared. "We have to throw that out there in order to deal with the mass amount of information on Digg," says Adelson, adding that with such personalization, "your profile page will be much more interesting to you on the first view."

I hope this encourages Reddit to fix their own recommended page.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sticking by the source who told me about Digg bringing in the bank to help them sell. Even if that's not how Digg wants to spin their strategy to Business Week.</comment>


Deep neural network vs. commercial algorithm in low-dose CT image reconstruction - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-019-0057-9 <comment><USER2> I would be worried that the deep neural networks would fill in the blanks with prior information from other patients, which might be incorrect. In other words, the neural network imagines what should be there, and does not faithfully represent what is there

<comment><USER3> Yes, this should be a major concern, especially since CTs are used to detect abnormalities. It's very likely that the vast majority of the training data will be what is considered 'normal' for any given part of the body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's behind a paywall but the use of the "commercial" in the title seems weird (the abstract mentions "commercial iterative" technique fwiw). It seems like any kind of algorithm can be commercial and making this part of the comparison is odd. You could have an open source iterative technique or a commercial neural network approach.

It's somewhat ironic also they make their code available on github but not the actual article.

<comment> ur-whale [https://github.com/hmshan/MAP-NN](https://github.com/hmshan/MAP-NN) and the actual DNN looks like a somewhat shallow residual network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone wants to share the article?

<comment><USER6> sci-hub.tw does</comment></comment>


Worldwide Debt Crisis Unravels: Doomsday Scenario for the Markets - <AUTHOR> http://seekingalpha.com/article/285422-worldwide-debt-crisis-unravels-doomsday-scenario-for-the-markets <comment><USER2> "It becomes quite frightening when a country's debt level is reaching or surpassing its GDP."

This sentence and the accompanying graph told me as much as I needed to know about the author. Debt is total and GDP is annual. If having a debt greater than your GDP is an intrinsic problem, imagine how much worse off we'd be if the earth went around the sun twice as fast. (And yes, I realize that would be a problem for other reasons.)

<comment><USER3> Let alone that GDP isn't a particularly good measurement. For example among many possible, if I sell a house and pay capital gains taxes, the transaction isn't counted</comment></comment>


AMD Aparapi: Java API for Expressing GPU Bound Data Parallel Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.amd.com/developer/2010/10/13/amd-releases-aparapi-a-java-api-for-expressing-gpu-bound-data-parallel-algorithms/ <comment><USER2> For other people interested in high-level GPU programming, might I suggest Theano?

Theano (<http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/>) is a CPU and GPU compiler for mathematical expressions in Python. It combines the convenience of NumPy with the speed of optimized native machine language. For gradient-based machine learning algorithms (like training an MLP or convolutional net), Theano is from _1.6x to 7.5x_ faster than competitive alternatives (including those in C/C++, NumPy, SciPy, and Matlab) when compiled for the CPU and between _6.5x and 44x_ faster when compiled for the GPU. You can read more about it here: [http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/pointeurs/theano_scipy2010...](http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/pointeurs/theano_scipy2010.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> But Java is dead, haven't you heard?

... <_<

But seriously, this is cool. I like that they responded to Linux demand!</comment>


Building a dedicated Rails host - <AUTHOR> http://railsready.com/

<comment><USER2> Hi RailsReady. I highly advise you to move off launchrock and use a a custom site for signups. What does it say to me about your technical skill if a simple sign up website is out of reach? You can even continue to use Launchrock, but use the embedded widget in a custom site. Also, there are several rails tutorials about a easy sign-up page for a startup, one is here [http://railsapps.github.com/tutorial-rails-prelaunch- signup....](http://railsapps.github.com/tutorial-rails-prelaunch-signup.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> We're focusing on building a hosting platform, not a signup page. Thanks though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be far better if you had some more technical information available as to what your platform is built on and what it offers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true and we're putting together more details. More to come.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Comments welcome :)</comment>


Harvard prof tells judge that P2P filesharing is "fair use" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/harvard-prof-tells-judge-that-p2p-filesharing-is-fair-use.ars

<comment><USER2> This sounds like the "put it all on black 23" defense. The unlikely win will change the world. The almost certain loss will likely draw significantly harsher damages.

Maybe Joel Tenenbaum is in a position that harsher damages don't matter, they can only bankrupt him once.

(and, there is no black 23.)

<comment><USER3> Pardon me, but why isn't there a black 23 in this case?

As I understand it, half of deciding 'fair use' is: -is the use of commercial nature or is it for nonprofit educational purposes? -how does the use affect the potential market?

It seems to me that Nesson might actually have it right: the sharing certainly wasn't for profit, and he seems to have evidence showing that there is no effect on the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn5-VN3SH1o></comment>


Don't Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hatchlings.com/post/20171171127/dont-be-evil-how-google-screwed-a-startup <comment><USER2> I lost my Adsense account two years ago, due to valid violations. This saddened me, and was the end of web development for me. The stats were my heroine.

Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March.

I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my new home on the internet.

Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point, because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open.

I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing.

6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching the growth/lotto.

So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push.

I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone. There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many years/services to come.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar thing happen to me...to a point.

It was with adwords...it was back when I was just getting started and I did affiliate marketing. I promoted this weight loss clickbank book...it didn't pan out, so I paused the ads.

My mistake...TWO YEARS later, I get a notice that they've shut down the account with bots because apparently that type of advertising is no longer allowed. So my old approval got tossed...and my account got perma banned over something that happened 2 years prior.

I filed an appeal, and that got ignored.

So I just said screw it, and created a new account. If Google won't play by its own damn rules, and will apply rules retroactively, I don't see why anyone should follow the rule about no duplicate accounts.

So I just signed up for adwords with a po box and did everything via VPN to avoid getting banned for duplicate account(matched via ip address). And it worked just fine.

That's the thing, all this bullshit that Google does...only hurts legitimate publishers.

The black hatters(who these rules are actually supposed to be for) only get a slight slap on the wrist...since all they have to do is just pay $5 to get a legitimate approved Adsense/Adwords account. Then just continue doing whatever they were doing before.

<comment><USER4> So how do you tie in the account to a credit card or bank account?

Won't google detect the same name on the CC or bank account?

<comment><USER5> Names aren't exactly unique.

<comment><USER6> Tax IDs and SSN numbers are.

<comment><USER7> AFAIK SSNs are not unique (1:1 in either respect) in the US.

<http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5969>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault tolerant.

Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes.

It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.

<comment><USER9> But who are the "customers"? There are no less than _FOUR_ parties at play here: Google, the ad buyer, the content provider, and the consumer. And none of their interests are very well aligned. Being "nice" to questionably fraudulent activity (because let's be clear: delaying a fraud ban means that on the margins, they will miss some valid bans and thus lose money for themselves and their advertisers) hurts Google and the consumer at the expense of the interests of smaller content vendors.

I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from the other perspectives.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, but it's insulting that you think those of us who find these stories disgraceful aren't aware of the issues. You think the audience here is skewed? I think you are apologizing for Google where no apology is due.

It is not a given that Google's anti-customer service policy is the right one. There are other tremendously large multinational corporations who have friendly customer service relationships (e.g., Amazon and Apple) and aside from being the "right thing to do" it's working pretty darn well for them from a profit-and-loss perspective.

I don't care how you define "customer". If Google had confiscated 40K from any partner in circumstances resembling these, and refused contact with their partner despite having previously assigned them an account rep, I'd find this shady.

Like pg mentions, this is certainly an opening. Despite your protests, Google's partners don't like this. When partners don't like something, that's an opening for competitors. There are several other ad networks, some at least reputed not to employ such a destructive and passive aggressive customer service strategy.

The only problem is, Google has a near monopoly for search ads. Can you agree that near-monopoly power gives a company the power to adopt abusive policies? It's hard to tell whether Google really is forced to ignore partner emails or whether they are partly able to get away with it due to their market power.

It's not like companies purposely adopt terrible policies. Of course Google currently thinks this is the best trade-off. And this is now our bullhorn to say, no, we don't agree that this is the best trade-off. If we can't hold Google accountable to showing the faintest bit of decency to this partner in this circumstance--assuming the facts are correct as related--when _can_ we complain about a company's policies?

Edit:

People aren't out to get Google. Please, stop with the "I know it's (suddenly, and frankly inexplicably, IMHO) fashionable to Hate teh Google around here", which is a fallacy closely related to ad hominem.

Apple and Amazon are the subject of repeated flames like this one? Please cite a few HN posts where this has come up. Nobody is against Google freezing problematic accounts. People are against arbitrary-seeming policies and poor customer service. Flames alone don't matter. The facts of each case _do_ matter. And in the cases that have come across the transom here, the facts have more often been against Google.

Do you agree that it's in theory possible for a company handling fraud detection in online transactions to behave unethically? Because it almost sound like you're saying "fraud detection is hard, let's go shopping!" Just because a business engages in fraud detection of online transactions doesn't mean their policies are suddenly above reproach.

We are all well aware of the difficulty of detecting fraud in online transactions. This isn't new information. What's at dispute is whether Google is actually forced to treat people poorly during the course of handling online transactions. Most people say no. Ultimately, the government and/or competition will decide.

<comment><USER11> _There are other tremendously large multinational corporations who have friendly customer service relationships (e.g., Amazon and Apple) and aside from being the "right thing to do" it's working pretty darn well for them from a profit-and-loss perspective._

Really? You're citing Apple as a company that's friendlier and more approachable than Google? Is this the same Apple that routinely pulls apps from the app store without rhyme or reason? Is this the same Apple that approves an app quickly, but then takes much longer to approve updates to the same app? Or is this the same Apple that changes the terms of service to severely restrict certain forms of functionality (e.g. in-app purchases) just because that makes its own business model more attractive?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of Google's customer service either. It's extremely difficult to find an actual person to plead your case. It's even more difficult to get that person to overturn the decision the algorithm made. In some cases, it's not even clear that people _have_ the power to overturn the algorithmic decision. But compared to Google's corporate attitude, Apple often seems out and out hostile towards developers using its services.

<comment><USER12> He's probably talking about the Apple that gives customers brand new iphones or upgraded macbook pros when they experience simple hardware issues with their original purchase.

<comment><USER13> That's because the folks that buy Macbooks are customers.

The folks that buys iOS Dev Licenses are the sharecroppers. Don't like massa's rules? Get off massa's field. Or go buy and plant your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is actually an _incredibly_ common practice of Google's, although in most cases they only make off with a few hundred dollars of ad revenue. I personally had it happen to me with a blog. They accused me a of "click fraud", disabled my account, and disappeared with the money they owed me. I did some research and found the same story repeated dozens of times. This has been going on for years.

Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity for appeal.

<comment><USER9> The second paragraph seems like something one could test. Have you?

Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link.

I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something "evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them and figure out what really happened in discovery. _That_ would be a blog post I'd want to read.

<comment><USER14> > _a clear case of Google doing something "evil"_ //

Using $40k of a service (ad space in this instance) and then refusing to return the service providers calls and emails for over 12 months may not be "evil" _per se_ but it's certainly on the malevolent side.

If it ruined someone's livelihood then I'd say it's getting to be in the locus of what could well be described as "evil".

For a company to do this without apology demonstrates a pretty serious ethical deficit (assuming we have the full story before us).

<comment><USER9> You're taking the linked post on an awful lot of (IMHO, unverifiable and undeserved) faith. Yes, if everything they say is true, Google are jerks at best. But a blog post does not a reputation for honesty make, sorry. Even PayPal doesn't hit verifiably honest saints more than one a year or so.

Look, I don't know anything about "hatchlings", I'm just saying I'm not going to believe a post like this prima facie. They look like a garden variety spammy facebook game to me. That's a market pretty well known for playing SEO games and gaming ad systems.

Are these guys guilty or not? No idea. Fight it out, get some evidence, and _then_ come to the public for support.

<comment><USER15> I agree that you shouldn't just take us at our word (and that's why we included as much documentation as we could to support our case).

But it would make it a heck of a lot easier to defend ourselves if Google had actually accused us of doing something wrong. To this day we're not even sure what we're alleged to have done to get our account banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate to suggest this. I repeat, I really hate to suggest this:

It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just can't be allowed to behave this way.

I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the table.

Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with government action is unavoidable.

A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.

<comment><USER3> alternatively, Google can be slapped with a class action lawsuit

I know their emails always say "we've refunded your money to the advertiser"...but has anyone seen proof of this? Any of you that advertise with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks?

<comment><USER17> > ever see a refund for any clicks?

Yes, all the time. Here's what it looks like in the billing summary:

<http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png>

The alt text for the question mark graphic: "Your account has been credited for invalid clicks that escaped automatic detection."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, this is a reality of using AdSense.

I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay.

There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google catches them.

The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different priority.

Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense, then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad stories from successes.

<comment><USER19> > The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make > sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient > and let some bad actors stay.

If that's indeed their attitude, then they deserve to burn long and hot over this shit. And nothing excuses a shutdown in communication, period.

The lesson (to me) is "don't rely on AdSense for any make/break percentage of your revenue."

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I've had several bad experiences with Google's AdSense and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with them. They suspected one of my accounts of click fraud and it took almost 2 years of back and forth to finally get my money back. Even after all of that, they never reinstated my account.

My general attitude is the same, "Don't rely on Google for anything in which some kind of monetary relationship is involved." It's just not worth it - ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it my imagination or have I seen many "Google Screwed Us" posts and never one "Google Made It All Right" posts? It seems to me to be the opposite of Amazon, where I've seen many glowing posts about CS and very few posts about things going incredibly bad.

Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.

<comment><USER22> I have liked Google for a long time but it seems that they really struggle when it comes to customer service. Hopefully, someone will realize that this is important, especially when money is at issue, and do something about it.

<comment><USER23> They don't struggle. It just doesn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "I realize that this probably wasn't done maliciously and that we were probably caught up in some algorithm gone awry"

I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty customer service.

</comment><comment><USER25> The issue with google ads is that it only takes one bad vistor to get your ad sense account disabled.

Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP). With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.

<comment><USER26> Surely it cannot be that basic?

If it is, then it would be relatively simple to automate this behaviour from a range of IPs and disable the accounts of hundreds, if not thousands of ad- sense customers.

<comment><USER27> Actually, what you have proposed is exactly the approach that some black-hat practitioners have used to hide click-fraud.

Some guys will setup a script to go to 5 sites (for example) and click ads on all of them. Their site will be one of the 5. All of the site owners make money, as do they, and because it's distributed across multiple sites, Google does not flag the activity as blatant click-fraud.

If you spend any time a BHW you will see these schemes over and over again, along with people claiming to make hundreds of dollars per day "on autopilot"....

<comment><USER26> That is similar, but I was meaning it less in terms of hiding click-fraud and more in terms of click-fraud-fraud, which would have a far more devastating effect on googles customers and if it was widespread enough would be horrendously bad for google as well.

<comment><USER28> I'm not advocating anything illegal, but this _might_ be just what it would take for Google to fix their policies. Scrape a few million sites with Adsense, rent a Russian botnet, and spam-click ads until Google takes notice.

<comment><USER29> semi-OT, but I've occasionally wondered if these botnets for hire actually come with any sort of term of use/AOP. Certain behaviours are more likely to get the individual zombies identified and potentially notified and cleaned up, so you'd think the botnet herders would try to minimise (or charge a much higher rate for) those sorts of activities.

I'm also curious how actually deploying to a rented/borrowed botnet is done - what's stopping the client from using a payload which nukes and replaces the controller with one of their own, stealing it from the owner?

<comment><USER30> I don't know for sure, but perhaps the botnet provides higher level abstractions (DDoS, spam mailer, click bots, etc), or a sandboxed environment. "Heroku for botnets".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have no recourse at all.

I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a _little_ something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was.

Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.

<comment><USER32> Even if the "personal site" is kinkybattledungeonsandfoodfights.com, any account holder has the right to know what they did wrong.

<comment><USER33> The problem is that they don't have any rights. Google makes the rules for Adsense and you need to follow them. You could try to sue them in court, but do you really want to spend thousands of dollars and waste all kinds of time?

Something similar happened to me with Amazon. They kicked me off, never gave me a real reason, had automated responses, and now just ignore me. They also held $5000 for 3 months. I guess with 100% feedback and no complaints, they need to worry about me scamming them.

You never think that if you are following all the rules that something like this will happen to you, but it will. I now will not base any income off of third-parties.

It might be nice for some secondary income, but the risk is too high that they will destroy your revenue stream.

It's sick that so many people make these companies thousands and thousands of dollars/month and they can't even give them the common courtesy of a real person to talk to when problems like this arise.

The only reason they can get away with it is because they are a de facto monopoly.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Perhaps having a "right" is too strong of word. But I think anyone that has been told their account is banned because of some generic "risk" would want to know exactly what rule they violated... particularly if $40k is at stake. And while Google may be well within their right to just ban the account and never speak to the account holder again, then EVERYBODY needs to know that this can happen without warning and without recourse. I would imagine that the more people this happens to and the more people that know it, the fewer people would even start down that path.

The real shame is that it is more likely to scare off more legit accounts than fraudsters. People with fraud (or gaming the system) in mind are just going to keep creating accounts and collecting as fast as they can before it gets shut down... and then move on and do it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a textbook example of why it's never smart to hinge one's profitability upon the whims of another company.

I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and gone the next.

Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.

<comment><USER34> SaaS is "software as a service" but what is PaaS? Can you give an example?

<comment><USER35> Platform As A Service. Heroku & Amazon Web Services are both examples. In fact, they're nested examples!

<comment><USER36> Actually, AWS is generally categorized as Infrastructure-as-a-Service-- although it's added a number of higher-level services that are more PaaS-like. (EC2 and S3 are definitely IaaS level. Elastic Beanstalk is pretty much a PaaS. Other services are in-between.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What else could Hatchlings have done to prevent this? I know people are saying, "don't rely on someone else for your profitibility", but if you are going to work with Google what other steps can you take?

He seems to have done all the right things:

1) Found an account manager. 2) Formed relationships with public google folks. 3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.

<comment><USER27> Assuming that his accounting of the facts is accurate, he did do all of the right things. That's why the "Dont rely..." comments are relevant. The affiliate-program market (and that's all Adsense is - a unique form of affiliate program) is almost universally open to this type of abuse.

Would you want to work for a company where you never got to meet or talk to your employer, you never knew for sure how much your paycheck would be, or exactly when it would be mailed/deposited? That's what we all do when we signup for Adsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or comments you can email me at email@example.com. We appreciate the feedback.

<comment><USER15> Hi Tom, I am the founder of Hatchlings. Thanks for looking into this. We completely understand the need to fight fraud. We've spent heavily on advertising as well and rely on Google and others to make sure our spend is not going to waste.

Our beef here is not even necessarily with the false positive. The main problems here are that

a) We have never been accused of wrongdoing by Google. This makes it very hard to defend ourselves.

b) That it takes making a lot of noise in a very public manner to get any sort of response.

and c) That we had a working relationship with Google and a track record of working with our account manager to improve our ad placements, etc.

If there was a legitimate concern with our "traffic quality" why didn't someone at Google give me a call to talk about it and see what we could do to fix whatever issues there apparently were?

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the additional context. Will look into this and get back in touch via email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is too large for a small claims court, and too small to retain lawyers and suit Google.

But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits.

This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason.

What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too, and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour.

In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates. Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate system.

<comment><USER40> This is the best idea/solution I've read yet, and a clearly appropriate way (at least in the US) to deal with Google on this issue.

Well done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> [Edited at ~15min, original comment below] This "personal site" was <http://guitarhero-4.com>, which was a thin affiliate site using a brand name without permission (ref: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746>).

I think we've found the problem...

[EDIT: original comment was: Looking at [http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-5.com/) (via <http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png>), it appears that this "personal site" was a seedy affiliate site using a brand name without permission.

I think we've found the problem...]

<comment><USER15> It appears that our account rep mis-typed the URL in that email reply. My site was actually guitarhero-4.com, here's the orignal email we got from them: <http://i.imgur.com/2mcfo.png>

I honestly don't think that site had anything to do with the ban though as there was over 2 years in between those two incidents.

<comment><USER42> Don't be so sure. Google has been known to ban Adwords accounts for ads that were deleted years ago because the content of a domain that has obviously been allowed to lapse and been re-registered by someone else has changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Great timing on the article. Easter is here... good way to acquire new customers in the "festive" mood.

As the cliché goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

</comment><comment><USER44> When Google inevitably smooth this over to avoid the bad PR, just spare a thought for the hundreds of smaller sites who don't have the option to generate that kind of press (Google screwed me out of $50 on my blog about kittens doesn't have the same ring to it)

</comment><comment><USER45> That's the main problem with automating as much as possible, and having as few customer service reps as possible. It feels like talking to a brick wall when something non-standard happens.

If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.

</comment><comment><USER46> My personal experience with Google is that they have almost a pathological obsession with making it as hard as possible for you to get in touch with them.

They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support. It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of enterprise customers.

<comment><USER47> There is no customer service for Google Apps besides an email. And even that, you won't get a response for days, besides a canned, "Thank you for contacting Google...".

And look at their phone, which failed IMHO. One of the main reasons was the lack of customer service. Like a customer is gonna email you and wait 3 days for a reply when his phone doesn't work.

And now they are about to release a tablet? Good luck.

<comment><USER46> That sucks for Android users. You want a Nexus device because it has a better chance of getting an update but otoh support sucks because it is Google.

To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with Google not supporting free products (although it is good customer service to do so). However, this bad behavior applies to products and support that customers pay for which IMO is unacceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> To me this highlights a much wider issue. Basically, you fall fowl of some web-admin and that's you banned for life with absolutely no come back what so ever. And the sad fact is that too often it boils down to a bruised ego, and then colleagues backing up their friend.

I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site. Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have a similar experience, and this is why I left the Google Services thing. I signed up for Adsense 6 years ago. I worked with it for 3 years and I was making $150/month with it. Then I decided to change the payee name (was using my sisters'). I closed that account and signed up for another one. A month later, I made around $147 and got my account suspended.

The reason: A risk to advertisers. I tried to contact Google but I received the same email the author did. I didn't care much, after all, it's $140. Why would Google care?

But $40K? That's quite serious.

</comment><comment><USER50> Thank you for sharing, and preventing me from potentially falling into this trap.

I was considering doing an ad based project until I read this.

<comment><USER51> So, you should balance this. There are lots of people out there that do well serving ads. It really depends on your product and your alternative avenues to revenue. It is a cautionary tale, but you shouldn't close the door because of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> You may want to read "Why I sued Google and won" [1]. The guy has a similar story to yours, sued Google for the revenue already earned, and won all of it (it was only ~$700).

For $40k, I'd sure look into it.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued- goo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and- won_b_172403.html)

<comment><USER53> If you read the follow-up, you will see that he actually _lost_ an appeal by Google: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google- bot...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to- ap_b_213176.html)

<comment><USER54> In particular:

> Despite Google's objections to what they perceived to be technical > violations of their AdSense terms of service, they also had an entirely > separate (but confusingly similar-sounding) program called AdSense for > Domains, which handled the exact problem I was trying to solve--that of > using advertising to profit from "parked," or unused, domain names, much > like putting a billboard on a vacant lot. Though AdSense for Domains was > closed to the public for years, Google did finally open it up December 11, > 2008, just two days after my account was cancelled. Had it allowed my > company to join in the first place, I would have had no reason to create my > own billboard using "normal" AdSense since Google would have already taken > care of it for me, and no violation would have occurred.

"If Google would've let me into their private club I wouldn't have had to trespass in it" probably didn't sit too well with the judge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why would google sooner disable a site showing ads and remove all revenue streams, than simply stop showing ads to "repeated" violators (based on IP, or whatever else they use to detect clickfraud) on that site, and only refund money made by THAT SECTOR the clicks came from?

<comment><USER56> Presumably, Google assumes that the account owner is the person or entity committing the click fraud and will find ways to continue perpetrating the fraud if only an IP or range is blocked. It's probably much less of a headache to just nuke an account than play a game of cat and mouse with fraudsters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Wow, this makes Paypal look like angels. I suppose we are just starting see the effects of ad monopoly. Once a few more alternatives are taken away, there will be no where to hide.

</comment><comment><USER58> Google seems to be very good at what they are doing to it's customers & will continue to do so until someone in that company wakes up & smells the garbage they hand out. Hatchlings is not the first small enterprise they have taken advantage of nor are the people who invest their time & money in said "game" the first or the last. Delve into another of Facebook's "games" called SuperPokePets (SPP) originally brought to FB by a company called Slide that Google decided wasn't raking in the big bucks fast enough so executives in Google decide to stop the game with a minimal warning to it's customers. SPP in all aspects that we the users could see was making plenty of money to keep the game active but instead higher-ups decided to hang it up causing loss of fun & incredible hurt to thousands of children and their parents. Google is a very selfish,greedy, animal. They will,I hope, eventually find themselves with very few customers,advertisers,or money which they value the most. Corporate greed does not go unpunished in this world anymore. They took people's trust & their money then hung us all out to dry without an apology or a reasonable explanation. I see no reason to give them anymore of my time or my money.

</comment><comment><USER59> I was banned from adsense about 6 years ago... using my main personal email account.

I tried to log back in a few times over the years, and after about 4 or 5 years I was told that they no longer had any record of my account.

I signed up again (using the same email and personal information) without a hitch. I have been receiving checks for many months now.

</comment><comment><USER60> I have a question about what happens when an account gets disabled/suspended while there's a positive balance. Does Google keep that surplus, or return it to advertisers? If the former, that's truly evil, so let's say the latter.

If they return to advertisers, would they suddenly see a drop in their budget spent, and number of clicks produced? For example, say I have an AdWords account and yesterday I owe Google $100 for 100 clicks, and today someone who had a balance from my ads got suspended, and they generated 2 clicks at $1 each. Does my bill go down to $98, and clicks to 98? If so, that's pretty weird.

Does anyone who has an AdWords account know?

<comment><USER61> dangrossman posted a link to a screenshot showing "click quality" account credits.

search this HN thread for "in the billing summary" to find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I would like to make sure that people here understand one thing. The hatchlings guys are doing it wrong.

Who's to blame in this story? The guys who based their business on something they had absolutely no control on, or the company using algorithms to protect its customers (the advertisers)? I am absolutely not defending Google here, but honestly, this has been said a thousand times, ffs, do not base your business on AdSense.

Better, the more people stop using AdSense, the easier it is gonna be for a competitor (your next startup?) to come, and the more chance we have to see a change coming from Google.

</comment><comment><USER63> I spread the word, sorry for your problems, but they will help other people and me (and you too once you swallow your pride).

Keep working at it, you got something. The fact that they are even willing to screw you tells you so.

</comment><comment><USER64> Conspiracy Theory: Isn't this a great way to boost earnings before the end of a quarter? "Hey, we have a $50 million shortfall, let's close down some AdSense accounts and take their money".

It's one thing to suspend an account and say "as of tomorrow, we dont want to do business with you and won't pay you for clicks going forward" - they don't have to provide a reason, they are a private company and can do whatever they want.

However, when you're seizing money, whether its hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands, there needs to be proof and an appeal process. Algorithmically closing down accounts and seizing cash just doesn't work. Plus, it seems like it'd be all to easy to get a competitors account shut down by running a bot and generating fake clicks on their site...

<comment><USER32> From the article: "Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers."

Unless Google never refunds to "the affected advertisers," there is no motive other than preferring algorithms to humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Happened to me, it sucks - luckily it was on a small site and not one that I was relying on for income. Good lesson not to rely on third party advertisements in the future.

</comment><comment><USER66> I guess he will get his account back because someone at Google is looking at this now, but this also proved that their appeal system is broken for the vast majority.

</comment><comment><USER67> The number of comments mentioning similar events are frightening. I always thought these were isolated incidents, flukes if you like. Apparently not.

</comment><comment><USER68> It happened to me for a blog where adsense was removed for years.

I moved my adwords campain for other business sites since then and advocate it when I can.

</comment><comment><USER69> If they're screwing people over, sounds like it's time for a lawsuit, not yearning for a startup white knight to ride to the rescue.

</comment><comment><USER47> The main problem here is that Google has god awful customers service. Even for their paying customer on Google Apps. Just terrible.

</comment><comment><USER70> There should be a sub-clause to "Don't Be Evil": "Don't Be Indifferent".

<comment><USER71> There is. Being indifferent, in certain situations, is being evil.

And Google isn't being indifferent here, there is well documented extreme hardship created by Google's choice to operate in the way they do. They know this and choose to continue their behavior. It appears as long as Google believes it is more profitable to act in this way they will continue to do so. I would imagine (based on their actions and words) if this behavior was to negatively impact their estimates of their profits then they would change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Posting from a throwaway handle, so that there is no way that Google would track me down.

Our company uses AdSense, and we have not been disabled so far. Our monthly revenues are much larger than Hatchling's. We have user-generated content. Despite our MOST extensive, multi-tier keyword-based content screening system, we are terrorized by Google weekly, from noreply address, that AdSense ads are disabled on this or that user's page, due to various violations found (often in the content in obscure languages, e.g. Hungarian , Finnish, Turkish), threatening to shut down the whole account. We are aware that the account can be shut down at any moment, and have been diversifying our ad revenue component for the last couple of years, using CasaleMedia, TribalFusion, Adbrite, taking conscious cuts in ad revenue compared to AdSense in exchange for security. Those companies actually care about your revenue.

DO NOT RELY on ADSENSE as a sole revenue provider for your startup! Do not! AdSense is only a good idea either if your revenue is negligible, or if you are a highly public high profile client like MySpace, where they KNOW that they cannot get away without serious negative PR.

<comment><USER53> On my opinion, this is why Google Payments never took off: they used the same smart-ass approach to shut down merchant accounts, knowing when a merchant was about to commit payment fraud _before_ it was actually committed. In the case of sale of physical goods, an account termination could be much more harmful, so people stuck with PayPal, no matter how imperfect it was.

<comment><USER73> I don't understand. If you're smart enough to shut down an account _before_ it does anything fraudulent, then you have no conceivable excuse not to pay the balance out when you close the account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My own experience: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084>

</comment><comment><USER74> when i hear "don't be evil", i immediately thought whoever said this must have something that _is_ evil, as for a typical good behaved company, it does not need say this loudly to itself or somebody else, in fact, this kind of slogan will not even come to its mind at all.

</comment><comment><USER75> On an unrelated note:

> Sorry, due to a security vulnerability this browser is not supported. You > might like Google Chrome.

I actually hate Google Chrome, it's Internet Explorer 6 with a service pack. You don't support Opera? Seriously? For a long time Opera has been the most secure browser on the market, I don't know it's status in the last year. What security hole?

<comment><USER15> They don't honor no-cache headers in the same way that all other browsers do which allows for duplication of virtual goods in some cases. We've spoken with their dev team but it's apparently a "feature" not a bug.

Our V2 that is coming out soon will definitely support Opera though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> DuckDuckGo

<comment><USER77> I am downvoting you because this adds nothing to the discussion. While DDG may be a worthy search engine and a good alternative to Google as a search destination, it does not offer an alternative or a solution to the problem that is AdSense related.

<comment><USER77> (for those downvoting him further - there's no reason to get him hell banned, pretty sure he got the point!)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Cryptocurrencies?: A Defective System - <AUTHOR> https://whycryptocurrencies.com/a_defective_system.html <comment><USER2> I think Cryptocurrencies has a bright future. So you can't mark them as Defective System.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not referring to cryptocurrencies.</comment></comment>


Airbnb Open Sources SQL Lab, a SQL IDE That Ships with Superset - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/superset-scaling-data-access-and-visual-insights-at-airbnb-3ce3e9b88a7f#.ba236ih0e <comment><USER2> Wow a new SQL IDE, I cant wait to try it out. I'm so tired of SQL Developer that I didn't bother reinstalling it after a laptop refresh at work.

For those that care my objections were simply the 90's design and UI paradigm, shortcuts that clash with everything else I'm used to, and other superficial stuff. Plus it got hung up a lot.

I've been so jealous of the beautiful IDE I've seen Java devs using, IntelliJ; maybe superset will rekindle my excitem--oops, looks like jetbrains makes a SQL IDE called Datagrip.

I guess I'll check them both out. I'm pulling for the new guys!</comment>


Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/43770 <comment><USER2> I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale?

Cloud providers have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants, profiting immensely from millions of lines of open source code while giving little of it back, and we seem to be largely fine with this. Will we be fine depending on their services when the cloud providers become the new Oracle, free to raise prices extravagantly when we have no other choice?

If MongoDB Inc can't compete in the enterprise cloud market simply because they are not AWS (as mentioned by threeseed), what should their business model be? Licensing to cloud providers would have been ideal, but the response from AWS in this case wasn't encouraging. By boycotting MongoDB in this case are we telling future innovators that their work will simply be stolen and resold for profit if it gets popular? That scares me a lot more than some project changing their license.

<comment><USER3> We live in the world where we can see a _bait and switch_ for what it is.

MongoDB was advertised as being _Open Source_ and _Free Software_ , distributed under an OSI-compliant and FSF-compliant license. Now they are trying to eat their cake and have it too.

> " _then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it > wholesale?_ "

Because that's not what open source is about. Open source is about contributing to the commons, such that your competitors can make a profit from your work.

If your competitors aren't able to do that, then the software is not open source. Period. And in this case, we should point out that MongoDB Inc by owning the copyright doesn't have to play by the same rules, they aren't beholden to the same rules as everyone else.

> " _If MongoDB Inc can 't compete in the enterprise cloud market simply > because they are not AWS (as mentioned by threeseed), what should their > business model be?_"

Why the fuck should we care what their business model would be? That's for them to figure out.

But if they sell something as open source and they close source it, then we, the schmucks that bought into it, will point out that MongoDB is no longer open source and treat it as a proprietary piece that comes with the caveats of proprietary software, like lock in, etc.

So I hope somebody forks MongoDB from the version when it was open source.

<comment><USER4> _I hope somebody forks MongoDB from the version when it was open source._

That no one has done that already suggests that no one thinks it's worth doing. And it isn't, Postgres is properly free, and more than surpasses Mongo in all aspects.

<comment><USER5> Coming from Rethink and Mongo I don't like SQL. I don't want rows at all, or documentation that assumes a table model. Having a JSON data type doesn't mean you're a document store.

<comment><USER6> Postgres can do JSON. Does MongoDB have schemas yet?

<comment><USER5> The comment you're replying to mentions that Postgres can do JSON.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I see what they meant now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From their official formula: [https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew- brew/blob/master/Formula...](https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew- brew/blob/master/Formula/mongodb-community%403.4.rb#L9)

Every time I run `brew update` (or perhaps _any_ brew command), I make 6 requests to "[https://downloads.mongodb.org/current.json"](https://downloads.mongodb.org/current.json") (one for each version of the formula), and one request to get the SHA for mongdb-shell?

This defaults the whole point of a formula - metadata describing an installable. If that .json file is compromised in any way then suddenly you are downloading anything from _anywhere_ with no checks. By embedding the hash and the download URL in the formula, like literally every other formula does, the download will fail if the release is modified. And there is a git audit trail of any formula modifications.

No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would love to see an overview of companies that fell into the mongoDB trap and have / are migrating to another DB store.

<comment><USER9> What you do mean by the "mongoDB trap"?

Are you saying companies are hurt by the license, or are you saying companies are hurt by software's behavior (e.g. consistency model)?

<comment><USER10> A lot of companies got lured into using mongodb because it was so developer friendly. It cost nothing and it was easy bring in the back door and alleviated the need for thought.

Then their sales people started coming around and asking for insane sums of money (like $10,000 per instance per year plus 100% markup on hardware to run in AWS - support is extra). They were worried about amazon and others offering a better so next they changed the license.

If it had been SQL it would have been easy to drop in another database. But Mongodb is so different from anything else that you need a major rewrite to get away from it. Postgres has some similiar functionality but it's not drop in. Amazon has a more or less public beta of DocumentDB which as far as I can tell is a mongodb compatible interface to aurora backend - it works but doesn't have the polish of RDS yet.

<comment><USER11>
      > If it had been SQL it would have been easy to drop in another database.

Not true at all. Way too many organisations are locked into Oracle just because it's too hard to switch to something cheaper.

<comment><USER12> Why is this? If Oracle uses SQL why can you not just export the database, make some transformations, and import it into a PostgreSQL db for example?

<comment><USER13> I feel like you're imagining that SQL is more of a standard interface than it actually is. No two relational databases are quite the same and you'll be stuck combing through your entire app looking for obscure syntax usage that depends on Oracle specific extensions or quirks.

There's no incentive to not extend or try to improve SQL semantics because for proprietary databases it increases lock-in which is good for sales and for OSS databases the extensions are genuinely positive and increase developer productivity and you don't feel bad about locking your users in because it's OSS.

<comment><USER4> I think it is probably easier to port from one SQL dialect to another, than from Mongo's hokey JSON based query language to anything else.

<comment><USER14> Also not easy.

We tried to do a migration from Sql Server to Postgres.

Even went as far as building a parser/compiler to transform Sql. Certain things are just too difficult to handle.

1\. Sql Server supports arbitrary sql statements in queries. Postgres does not.

2\. Data types are not the same.

3\. Feature sets at the 'interface edge' between the client library and the engine differ. For example, Sql Server queries can return an arbitrary number of results.

It's true that Mongo uses a custom language, but with Mongo - you are unlikely to have any significant business logic in your data layer.

Also their API surface is relatively simple.

For example, FoundationDB has a layer that mimics the Mongo API. Amazon has one as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nevi-me I understand the removal of non-OSS-compliant software from core distributions, and see little controversy in that, as it's the risk of changing a license.

What I don't understand is the many people who are talking about AWS' replacement being a solution for people migrating from MongoDB.

From the comments, it seems:

\- it's expensive to use. Someone spent $15 for 2KB data over 3 days [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20862196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20862196)] \- it's only compatible with MongoDB 3.4, which seems not to be enough for some people.

What are the reasons to move to AWS' very offering that MongoDB (and others) are trying to prevent from making money off their investment? Is it a feeling of 'betrayal' that the license has now changed?

MongoDB has had an attitude that the source for the community product is available, but that they mostly develop their product using their core team. [[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mongodb-ceo-tells- hard-...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mongodb-ceo-tells-hard-truths- about-commercial-open-source/)]

So, did the change to their Server License thing result in people having to pay for the Community Edition?

Is the move from MongoDB because it's incompatible with one's data needs (in which case, why didn't one do enough research)?

Why move to AWS' offering instead of 'supporting' these companies? If AWS and Azure thought to create MongoDB Compatible abstraction layers, then surely they saw something useful/good in parts of the database? Then why punish the companies that innovated in creating these technologies?

Lastly, the idea that companies will be fully-OSS and make money from unicorn dust fails once those holding these opinions are on the driver's seat. How many foundations do you donate to, that support the OSS that you use?

The current trend of continuing to want things for free from companies, but being willing to spend an extra fee for a 'managed service' from a cloud provider will hurt a lot of otherwise innovative companies in the coming decade.

<comment><USER15> If people accept that what MongoDB did with its license is acceptable because the OSS model failed for them, then the viability and future of the OSS model might come into question.

People tend to come to believe something organically and then later cherry- pick facts and observations that back those beliefs up. So even if MongoDB did what it had to do, or did what would otherwise be morally defensible in the most popular moral frameworks (as I personally believe to be the case), people who have a personal or emotional stake in the future of OSS will be looking outwardly for a villain. If it failed, it must be a failure of someone who crossed OSS. MongoDB seems the only choice for a villain in that regard.

<comment> nevi-me I agree with your statement.

Rationally, MongoDB's decision made sense because of the real actual threat of AWS and others offering alternatives (at various levels of baking) that seek to undermine MongoDB.

If this is the path that we choose to take, we'll see more companies go back to the closed source model (which MongoDB hasn't gone in).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Serious question: can someone explain why the server side public license is not an open source license, with specific reference to AGPL? Is it because of the provision forcing the source code release of auxillary software used to run the software as a service? As far as I can tell, it meets the FSF's free software definition and the only that seems questionable in the OSI's open source definition is point 9.

<comment><USER17> > can someone explain why the server side public license is not an open source > license

Depends on what you think 'open source' licence means. The source is literally openly available. There are just some extra restrictions on what you can do with it. The FSF and the OSI don't own what 'open source' means, of course - the term predates them and comes from intelligence.

<comment><USER18> > The FSF and the OSI don't own what 'open source' means, of course - the term > predates them and comes from intelligence.

Ref please?

The FSF was certainly around pushing for "free software" long before "open source" was commonly used to refer to copyleft / permissive licenses. And the sole purpose for OSI's existence is exactly to define what is and is not "open source".

In any case, it is very important to define terminology and protect its use. The goal of "open source" is certainly not to simply let people _look_ at the source, but to let people _use_ the source in certain ways. People have thought long and hard about exactly what the minimum standards are to consider something "free software" or "open source".

You can find the core criteria for OSI here: [https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

And the "Four Freedoms" for the Free Software Foundation here:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)

<comment><USER17> > Ref please?

Both ESR and the OSI will tell you this.

For example [http://www.catb.org/~esr/open- source.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html)

> Yes, we're aware of the specialized meaning "open source" has in the > intelligence community. This is a feature, not a bug.

The OSI tried and failed to trademark 'open source' \- because it's simply a description.

[https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open- source.p...](https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php)

> We have discovered that there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent > and Trademark Office would register the mark "open source"; the mark is too > descriptive

Maybe it turned out to be a bug after all!

<comment><USER18> While ESR's link establishes precedence, it doesn't actually tell me what it means in an intelligence context.

From Wikipedia [1]:

> Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is data collected from publicly available > sources to be used in an intelligence context.

IOW, the "source" in "open-source context" isn't actually talking about "source" as in "source code", but "source" as in "source of information". Not really related.

Whether or not they could trademark the term, when people in our community say "open source", they specifically mean something which matches OSI or FSF's definitions.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- source_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence)

<comment><USER17> > IOW, the "source" in "open-source context" isn't actually talking about > "source" as in "source code", but "source" as in "source of information". > Not really related.

ESR says _specifically_ that it's related - he says the relation is a 'feature' of the name, even.

<comment><USER19> Some features start as happy accidents.

ESR was the president of the OSI when it published the Open Source Definition and applied for the trademark. Justifying a weaker definition can't be why he called it a feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can somebody tell me what is wrong is SSPL? I just don't understand what this hostility is all about. A company creates a crucial infrastructure component which is a database, open sources it, everybody can use it for free, cloud vendors started just installing it on their servers or making clones of it and making profit off it, everybody is using a component that took years and millions of dollars to develop but the company that created it cannot even get profit from its own product. I just can't understand why would a company open sources its products if this is the result. The product is free to use, but for profit entities using this product MUST pay the maker if they are using it as a SaaS which is a zero effort operation.

This just doesn't happen in any other industry, if you go to a baker, you must pay for the bread, you can't in most cases even ask how this bread was made or know for sure that price was fair or not, and mind you this is just slice of bread, while in technology it takes years of experience and knowledge just to create something as crucial as a database, and yet people expect everything to be free, very liberal licensing to even profit from the product without sharing it with the original maker. I don't even like or even respect MongoDB as a database, but the amount of hostility towards anybody trying to make money off a FREE and OPEN SOURCE complex software is totally beyond me.

<comment><USER21> Software licensed under the SSPL is not "free" in either sense of the word. It's not free as in beer, because I must pay to use it. It's not free as in speech, because it violates Freedom 0 of the four fundamental freedoms [1]: I can't run it as I wish, for any purpose.

More practically, MongoDB offers their own managed hosting service. Are they paying the Linux Foundation for the OS they're almost certainly running? How about nginx / HAProxy / Let's Encrypt / whatever else they're using in their stack? This isn't to say that there's anything wrong with charging for software, but it's pretty hypocritical to point their finger at others for profiting off free software whilst doing so themselves.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition)

<comment><USER20> afaik the user doesn't pay for MongoDB, you can use it freely, read the code, modify; if I understand correctly SSPL is basically AGPL/GPL but with clause that cloud vendors that want to use this product to provide a SaaS version must pay to the maker. I don't think this is any unfair esepcially if this project was made from scratch by the maker and not a fork off another OSS project.

<comment><USER21> Cloud vendors are "users", too. I'm not saying it's fair or unfair, just that it's not free. MongoDB is of course within their rights to charge to use their software, but they're not somehow being exploited by those who profit from it without paying — after they offered it for free! — when they themselves profit off the labor of _the same people_ without compensating them.

Put another way: Amazon is a corporate member of the Linux Foundation. Why is it okay for MongoDB to profit off Amazon's labor without paying, but not vice versa?

<comment><USER20> Okay, what if I want to offer total freedom to users but not for other competing companies? There is no single license that can protect a company that creates a FOSS product. It's just ridiculous that a company creates a product for free and another uses it as is and sells it for profit by just "hosting" it. Esepcially for the case of a database, the only way to make money is by having managed service or licesning it to cloud vendors. I can't think of any other way of monetizing such a product

For the case of Amazon sponsoring linux, it's in the very interest of Amazon that Linux stays alive and active because all their billions from AWS comes by running linux kernel as infrastructure, not to mention having the advantage to influence the components being added and maintained that result directly in more profit for them. Linux foundation is totally different in its structure and goals from a for-profit company like Mongo.

<comment><USER21> _> Esepcially for the case of a database, the only way to make money is by having managed service or licesning it to cloud vendors. I can't think of any other way of monetizing such a product_

What about charging all their users? It's worked out fine for Oracle.

The current licensing scheme is fine, too. Again: no one has any issue with Mongo charging their users! It's just not open source software.

 _> For the case of Amazon sponsoring linux, it's because the very interest of Amazon that Linux stays alive and active because all their billions from AWS comes by running linux kernel as infrastructure, not to mention having the advantage to influence the components being added and maintained that result directly in more profit for them._

The question remains, though: why is it acceptable for Mongo to profit off Amazon's open-source contributions without compensating them (or at least donating to the projects themselves), but not vice versa?

 _> Linux foundation is totally different in its structure and goals from a for-profit company like Mongo._

I don't understand your point here. Mongo isn't owed anything extra just because they've decided to structure themselves as a for-profit company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a question: has anyone simply forked MongoDB from the time just before the license change? Owners of open source software can change the license, but can they change the license of old code?

<comment><USER23> IANAL, but this happens fairly often within the community. My loose understanding is that code released under the AGPL remains licensed under the AGPL; the license can't just be retroactively revoked like that. The company may require that active forks adopt a new name and branding due to trademark disputes, but this is a different matter not covered by the license.

I was _not_ able to find an active fork; the closest thing I'm finding so far is here, but it hasn't seen any activity for 7 months:

[https://github.com/normousdb/normous](https://github.com/normousdb/normous)

<comment><USER22> Very cool, thank you. It seems like the original AGPL license should have worked for companies like MongoDB. But, their company, they can do what they like and lose users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> With MongoDB's license there is another reason to migrate away from it. I migrated an app from MongoDB to postgres. I ended up just using a varchar to store the IDs. The Mongo style IDs are in addition to an integer primary key, so joins happen with integers, but every time a user is shown the IDs, in the URLs, it's a BSON ID. It hasn't caused any issues, performance or otherwise, but there are thousands rather than millions of records. It's because of Django, not postgres, that I decided to use varchars to store the IDs rather than bytes or integers. Django is flexible but there are always tradeoffs from going outside the framework. Finally, and this is my favorite thing about how I went about it: all BSON ids have the column name of "id" and all integer primary keys have the column name of "pk", whether or not they have a BSON ID (through tables don't need their IDs exposed to the API).

<comment><USER25> PostgreSQL do have a variable unlimited length datatype : text. AFAIK, Varchar is internally a subtype that bound the text type. So in extreme situations you might even get a very slight performance advantage using text instead of varchar.

<comment><USER24> Interesting. When is there an advantage of using varchar in postgres, other than limiting the field length?

<comment><USER26> I think never, except if you want your SQL to be portable to other dbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the executive summary of what's going on with Mongo, and why other commenters are referring to using mongo as a mistake?

<comment><USER28> MongoDB changed their licensed from an open source license to one that has restrictions specifically aimed at busting up Mongo (the company)'s competitors who offer managed MongoDB services.

These restrictions mean it is no longer an open source project. It is also worrying for a lot of people that mongo was willing to change license terms like this, as it means they may be willing to do so in the future if it brings them more money.

Since mongo has reached the point where they're competing on license terms, not on service or via their product, mongodb may not be the best choice for someone starting a new project. At this point lots of other options exist, with stable and open source solutions like postgres having document store features built in as well. In fact for a lot of use cases postgres already performs much better than mongodb, leaving the real question to be why anyone would choose to use mongodb at this point.

<comment><USER29> Couldn't someone just fork on the last fully open source version of Mongo, similar to the genesis of CentOS?

<comment><USER30> Following the links here: "mongodb and email@example.com do not build from source anymore" -> "We gave up on this as we have no clue on how to fix the build, or it would take too much time."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A lot of people advocate PostgreSQL as a replacement. Why not elasticsearch? It's also a document store with a good history.

At a previous job I shipped Mongo as the store (under AGPL) because at the time the replication story for PGSQL was too complex compared to mongo. But I reached a point where I was going to replace Mongo with elasticsearch and get rid of Solr at the same time.

<comment><USER32> I may have a project coming up that will include a document store component. It's in-house, with the maximum number of simultaneous users under 15, so scalability that way isn't a concern.

However, the number of documents is large, and for some documents previous versions will have to be stored, as well.

With Mongo out, do you have any suggestions? Is PostgreSQL the best option here? I'm fairly new to this space.

<comment><USER33> I do like this, millions of record, prime fields in the table, then a jsonb column as the document-store. Just add a row for a new version. And extracting detail from jsonb is pretty easy, usable in SqL queries and materialized views

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can't we trace a clear line that says: "Here is my new tech. It's FOSS you can access the code and use it for free to build __other __technologies with it. You may __not __simply provide my tech as a service and charge money for that's __my __biz model"

Example:

Here's a fantastic new mixing machine. You can make your own for free and use it in other applications such as making smoothies or cakes. You may not start an industrial mixing biz and charge money for it. That's my biz model.

<comment><USER35> My understanding (from asking the same before) is that:

* Yes, but that's de facto _not_ open source, because all OS licences allow commercial use by definition;

* A licence isn't a magic bullet, you can have this model but if you're not prepared to enforce it it's useless.

<comment><USER36> > Yes, but that's de facto _not_ open source, because all OS licences allow > commercial use by definition;

The idea is probably that one would have to pay for commercial usage, which absolutely is compatible with open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What are the best alternatives to mongo db going forward?

Are there any forks with momentum?

<comment><USER38> My current thinking is to consider postgres as the default choice, especially for an MVP. It can handle just about any MVP-level scenario and helps you avoid over-engineering.

But if you really do need NoSQL to deal with scalability or more advanced requirements, I like DynamoDB. I like it not because it's user-friendly (it's not very), but because its limitations are very clear and out-front, and if you try to do something it's not suited for, you'll quickly realize it's hopeless.

Mongo is the opposite—it gives you the impression that you can use it for all kinds of things, and it _feels_ easy in the beginning. But without careful planning, it will lead you merrily into awful traps, because its underlying limitations are glossed and patched over by the api rather than being made explicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this article is very relevant to this discussion

[https://opensource.com/article/19/8/open-source- licensing#co...](https://opensource.com/article/19/8/open-source- licensing#comments)

</comment><comment><USER40> asked this on a sqllite thread before but: anyone know a single file nosqldb that has good python bindings. i know I could just write to json or something but I'd like something that supports queries. right now I'm using MongoDB and it's completely Overkill

<comment><USER41> It depends on what you mean when you say you want it to "support queries", but then also ask for a "nosqldb". It really depends on whether you want a full query grammar (in that case, why not SQL?), or if a key/value store is enough.

I use lmdb pretty extensively. It is single-file (well, it has a lock file) key/value store, can be read-from/written-to by multiple processes, and embeds nicely. It has Python bindings, but I've only used it from C.

[https://symas.com/lmdb/](https://symas.com/lmdb/)

<comment><USER40> i'm imagining something like the sqlite for mongo. ie you can do aggregations and nested k/v queries and filters and things like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Play stupid license games, get stupid prizes?

</comment><comment><USER43> Should I sell MongoDB? In around $29 last year and have seen 450% return... The concern was always it becomes next X

<comment><USER44> If you are asking questions like this you probably should not be buying individual stocks</comment></comment>