The Cathedral and the Bizarre - <AUTHOR> http://marktarver.com/thecathedralandthebizarre.html <comment><USER2> It is perhaps useful to understand where the author is coming from.

The author is very critical of open source on the whole. He has a series of articles detailing criticisms of open source software.

[http://marktarver.com/problems.html](http://marktarver.com/problems.html) (The Problems of Open Source) [http://marktarver.com/open.html](http://marktarver.com/open.html) (In Praise of Closed Source)

He is the inventor of the Qi (later Shen) language (essentially a Lisp dialect with a configurable type system). He experimented with taking it open source. He was very underwhelmed by the results and has made later revisions closed source again. In particular as far as I can tell he felt he was losing creative control of the project and getting little to nothing back for it in terms of contributions and features (and in general very unimpressed with people's reaction to the language and the wider programming community's capability of understanding the language).

He has also had at least one argument on Reddit about this (see the post by Mark_Tarver here [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/57h33q/arguing...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/57h33q/arguing_against_opensource_shen_programming/)).

This is one article in a long series of events and thoughts for him that have played out over the past decade.

<comment><USER3> HN makes an appearance:

> This is the time when reddit made an appearance. I blessed the Shen > subreddit because I thought that reddit was some polite ladies bookclub - > obviously showing my ignorance of it. It is nothing of the sort of course > and some of its most vicious sites like Coontown - the reddit for racists > only recently closed - shows what is so often like. Reddit is a shit hole; > and to a lesser degree so are SlashDot, and Hacker News.

> Unfortunately some members of the Shen group, imbibing the mindshare poison, > gave much power away to the opinions on reddit.

> The OS fanatics relished their power to bully and shame and people used to > mail me and say 'You need to say something because XYZ has said such and > such on reddit'. I did on occasion call such people 'complete prats', but > really this was whack-a-mole because the supply of arseholes was unending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable."

When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github.

The serious projects are _actually_ better than their closed-source counterparts, both in quality, and in their ability to be extended and customized. Customization is not going to be cheap or easy, but it will at least be possible.

The fact that I wrote a toy renderer in Rust five years ago and haven't touched it since then doesn't change this. The fact that there are 100 or 1000 times as many toy projects as there are serious projects doesn't change this either.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > most open source code is poor or unusable

Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.

<comment><USER5> Generally, a business pays developers to write software that it expects to be put to immediate use, which means that most of the time it functions, at least minimally. I'm sure exceptions exist, of course.

FLOSS abandonware has no such constraint.

<comment><USER6> Generally, _expectations_ do not define reality.

I'm not just being contrary, I've worked on a project for a year or two that got scrapped, and I think it happens a lot.

Another way to look at it, is that if you have programmers that are regular employees and not temps or something, you might as well have them work on something that's not very important, or that's risky, when you don't have something better for them to do, because you're paying them anyway.

<comment><USER7> I'm convinced if they stopped paying us all to rewrite things that work the market would fall out from under us.

Every job I've ever been involved with has always had some code base that was in framework X and now needs to be in framework Y, or on in house hardware and needs to move to the cloud, etc etc.

And having just interviewed every place has a project like that. "We were using PHP for the mvp but are moving to RoR", "We were using class based react but now we're using hooks", etc etc.

I feel half of it is valuable migrations and half of it is to always have something on our plates.

And it always has to get done yesterday. What a world.

<comment><USER8> Most software engineers I know love to build software for the sake of itself. They are not all that interested in the business. Most businesses for which software is being produced is not personally relatable or interesting to most software engineers.

To keep engineers motivated, the work has to have sufficient amount technical accomplishments and not just churning out business features.

Luckily, due to continuous growth in market and scale of users, and improvements in hardware, there is opportunity for serious amount of technical work in any project.

Also, faster time to market is of real business value. Compromises are done in ideal perfect designs to meet timelines (or resource constraints) – hence, tech debt occurs and it is real and just as useful as financial debt to help scale a business in a competing marketplace.

And speculative/iterative market feedback based development is also real. All these things add up to one thing – things that were right for yesterday isn't right for tomorrow.

So we have to rewrite or refactor software continuously. And that's perfectly normal. It is actually one of the biggest strengths of software based solutions – that we can change things live - while it is already in use - change the engines of the rocket while it is flying - so to speak. We have to embrace this and leverage it disruptively.

Those who pine for perfect software are denying realities of the larger real- world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >...an article puts the abandonment rate of open source projects on Github at about 98% - meaning that there is no activity on 98% of projects after a year [0]. This has coined a phrase - abandonware.

I'm not a programmer, I'm a researcher. Let me tell you a fact: about 100% of research articles are not updated.

Somehow the link [0] cited in the article makes an indirect similar point, but what's wrong with programs which are not updated? After all there is a (small) group of people who keep telling that programs are the next level in mathematics, (ideally they are) better than proofs.

[0] [https://www.techrepublic.com/article/open-source-failure- is-...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/open-source-failure-is-its- greatest-success/)

<comment><USER10> Moreover he's using the large amount of wreckage to argue that the Darwinian process of selecting "category killers" isn't working, which is completely backwards.

If "category killer" is a winner-take-all competition, then there are going to be a vast number of losers, and we do see a vast number of unmaintained projects. It's just that no one is bothering to remove them from view when they're defeated.

<comment><USER11> The analogy might be clearer if instead of GitHub we used Fossil.

<comment><USER12> He _does_ talk about how huge corporations use open source and exploit open source developers for their own profit...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm saying nothing for or against the rest of the article, but this one sentence does not describe software as I know it: _"But above all this is the sheer waste of human effort in terms of the production of rotting software in repositories."_

The act of writing code changes the programmer. I have written many things that didn't turn into successful open source, nor did they act as resume-ware. But the act of writing them taught me something.

There is no waste of human effort involved when you practice your craft. This is like telling me that if I climb a cliff and then lower myself back to the ground, I haven't gone anywhere.

Right now I'm working on implementing a subset of regular expressions that compile to finite-state recognizers. There is a zero-percent chance that my working code will be used in production.

So what? I am learning something about pattern-matching, and perhaps it will grow into a little language like SNOBOL.

[http://raganwald.com/2019/09/21/regular- expressions.html](http://raganwald.com/2019/09/21/regular-expressions.html)

If that is a waste, then most of my most enjoyable moments programming were also a waste.

<comment><USER14> > _But above all this is the sheer waste of human effort in terms of the > production of rotting software in repositories._

Yup, what about the amount of human effort that has been wasted in the course of producing off-the-shelf proprietary software? How much of that proprietary stuff is now entirely useless, for some reason or another? It's just so weird to make an _engineering_ -focused argument for proprietary stuff, when the only case that's even remotely plausible is about production incentives, and everything else hugely favors FLOSS.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure that, in the medium-to-long run, we'll manage to fund FLOSS development to an entirely satisfactory extent via crowdfunding, and that while saving a _lot_ of dough compared to what it would take to fund proprietary development in the same way.

But in fact, even his point about support revenues is misguided. Well-designed and easy-to-use software does not really draw fewer paid-support arrangements than software that's hackish, unintuitive and the like. The nees for paid support is almost entirely an _organizational_ one, so it matters zilch how easy the software is to support in reality; it's far more important that the organization can point to that support contract if any such need should arise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have like 30 projects on github, I don't expect any of them to really go anywhere, it's just where I put stuff when I'm playing with a new concept.

There are ~3 projects that I would have actually have liked to go somewhere, real projects not toys, that I have abandoned.

So that "98% of projects" statistic is fair, but I think those numbers would be looking a lot better if you accounted for the fact that github is just a place to throw stuff up. Just because something is on github doesn't mean it's an open source "project".

<comment><USER16> > I have like 30 projects on github, I don't expect any of them to really go > anywhere, it's just where I put stuff when I'm playing with a new concept.

Then why put it there?

git works fine without github. And by putting your projects on github all you did was add to the baseline white noise that people have to filter through.

<comment><USER17> Where should I put it? Or are you suggesting not sharing it at all?

<comment><USER12> My view is different from the person you're answering to, but - on an actual open-source based website that hasn't been bought by a closed-source transnational corporation ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lots of proprietary software are abandoned & unmaintained on old storage devices, the statistic about abandoned software on Github is meaningless.

On quality: quality is very suggestive. Quality changes if you factor in questions such as: Does it run well on low-end devices, does it track you, will it still open your files in 10 years, will the company still exist in 10 years, does it work well on many platforms, can it be automated, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Writing software within old-school enterprises is a daunting task involving lots of proprietary systems that create a lock-in of sorts. Complex build and test systems, complex deployment and production systems are the norm. Weird tools and libraries with their own proprietary names and conventions increase the learning curve for any new-joinee. Some even have very proprietary non- standard language, runtime etc. making the skills acquired in such environments to be largely useless outside of such environments.

Open source culture changed all this drastically. This culture started with individuals loosely connected via Internet who collaborated on writing software and without much complex central infrastructure. Common conventions and standards emerged as these individuals openly discussed them and took with them to other projects – not just conventions and standards, but also the code. Without the enterprise lock-in, this has proven to be extremely successful and cost-effective.

Most commercial software companies today follow this new model for their internal software development practices. Using openly available technology components lets everyone to acquire portable skills that they can continue to improve throughout their careers across many different companies. This drastically reduces the cost of software production as cost of acquiring skills is amortized over many companies and cost of development effort of these open source standardized components is also amortized over many corporations/projects.

Every company I worked in has supported contributing to open-source with the selfish motive to attract talented engineers. And the engineers like contributing to open-source projects as a way of showing off their skills and building their resume.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately that only leads to another kind of lock-in. The culture assumes everyone is using the same tools, so you are not allowed to use any kind of non mainstream software. And any smaller project using non mainstream libraries gets killed.

For example I use Mercurial rather than Git. Mercurial had better Windows support, a better command line syntax and with TortoiseHg a better Linux GUI. However, it happens all the time that linux distributions include wrong versions of Mercurial and TortoiseHg. You can use an old version of Mercurial and an old version of TortoiseHg, or a new version of Mercurial and an new version of TortoiseHg, but the distributions package a new version of Mercurial and an old version of TortoiseHg, and then TortoiseHg does not start. So they ship a completely broken package and no one cares because it is not a standard tool. (and last time I tried to install TortoiseHg from source separately, it also did not run, because was not compatible to the Python version installed by the distribution)

Recently I wanted to use a tool written in OCaml. It is really well written, has a GUI, using gnomecanvas. And it does not start anymore. Debian/Ubuntu has decided, gnomecanvas from gnome2 is deprecated and will no longer be installed. But the new gnome does not seem to have OCaml bindings. I am not aware of anyone working on a update to fix that. OCaml is too small to be allowed to make GUIs.

I write my software in FreePascal. After a system update, my projects do not start anymore on Android. Turns out binutils has enabled relro by default and FreePascal does not work with relro enabled. Imagine GCC could not create Android apps in the default settings. That would be fixed quickly, but with FreePascal no one cares

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> there's a lot of nits to pick about this essay, but the real punchline is that corporations have reaped the profits from open source software, far more than any developers do directly, and that claim seems hard to dispute.

<comment><USER21> I think a lot of people have reaped the benefits of open source software. And corporations are formed of people.

It is a check and balance on proprietary software, in quality, cost, privacy and independence.

It has benefitted developers directly, in education, in transferrence of skills to other employers, and in direct customization of software for their personal needs.

<comment><USER22> > And corporations are formed of people.

So was the Nazi party.

The problem is with the distribution of benefits. Much like the vaulted Lebensraum the question is who gets the land and who gets to be fertilizer for the land.

So far the answer to the first is Bezos, and to the second is everyone who isn't Bezos. A distribution that leaves something to be desired of.

<comment><USER23> Utter nonsense. There are many people getting great benefit from Amazon other than bezos. Including many of people employed there and the many investors that have reaped benefit from the stock increase.

<comment><USER24> > There are many people getting great benefit from Amazon other than bezos. > _Including many of people employed there_

[https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+warehouse+workers](https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+warehouse+workers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article is wrong in attributing "open source" to Eric Raymond alone. As it's now used, it was apparently coined by Christine Patterson and mutually agreed to at a meeting where Eric Raymond was present in February 5, 1998. [1]

According to the release history, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" was written in 1997, but originally used the term "free software". The term was changed to "open source" on February 9th. [2]

[1] [https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open- source...](https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source- software) [2] [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral...](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/)

</comment><comment><USER26> "No mathematical theorem, no enjoyable novel, no work of art of any importance, have ever been produced by a herd. I fail to see why innovative software ought to play by a different set of rules."

Nobody tell this guy about Bourbaki... He's also probably never enjoyed a movie.

<comment><USER27> A novel also is produced by a "herd". There are a lot of people involved. People that make suggestions, corrections, the editor... It's not a single person effort.

<comment><USER28> _Naked Came the Stranger_ was written, not just produced, by a herd, to massive success. (It was intended to fail, and the herd writing was an element of that intention, but none of that stopped it from experiencing massive success.)

<comment><USER29> See also: _Atlanta Nights_ , another sort of "successful failure" group- written project meant to demonstrate that an alleged "publisher" was really a vanity press with no actual standards or editorial process. You can now buy the book via various links from the official website of the "author" [1], but in case you're in need of a few giggles _right this minute_ , the submitted manuscript was also released by one of the conspirators [2].

[1] [http://www.travistea.com/](http://www.travistea.com/)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20050305143929/http://www.cs.du....](https://web.archive.org/web/20050305143929/http://www.cs.du.edu/~aburt/StingManuscript.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Is that…all? It says 71,503 words at the top but I only see a hundred…

<comment><USER29> It's readable (y'know, _technically_ ) for me in Firefox 71. Maybe there's something weird about the PDF?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A main point of this seems to be that most projects on github are abandoned.

What a stupid comparison. That would be like listing all the commercial projects that go out of bussiness, or dont even progress far enough to get funding in the first place, and saying closed source model is a failure because most closed source projects fail.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article seems to leave out _why_ open-source changed it's meaning from "source available" to "source shared". That results from the FSF, GNU, copyleft and the rise of Linux.

⌘-F show only two references to GNU or Stallman, both derogatory references to Emacs. All references to Linux are about how early versions sucked and how it was a "copy" of Unix.

This highlights a lack of understanding from the author which may explain a lot of the viewpoints.

</comment><comment><USER32> The harsh reality is that most software, no matter whether it's open source or closed, never makes it big. Take a stroll through an app store on iPhone-- or better yet, on Android! just to see how many apps there. You'll find hundreds of flashlight apps, calendar apps, and so on. Buggy, abandoned software is hardly unique to open source.

Then there is the argument that "open source isn't innovative." This seems like a really tired argument. Most software of any kind can be painted as just a mere modification or variation on something that someone once wrote in the past. We've had almost a century of software, after all. I also like the links to late-90s and 2000-era websites saying that Linux will never be innovative. The only way this could be better is if we could create a deep fake of Steve Ballmer saying it onstage.

But wait! Tensorflow is open source, so we can't use that, clearly. Financial deficiency disease and all. Luckily, I'm willing to make a special enterprise edition for this guy, at a modest charge.

<comment><USER12> Tensorflow is backed by Google, an advertising transnational corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > In 1990 when you said a program was 'open source', you meant that you could > read the source code; the actual code the person had written to create the > program.

Citation needed. I don't think people were saying "open source" in 1990. FSF/GNU had the term "free software" for longer but they had to explain it on every first use. (Probably still do to an extent.)

</comment><comment><USER34> > _In fact an article puts the abandonment rate of open source projects on > Github at about 98% - meaning that there is no activity on 98% of projects > after a year. This has coined a phrase - abandonware._

That's factually incorrect. The term "abandonware" dates back to the 90s (long before github) and was originally used to describe software that was predominantly proprietary. Virtually all proprietary software ever written has become abandoned or will eventually become abandoned, but I guess that fact doesn't really square with what the author wants to say.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am not really responding to the article, but to the general concept of the Cathedral and the Bazarr.

The main problem is this: in sufficiently complex programs, roughly associated with LOC, there becomes a point where there are no longer enough eyes on enough pieces of code.

Therefore, I propose that the future of FOSS in the Bazarr style is to focus on reducing code complexity and increase readability as much as possible.

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." - Bruce Lee

</comment><comment><USER36> Cute title. But wow, this guy apparently does not live in the same universe as, I think, the rest of us.

I hadn't read ESRs paper in a few years, but just reread it again now. This author is definitely oversimplifying and mischaracterizing it. It's not right to conflate "Cathedral" with "Closed-Source" and "Commercial", nor to incorrectly imply that's what ESRs paper point was. Plenty of earlier Open Source software, notably FSF software itself, is (or was) developed "Cathedral" style and ESR definitely talks about that. I always read his paper as kind of "GNU FSF" process vs. "Linux", both being Open Source (or Free to please RMS). And I think history has proven his points rather nicely, IMHO.

But "Cathedral" and "Bazaar" are just two points on a spectrum anyway, and it's mostly orthogonal to a "Free/Open" vs. "Closed/Commercial" spectrum.

Now to the rest of the paper, while couched in formal and civil language, the author would have been much more succinct if he just came right out and said "Open Source Software Sux!". Which is an odd point to make for an academic having little experience writing either or any kind of _real_ software.

I can see he thinks that, but there's not much in the way of actual arguments, other than opinions and cherry-picked sentences from ESR's paper, to make it worth picking apart or disagreeing with.

So yup, I fully agree: Dr Mark Tarver thinks that "Open Source Sux because Reasons".

Now then, I will just be getting back to the universe in which I live, where Open Source software is the foundation of the internet and just about every other piece of modern technology from doorbells to cars, including nearly all proprietary commercial products too...

</comment><comment><USER37> > There's a larger group of not-so-harmless people than the givers who are > driven by greed for free stuff and a sense of entitlement. We can call these > the takers. Takers are generally abusive if their entitlement is challenged; > because to criticise the open source model is to take away their > intellectual candy and the result is a tantrum. Amongst this larger group > are a smaller group of DRM crackers and pirates. In nearly all open source > projects, they outnumber the givers. Michael 'Monty' Widenius, an open > source advocate, acknowledges the problem.

> Help create a generation of takers that believed that all code should be > open source and embraced open source as a religion. Online bullying of > dissent began in forums. A large number of believers then traded 'code' for > 'digitisable media' and the most active of those went in for DRM cracking > and piracy.

Judging by the comments so far, I think he struck a nerve.

<comment><USER38> You can definitely filter out the worst customers by raising prices, the bottom of any market is usually a cesspit. I suspect the very top is as well although I haven't any experience of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Unfinished experiments that aspire(d) to be something relevant are more like vaporware, not abandonware. I'd argue the vast majority of what's on github is this or dirty hacks that never warranted any further development or maintenance.

There's actually substantial value in access to such things. Rather than repeating the experiments yourself, you can go see where they led others without investing the time and energy to repeat the effort. If you find something that mostly resembles what you would have made, can get along with the license, and still wish to move forward - huzzah, a jump starting fork is born.

Abandonware IMHO is more appropriately applied to examples like Google's ever growing list of abandoned projects that actually had _users_ , where the world noticed the abandonment of something useful.

<comment><USER40> That is a good point. Sometimes the code is useful even if it is incomplete. (I have sometimes done such things, taking parts of other programs; more often, I write most of the code myself, but some of it will come from other sources like that. As an example, I found the source code for a JPEG encoder, and modified it to improve the compression and other things. There are many other such cases too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The facts as presented by this article do not match the facts I remember. I'm an old fart and was actually alive and active writing software at that time.

The cathedral and the bazaar was not a book, it was an essay. They apparently later turned it into a book but I know nobody who read the book. The essay, in contrast, was read by everybody in the scene.

Here's how I remember it.

Open source has no specific meaning before esr claimed it. And after he claimed it, crucially, open source did not mean you could not charge for the software.

I practice almost no source code was released under non-liberal licenses, but there are some notable exceptions. For example, Microsoft released the source code of the Windows kernel for research use to universities. AFAIK that technically means Windows is open source.

esr was not against releasing source code under non-liberal licenses. He was just convinced those would not stand a chance against code released under liberal licenses. Time has proven him right, I would say.

Also this article misses the point, I think. Open source was not meant to define or enshrine a methodology. It was coined because at the time people felt that the free software movement was holding itself back in the fight against Microsoft (google "halloween documents" to get more insight into esr's struggle against Microsoft) because it sounded like you could not make money with it. Also because the GNU General Public License said if you make changes to a piece of GPL code, the result must also be under the GPL. So in a sense GPL actually did impede commercial exploitation of free software.

At the time many libertarians (like esr) felt that the market would solve this if you just let it, and software is not the place to fight ideological wars about the freedom of software.

I'm just paraphrasing the arguments here as I understood them. Personally I come down on the pro-GPL side of the aisle.

<comment><USER6> Before personal computers, wasn't free/open software the default because there wasn't a mass market for software? I think I've been told something like that by someone of an older generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Cathedral & Bizarre has never made sense to me.

What do people think of Social Architecture, Pieter Hintjens' ideas for building successful open source software?

Collective Code Construction Contract [https://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/](https://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/)

[https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social- architecture...](https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social- architecture/details)

[http://hintjens.com/books](http://hintjens.com/books)

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

\--

Hintjens' worldview appeals to me.

I've done a bit of activism, with (very) modest success. A Design Patterns book club I started 20 years ago continues today; we somehow stumbled on a sustainable format.

Not having any successful OSS projects of my own (yet), I can't say if Hintjens' ideas work. I hope to find out.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how much of the software between me and that blog post is open source?

</comment><comment><USER44> Some true points mixed in with a load of bullshit.

<comment><USER12> Yep, he's just torpedoing his own credibility with shit-nuggets like :

> What the world does not need is another buggy open source copy of Windows > Media Player.

Is this supposed to refer to VLC ?!? (Admittedly that one is not in in the current version of his "manifesto".)

\- Somehow using GitHub as an example that Darwinian competition doesn't work.

\- Retconning the term "abandonware"

\- The tired (and wrong) argument equating counterfeiting to theft. (No wonder that he thinks that mindshare is unrelated to making money !)

> Instead [F(L)OSS] produced a graveyard of dead software; the largest sink of > wasted human labour in history - bigger than even the Mao's Great Leap > Forward or the Stalin's building of the White Sea Canal.

And after all of this, he has the gall to call F(L)OSS proponent "Zealots" !

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Most open source is barely usable and empirical inspection of Github will > show that to be true.

There is no barrier to entry on GitHub or similar repositories.

It's quite another thing to contribute to the Linux kernel, or gnu, or similar, which are overwhelmingly excellent, and an essential part of running the world as it's currently configured.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've put some code I wrote up on GitHub. Why did I do it?

1\. As a learning experience, how does GitHub work?

2\. As advertisement for myself as software developer

3\. As a check on myself, is the software good enough for others to use. When you do something publicly "on stage" it better be good. Not only good in terms of "code quality" but in terms of "does it do something useful?".

So I think I've got some benefits from publishing my code as open source. Not financially, like the corporations.

I think the world is still waiting for a better monetizing model for opens source, as well as for component-software in general. As things go Cloud, I think such a model will eventually if not soon emerge.

On the article, I found this to the point:

"The truth revealed that OpenSSL was seriously underfinanced with only one full time operative working on a code base of hundreds of thousands of lines of C."

<comment><USER31> I've got another one:

4\. Breaking down that barrier of perfectionism that prevents you from publishing or finding worth in your creations.

<comment><USER46> HackerNews is open source, right? We share our ideas free of charge here. I'm not even aware of the copyright if any that applies to postings here. And we do it for fun, not for profit. But does it a great book make? Does it even make a magazine?

So I think the point of the article is that while Open Source has its uses, it is not and as far as we can see never will be a wholesale replacement for commercial software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "However the problem is that the open source user may not stumble on this magical fraction and the invisible iceberg of buggy, ill-conceived open source lies submerged ... open source uses massive amounts of user time trawling through defunct and buggy applications and posting to forums ..." Regardless of what you are looking for (open source computer programs, closed source computer programs, television shows, books, etc) some won't be so good, or might be difference what you need for your use, and so they have reviews about such thing.

"An awful lot of popular open source is inferior reverse-engineered copies of existing commercial software (Gimp, OpenOffice etc)." Is Gimp a reverse- engineered copy of existing software? Just because it is similar to some proprietary software does not necessarily mean that it is a "reverse- engineered copy" of it. OpenOffice presumably involves the reverse-engineered formats of Microsoft Office, although now there is LibreOffice. Both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice each have some features the other lacks. What is "inferior" may also depend on your opinion, because in some cases it isn't so clear, and in some cases it may be inferior in some ways but superior in others.

"If open source programmers do innovate and their innovation is good then its just as likely to be swept away from them by the corporations who have the capital to exploit it." In my experience that doesn't always happen. Many features first implemented in GNU/Linux systems are things that they did not implement similar features in Windows until much later.

"... the Linux desktop still lags behind Windows and the interface looks stuck in the 90s." Actually, I think both in Linux and Windows many programs try to be too fancy, but in Linux I can change the window manager and all of that stuff easily and still works. I uninstalled the desktop environment, and I think it works much better than Windows ever did, actually.

"Good software is properly documented, does not break and does not require hand-holding to use it." True, but that isn't the issue; the issue is customizing it.

Love of money is the root of all evil.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm going to play devil's advocate and suggest this essay is worth an open- minded read to anyone working in the software industry. The vast majority of comments that take issue with it in this thread thus far are nitpicks about minor points, and almost none address the essential thrusts of Tarver's argument, all of which are actually quite cogent.

As he notes, it's still the case today that the vast majority of successful open source projects are only those coming out of mega corporations that actually pay tons of smart engineers to spend time on them (fb, google, uber, et al). It happens every now and then, but it's quite rare that some solitary programmer or duo whip up an os library or product that snags as much of the market as an os project managed by one of the big dogs.

Burnout on the part of solitary maintainers of non-corporate backed os projects is also quite a real and problematic issue.

The adoption of the MIT license, I'd wager, borders on a cultic practice these days and is rarely the outcome of long deliberation on the appropriate license selection on the part of a project maintainer (excluding of course the big companies, whom are incredibly savy and smart about this because they have lawyers).

Os projects also have, generally speaking, horrible support. If an os library isn't small enough or written in such a way that I can read the source and understand it in about a day and a half, maximum, I won't use it. The adoption of certain libraries also trends toward tribal practice and ritualistic behavior. People select librires based on their popularity or a personal incentive (these two motivations merge, since a thing's being popular stirs a personal incentive to learn it in order to be more valuable on the market, see react et al.) more oft than they do based on a thorough technical assessment.

All in all, os has benefited massive corporations much more than it has benefited solo programmers or users. Tbh, I would not be surprised if a world w/o open source actually would have given us more diversity in the tech market—spawning several boutiques of software houses churning out small-scale bespoke, but closed source, tech instead of massive corps who not only use os as a "good grace" but also as a tool to create yet another relation of dependency between themselves and users or other companies—i.e. gain more power.

OS's one invoiable benefit is that it has significantly liberated the auto- didact—its a huge boon for those that can't learn through other channels...but even this benefit comes with wrinkles. One can't know which of the practices one sees in os code are instances of good or bad technique without having external knowledge about programming techniques, which cannot come from code reading alone (unless you think a pattern's frequency equates to it being a good practice, arguably a mistake in most cases).

</comment><comment><USER48> This guy is so wrong. Truth is that innumerable closed source programs are abandoned (and that's actually what "abandonware" stands for). However, contrary to open-source, they're nowhere to be seen.

When you're depending upon some piece of closed source abandonware, you're without recourse. If by any chance, you'd be depending upon an abandoned open- source software, most probably it has been abandoned because there are better alternatives; or in case there aren't, you're still free to salvage it from oblivion.

The whole article reeks of bad faith.

</comment><comment><USER46> See also: [http://marktarver.com/free-as-in-do-as-your- told.html](http://marktarver.com/free-as-in-do-as-your-told.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> > There's a larger group of not-so-harmless people than the givers who are > driven by greed for free stuff and a sense of entitlement. We can call these > the takers. Takers are generally abusive if their entitlement is challenged; > because to criticise the open source model is to take away their > intellectual candy and the result is a tantrum. Amongst this larger group > are a smaller group of DRM crackers and pirates. In nearly all open source > projects, they outnumber the givers.

What an absurd dichotomy. Even if you work full time on open source, you probably can't be a major contributor to more than a handful of large projects, at most; many people specialize in just one. But you probably _use_ dozens to hundreds of open source programs. So for any project with a modicum of popularity, _of course_ the number of people who use the software without contributing dwarfs the number of contributors. That would be true even if _everyone_ worked full time on open source.

Admittedly, the OP's definition of "takers" is not just "people who use without contributing", but tacks on some ad hominem insults to supposedly qualify it. The result has very little resemblance to reality. Sure, there will always be some people who become truly abusive if a project makes a change they don't like. But they're definitely a minority. Most people, facing such a situation, don't speak up at all; they might be annoyed, but they keep it to themselves. Others do speak up, but know how to be polite about it. Perhaps the OP assumes that people should not voice negative opinions at all, if they're not contributing to a given project. I disagree. A good default assumption is that open source maintainers are open to _polite_ and _well- reasoned_ negative feedback. A maintainer can always forbid such feedback in official project forums if they so choose; if they do, users should respect it, but it's is not a very gracious move.

And what the heck do DRM cracking and piracy have to do with anything? In my experience, those people – whom I respect – form communities which are oriented around piracy, and pretty separate from the open source world. In part this is because the nature of the work they do is different; reverse engineering is different from software development, and many pirates do neither of those, but just use existing tools to distribute pirated copies of whatever type of media they're fans of (e.g. anime). I'd say they're also more likely (compared to programmers as a whole) to use cracked proprietary software instead of open source. Of course, this is a massive overgeneralization, but the point is that bringing them up makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER50> He should've counted the impacts of the open source software instead of the number of it. Does he think Apache web server with million or billions usage the same as one random open source software he found on GitHub and less than hundreds usage? Further, If he counts all of OSS on github and or sourceforge, he should've counted all crappy and abandoned closed software buried in any corporate office.

</comment><comment><USER51> Old, large tapestries were often gigantic, complex, expensive, time-consuming, exquisitely intricate carpets that hung on walls. They could take from years to decades to complete, and consume fortunes. One of their primary functions was to show off how wealthy or important you were.

Now that we have machines that can do weaving and sew patterns automatically, it's possible to create a tapestry without as much time and expense. But until recent times it was time-consuming, laborious, difficult, and expensive.

One day we'll have machines to write code for us in minutes that would have taken weeks or months for humans, and we won't need to pay people to slave over keyboards to churn out pithy little programs and litter source code repositories all over the internet. We won't have to whine about the unkept documentation, or use complex systems that feed random data into test harnesses just to find the bugs that we accidentally put into the code. One day programmers will be obsolete.

Until the new machines come around to replace us, our software tapestries are going to remain really frigging difficult to make. So, yes, without proper financing, most of them will probably be abandoned.

What I'm wondering is: how many of the new machines already exist, but we can't use them because they're proprietary or patented?

<comment><USER52> well, there are tools for auto-generating code from schema files but no machines yet for creating whole applications. Based on my experience, I think the last frontier will be mapping the user-possibility-workflow space to action-consequence-application-state space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> He wrote this essay as if people haven't made billions and billions of dollars from open source software.

<comment><USER46> I think he covers that a bit discussing Red Hat and other OS successes, and goes on to say "There's a larger group of not-so-harmless people than the givers who are driven by greed for free stuff and a sense of entitlement"

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's interesting to ponder the points made in this essay with the recent discussion about "FUSE for macOS is no longer open source" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21759967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21759967)

The FUSE situation would seem to be a key piece of evidence supporting Dr Mark Tarver's main thesis that writing open source generally doesn't pay or mostly pays corporations who are in a better position to monetize the value in the software. His linked essay at the bottom about Stallman states the Stallman offers no economic model that would pay a programmer for their labor and states that may be because he has no business experience.

</comment><comment><USER55> ESR is the truth while this shill's critique of the open source model is both incorrect and a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER56> I skimmed these responses, I'd say that most of them are the result of not reading the material in the essay or nit-picking or ad hominem remarks. I really tried to find something of real worth.

'His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github.

I'm afraid this in an attempt to redefine open source and is an example of the 'isolated points fallacy' covered in the essay. Open source includes everything with an open source license. To say OS is successful by defining all projects that do not succeed as not part of OS is simply to coin a tautology.

'Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.'

Again covered in the essay

'Proprietary software vendors typically make money by producing software that people want to use. This is a strong incentive to make it more usable. (It doesn't always work: for example, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe software sometimes becomes worse but remains dominant through network effects. But it works most of the time.)

With volunteer projects, though, any incentive is much weaker. The number of users rarely makes any financial difference to developers, and with freely redistributable software, it's near-impossible to count users anyway. There are other incentives — impressing future employers, or getting your software included in a popular OS — but they're rather oblique.'

What an absurd dichotomy. Even if you work full time on open source, you probably can't be a major contributor to more than a handful of large projects, at most; many people specialize in just one. But you probably use dozens to hundreds of open source programs. So for any project with a modicum of popularity, of course the number of people who use the software without contributing dwarfs the number of contributors. That would be true even if everyone worked full time on open source.

A giver is a person who gives as much or more than he takes. A taker is one who takes more than he gives. Define it in relation to open source as a whole and the dichotomy is valid. There are users and corporations who take far more from OS collectively than they give back. Is this hard to grasp?

'The vast majority of comments that take issue with it in this thread thus far are nitpicks about minor points, and almost none address the essential thrusts of Tarver's argument, all of which are actually quite cogent.'

That's basically right and that's why after 20 years the OS movement is still stuck where ESR left it.</comment>


First Ever Quadriplegic Treated with Stem Cells Regains Upper Body Motor Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/first-ever-quadriplegic-treated-stem-cells-regains-motor-control-upper-body/ <comment><USER2> This is great news but I would be a bit cautious about it. I love the idea that stem cell therapy can cure spinal cord injuries but I know for a fact that spinal cord injuries are unpredictable as to what the long term impact will be.

Professionals in the field know that people with these injuries can regain mobility months and years after the accident.

I know of a few extreme cases where individuals were told they would never walk but within a few months were able to walk out of the hospital.There are other more common cases where movement to limbs increased in time.

I point this out not to throw water at the cure but it's a bit premature to celebrate and get people's hopes up without knowing the reality of the treatment.

I love the idea but one person does not prove a cure. I sincerely hope that Kris' improvement continues and that the therapy is as good as it's hoped.

The Christphere Reeves foundation has a great area on the subject.

[https://www.christopherreeve.org/research/reeve-stem-cell- re...](https://www.christopherreeve.org/research/reeve-stem-cell-research)

<comment><USER3> Here's a press release from the company: [http://asteriasbiotherapeutics.com/asterias- biotherapeutics-...](http://asteriasbiotherapeutics.com/asterias- biotherapeutics-announces-positive-efficacy-data-in-patients-with-complete- cervical-spinal-cord-injuries-treated-with-ast-opc1/) They're doing a dosing study, with escalating number of cells injected. Results are promising, but the study includes no controls, so there is no way to know if the cell-based treatment is better than no treatment.

The current study is open-label (i.e. not blinded) single-arm (no controls). Once they establish the right dose, they will need to do a double-blind randomized controlled study to find out if it works.

<comment><USER4> Blinding isn't especially important for a procedure like this. An RCT would be a sufficiently strong study design, in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> If you were going to RCT, in this instance, why would you not blind? Sham injections - it's a no brainer. Why get the second best level of evidence if you can get the best?

<comment><USER6> It's a needle to the spine...

<comment><USER7> Hmm... maybe use people who require surgery/anesthesia and just tell them they were injected? I've taken a few courses on clinical trial design just out of curiosity, but now I find I can't really say anything substantial about my own idea. Back to the courses?

<comment><USER4> Sham surgery is a thing (there have been some interesting studies looking at the efficacy of knee surgery compared with sham surgery for a variety of common knee issues...)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_pAdg8Y70Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_pAdg8Y70Y)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Potentially amazing news

Here's the direct Link minus the weird reblog of press release

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paralyzed-man- regain...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paralyzed-man-regains-use- of-arms-and-hands-after-experimental-stem-cell-therapy-at-keck-hospital-of- usc-300323407.html)

<comment><USER9> And the source, I believe verbatim...

[https://news.usc.edu/107047/experimental-stem-cell- therapy-h...](https://news.usc.edu/107047/experimental-stem-cell-therapy- helps-paralyzed-man-regains-use-of-arms-and-hands/)

<comment><USER10> And the ClinicalTrials.gov record: [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02302157](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02302157)

<comment><USER11> And this video shows how the procedure is performed, and clearly demonstrates its effectiveness: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNJi0zfodI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNJi0zfodI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Once Kris made the decision to pursue enrollment in the study, dozens of > doctors, nurses, rehabilitation specialists and others sprang into action. > Because he would need to provide voice confirmation of his desire to > participate in the study, Kris had to be able to breathe without a > ventilator.

That is an interesting requirement. I don't think it's necessary. morse code via blinking isn't sufficient?

<comment><USER13> I've never seen a voiced-consent requirement before... and it makes absolutely no ethical sense, either.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps they actually mean that patients must be capable of breathing independently to enroll in the study, and that voiced consent is the metric used?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is incredible. A non-speculative, non-hypothetical-petri-dish-stem-cell- potential announcement, but tangible, life altering progress that's happening now.

I hope they continue with the initiative and other institutions follow their lead soon if it proves successful.

<comment><USER16> Likewise! I think this is the first time all year I've been moved to deploy the phrase "Welcome to the world of the future" without grim irony. Truly amazing! I hope his recovery proceeds apace and without setback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm really pleased for this guy and hope he can continue to make progress.

Unfortunately the information content of these events is at best modest. After spinal cord injury you can get "spinal shock" which can last for a month or two. When it wears off you can recover a lot of previously lost function. As other comments point out bigger trials will be required to prove any efficacy.

Also there are many things in development to help acute spinal cord injury (some of which are FDA devices) but chronic SCI is a much thornier and challenging problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is really cool! Can anyone comment on what the state of art is on restoring motor function in paralyzed animals (i.e. rats, mice) ?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is fantastic news. I can't but think of the many people that have contemplated assisted suicide that were in his position. This should give them hope.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's the best thing I've heard all day!

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm amazed nobody has tried this before. In any case, it's wonderful news.

</comment><comment><USER22> All that and he survived living in Bakersfield

</comment><comment><USER23> San Diego man seeking help with effects of stroke gets stem cell treatments that leave him partially paralyzed and with mysterious tumor.

[http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/sep/20/patients-san-diego- stem...](http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/sep/20/patients-san-diego-stem-cell- companies-costly-unpr/)

<comment><USER24> Perhaps more accurately: San Diego man makes incredibly risky gamble on untested treatment and bad things happen. Given that, I'm curious what your point is here? This is a multiphase clinical trial. That was someone going to another country to bypass the very safety measures this trial is a part of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hope you don't hate me for kind of a joke comment, but it's extremely relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRtlkcQ6brE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRtlkcQ6brE)</comment>


Engineer unlocks Wii's hidden potential - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9858728-39.html?tag=newsmap

<comment><USER2> If CNet calls this "news", then no wonder its going down the pan and people (can't remeber who) want to "rescue" it with a hostile takeover.</comment>


GitHub personal and organization dashboard changes - <AUTHOR> https://blog.github.com/changelog/2018-05-17-user-landingpage-changes/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a pretty significant improvement, personally. The stuff I've been recently interacting with/working on is now right at the top of the page, and the repository list seems to highly prioritize original repos, rather than wasting a lot of space showing my "forks" which are just those automatically created when I'm making pull requests.</comment>


Windows CryptoAPI Spoofing Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-0601 <comment><USER2> Note that this does not seem to be limited to software signing, but affects all X.509 certificates[0]. This means it can be used for example to man in the middle HTTPS connections.

0: [https://mobile.twitter.com/taviso/status/1217146026923978752](https://mobile.twitter.com/taviso/status/1217146026923978752)

</comment><comment><USER3> Page isn't loading, but it was archived.

[https://archive.md/tykYn](https://archive.md/tykYn)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Context: This is an anticipated vulnerability reported to Microsoft by the NSA, patched today as part of patch Tuesday.

Related thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22039481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22039481)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised to not see patches for Windows 7 and 8.1 (vuln is rated "important", 7 ends extended support today, 8.1 still has 3 years to go, so both should've qualified). I guess the vulnerability is new in Windows 10?

<comment><USER5> Win10 added support for Brainpool and Curve25519 ECC Curves [0], so this might be where the vulnerability lies

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- server/security/tls...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- server/security/tls/tls-schannel-ssp-changes-in-windows-10-and-windows-server)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spoofed code signing certificate?

This sounds more like a key leak than a code exploit, no?</comment>


How expressive is one div? - <AUTHOR> http://diiq.org/divs

<comment><AUTHOR> I was asked, this morning, about the use of HTML div as an artistic medium; specifically, "You'd be limited to things like width, height, and either borders or [...] using those, would it be possible to make aesthetically pleasing <div> variations?"

I am always happy to act empirically with regards to art, so I gave it a few moments, and the resulting pseudo-minimalist art platform is surprisingly fun to play with.</comment>


Ask YC: What do you use for Project Management? - <AUTHOR> I've been fighting with Microsoft Project all day and I'm getting fed up. What does everybody use for project management? We do Agile development. <comment><USER2> Trac.

If you're a small enough team, you can also get by with a notebook or stickie notes. At my last job I just used a 5x8" spiral notebook, wrote down tasks when my boss asked, and checked them off when I was done.

It's kinda ironic that I've got a more formal process with my one-developer startup than at my last job, but I found that I needed to write lots of little design notes on each feature and cross-reference them as I was implementing. Flipping through pages is a real pain. Plus, it's really satisfying to just say "fixes #11" in a commit message and have the ticket automatically closed.

<comment><USER3> We've had a lot of success with Trac. Over the past 18 months, we've tweaked our milestones/iteration process several times, and each time we've found Trac suited to our style.

<comment><USER4> Here's another vote for Trac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feels a lot like the other posts I've responded to in the past 4 days. Sorry if I'm getting redundant.

We use a scrum-like backlog methodology based on ROI: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122203>

At some jobs, I've used very complicated spreadsheets for this method (to track dependency costs, etc), but lately Google spreadsheet works pretty well for individual assignments and status. There are some Scrum-based software solutions out there that somewhat support this approach. (e.g. <http://www.acunote.com> ) There's also a scrum plugin somewhere for Microsoft Project, but I haven't used that either.

It depends on the size of your group, probably, what will work for you. Also it depends on the size of the upward corporate group that needs reporting.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories.

Their site's at <http://live.gnome.org/Planner> if you like, but I don't think it's available for windows.

</comment><comment><USER7> We use unfuddle (<http://unfuddle.com/home>)

It's a bit basecamp like, but it has a better support for tickets and reports. We moved from basecamp to unfuddle 4 months ago.

And it has an svn repo built in it also which updates your tickets based on your commit comments:

A commit with a message "Closed #44, #45, assign #54 to Joe" does all that in the tickets repository, which helps developers who don't like visiting the management application too much.

<comment><USER8> Ditto to mtoledo's comments. Handy for virtual teams as well. We moved from basecamp to unfuddle a few months ago as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don´t know what _everybody_ uses. I survive with a Moleskine, a pencil, a rubber and a set of pens of different colors.

<comment><USER10> I love my moleskines and 3x5 index cards! Though I mainly use it for my todo items, notes and basically any idea that I would like to capture (tech and non-tech alike).

That said, I have been using MS Project for quite a while - At the game development company I worked for prior to my startup, MS Project was used by everyone. From the Devs, to the Producers and platform account managers (SONY, NOA, MS) - So I learned how to use it and have been using it ever since - Granted it is bloated with a ton of features that I never use, but IMO, it gets the job done and is used by a lot of people - I can shoot over an *.mpp file to to any of my colleagues to keep tabs on all aspects of our projects; \--

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the last year I have been thinking about how to do a proper project management app on the web - and once you start thinking about it you realise that it is a lot harder than you think. Basically the problem is that if you have 100 project managers they will manage in 100 different ways. Which makes it extremely hard to do something that will have exactly the features each manager need.

As it is now you can basically choose between project (great with gannt charts and dependencies, but you can't do much else and have to spend loads of time updating it), excel (lots of lists but nothing else, and no interaction with other people), or something like basecamp, which is pretty simple and really just an extended to-do list.

Whatever project you do, and whatever you choose it never quite fits, there's always something missing.

The real killer, of course, is that even though you need a gazillion features for all the different sorts of projects and managers it still needs to be simple to use.

So this is what I spend my time developing - who knows it might even work...

</comment><comment><USER12> Basecamp from 37signals, love it.

</comment><comment><USER13> You need to use Rally. There's a free version--go try it now for an iteration. You can trust me on this.

<http://www.rallydev.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Mingle <http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence>

<comment><USER15> same here. and its free for less than 5 users

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i´m trying fogbugz, after getting nowhere with msproject or basecamp. i´ll report to you when i have more data

<comment><USER17> I'm using fogbugz, like it a lot!

<comment><USER18> How have you integrated it with your SCM?

That was the major stopper for us in using FogBugz. We're using git and trac now, but would love something that tracks burndown.

<comment><USER17> Haven't, would like it (I'm using git too) but it wasn't a showstopper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> StreamFocus.com (Integrated Project/Workflow/Action Management with workflow organized files, Critical Path management, Collaborative GTD, etc.) Private beta launching in March :) (First 30 days free, then Personal version starts at $20/month, Business version starts at $40/month)

</comment><comment><USER20> We're using redmine, <http://www.redmine.org/>

<comment><USER21> Same with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Index cards and a Moleskin. But that's because I'm a one person team right now.

I'll move to FogBugz eventually.

</comment><comment><USER23> Backpack - <http://www.backpackit.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> I am a one man band so I just use <http://backpackit.com> not going to be that useful for teams. basecamp is pretty cool.

have you looked at liquid planner that was showcased at demo 08? that looks pretty tidy.

</comment><comment><USER25> "I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories."

Same as me. Free, and easy.

</comment><comment><USER26> We're using Target Process (targetprocess.com). They are basically a Rally competitor, but we found their product much simpler to use and much cheaper. We love it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Bunch of cool stuff out there -- Basecamp seems to be a fave.

I'm writing an Agile PM tool as a side project right now. Let me know if you'd like to beta it.

</comment><comment><USER28> For smaller projects: ΤΙΜΙΟΣ Gantt Designer @ <http://timios.net/Gantt/>

For bigger projects: MS Project

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always wanted to charge Bill Gates for third party testing services. MS project is all right for simple gant charts I guess...

</comment><comment><USER30> we use dokuwiki with SQL plugin in conjunction with flyspray and webcalendar.

since both webcalendar and flyspray use a database. it's very easy to make dashboards.

</comment><comment><USER31> backpackIT.com is nice -</comment>


Ask HN: Do Hackers Trust Keybase.io - <AUTHOR> I'm very excited about [keybase.io](https://keybase.io/). From my point of view this is a create combination of many crypto tools I'm work with.<p>But what do hackers think ? Do you trust them or the peoples/ companies behind that project? <comment><USER2> I can hear that they're using GPG to encrypt end-to-end everything. For now, I think I trust them.</comment>


Show HN: I got tired of missing new music releases, so I built this - <AUTHOR> http://beathound.com <comment><USER4> This is a good idea for a service but I found the interface too confusing regarding how to use it, why it had to have that information, and how it worked.

Select file would seem to mean the iTunes _folder_? Or do I select "iTunes Music Library.xml" inside it (a large file). What personal and private information is in that file anyway? How will it be used? Where is it going? What if the xml file I have is for a different version of iTunes than the site supports? Is there a list of iTunes versions tested and supported listed somewhere on the site? What happens if a bunch of users have information in that file that they have pirated songs and the service gets a subpoena to disclose all xml files? What if I only want updates on some artists I like and not the ones I hate and regret buying their CD? Does the XML file have DRM keys in it that I will be inadvertently disclosing? If not where are those things kept anyway? How often do I get emails? How can I unsubscribe? How can I tell it to stop sending emails about a given group?

A service I would probably like would be one where I could type in names of groups I actually like and get emails when they release a new album. This may even be a complementary function to the "everything all at once without distinction" feature on the beathound site.

<comment><USER5> If you're wondering what personal and private information is in "iTunes Music Library.xml", couldn't you open it up and look for yourself?

"What happens if a bunch of users have information in that file that they have pirated songs and the service gets a subpoena to disclose all xml files?"

Whoa, with absolutely zero knowledge of the .xml file, you just jumped 100 steps ahead to some hypothetical situation where this website will incriminate its users. Loosen up your tinfoil hat a little bit...

You're asking a ton of questions about a service that is obviously just starting out, and is probably not feature complete yet. Did you actually use the site, and can you provide any comments on how well the site actually does what it advertises? If not, your comment just seems like a lot of bikeshedding:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality>

<http://pink.bikeshed.com/>

<comment><USER6> Yes, droithomme (GP), please do not share your thoughts on a project which was listed here specifically for you to do so.

On second thought, thanks for bringing up your concerns. It certainly seems that in order for this tool to become a success for users like you it will have to deal with these types of issues carefully.

Edit to add: I want to stress the near infinite value that the HN crowd brings to the table whatever they say about any new site. Considering the vast majority of passers by even on HN will not comment at all, anything discouraging anyone from doing so seems to be more damaging than any negative comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "Select File.." button label would make more sense as "Upload your iTunes XML file" instead of expecting the user to read the entirety of the text above or to click the equally confusing "What have I missed?" button, which I assumed was a changelog but was really to pop up the helper text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up - I'll be deploying the change shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A service I can recommend is <https://muspy.com/> . You enter your favorite interprets and get an email when they release a new single or album.

<comment><USER9> Why would I want to create an account and then manually enter in my favourite artists?

<comment><USER10> Because you're not using iTunes. I don't. I agree it's not the best experience ever, but it's a great solution for people like me using small music players (Pragha) that will never be supported by services like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice idea, would use it if adapted for last.fm.

Your survey contains "FooBar" as a listening option - assume this should not be on there ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised too, but it _is_ actually a music player that some of my early testers use: <http://www.foobar2000.org/>.

<comment><USER12> A fantastic one, too. Unfortunately not on Linux, though.

<comment><USER13> Probably the single program I miss the most on Linux. I've never been able to find an acceptable replacement.

<comment><USER12> I use MPD + ncmpcpp/ario, and then Picard for tagging. It works pretty well, and I can do a bunch of stuff I couldn't do with Foobar2000, too, such as controlling my music via an app on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well done. This really works. The first recommendation was an instant purchase. So far I have spend £15.

Please consider two things: email alerts. I'f happily be spammed every time a new album from my most-played artists was released.

A monthly-spend-automatic-buy. I'd risk $20 a month to wake up to new music.

Oh. And it took me straight to the US shop despite me being a British customer. I take it the country code isn't in the iTunes.xml. Perhaps a country selector is needed on sign-up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now the plan is to email you max once a week - most of my early users hated email, so it was a matter of finding a balance between "I am putting something in your inbox" and "I am doing my best to not annoy you". Once a week seemed best for now.

This is my first time testing with an international audience - sounds like there's some work to do on country selection. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW, I spent a while trying to figure out how to pronounce "beathound" ("beath - ound"? "bea - thound"?). I eventually figured it's supposed to be "beat" + "hound" (right?).

As annoying as it can sometimes be, maybe this would be a good time to use camelcase ("BeatHound"), or perhaps just style the text to use a different color for the two words.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, I had a tester point out to me that this could be a problem - <USER2> is what I get for thinking he was nuts. Thanks for pointing this out.

<comment><USER15> I won't claim I'm _not_ nuts, but on the internet, you probably have to assume that a decent number of potential users are nuts, and design accordingly. :-)

<comment><USER16> Many simple obstacles that can be cleared up easily is worth doing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also <http://www.albumreminder.com/>

<comment><USER4> "You can add your favorite artists one-by-one or make use of one of Album Reminder's powerful importers."

Thanks that one is really cool, the one-by-one option is the right amount of disclosure for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, I have created this a while ago: <http://qusic.co.uk> It tracks currently only spotify stuff, but you can import your artists from SongKick. Any feedback / suggestions highly appreciated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - but if you're tracking things on Spotify, why do I need a Songkick account in order to import my artists? Does Spotify's API not do this for you?

<comment><USER18> You could only create an import building a proper spotify app. Songkick was the easiest to implement quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome. It's already found me a handful of new albums from artists I like.

<comment><USER20> Yes - this genuinely is excellent. I've already bought two albums (first I've got for years) and am really enjoying stepping through the results. Great stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I feel like official music releases are too slow to the game. Kind of like BandsInTown or SongKick, by the time you find out they're in town it's too late and tickets are sold out. You have to rely on social media like FB/Twitter for instant knowledge.

For releases, <http://hypem.com> is the way to go. Blogs will discover new releases way before anyone and you'll discover them through hypem.

<comment><USER16> I think this kind of service would be valuable to me just to find related or similar artists that I might not have heard of before -- if new music wasn't the sole focus

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a pretty cool solution; although I am getting a LOT of false positives. Could that have something to do with my hand-tagged MP3s?

(shameless plug) I made a new album notification tool for Last.FM focused on easily excluding non-important artists a while back: <http://releasification.frapp.it>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hand-tagged MP3s are a problem, but it looks like I have some bugs in my scanning logic that are creating more false positives than I'd like. I've been collecting library.xml files to try and track it down - if you want to help out, send yours to email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't see any kind of privacy policy link on the site, could one be added spelling out how the email address will be used?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - I need to do this. For now I can just spell it out: I will only use your email address to send you 1) an email when your library has been scanned, 2) an email maximum once a week when I find new releases from artists in your library, and 3) an email when there are recommendations for you to check out (if you opt in to receiving recommendations).

I have added this to my priority list - thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice use of bootstrap and changing things up so it doesn't look like a default bootstrap site.

</comment><comment><USER25> No last.fm integration?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but it's on my list.

<comment><USER26> Excellent. I'm sure I'm not the only one on hacker news who doesn't use iTunes.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there's anything I've learned today, it's been that people really like Spotify, and tend to send their information to last.fm. All the feedback is definitely helping me organize my list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is very similar to a service I built several years ago with a different concept: <http://ilikebsides.com>

</comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me a lot of <http://www.crapimissedit.com/> which is unfortunately shuttered now.

</comment><comment><USER29> The "Select File" button does not work for me on Firefox 15.0.1 / OSX 10.8.2 while it does when I use Chrome, bug or deliberate choice?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bug - that's what I get for trying to style a file input. Try clicking just to the left or right of it.

<comment><USER20> I hit the same problem, then fired up IE to try to get around it. Didn't work there either...unless you double click. I'd have given up if I'd not seen this comment!

The other thing that is rather confusing is that having selected the file, it's not clear how to proceed. I eventually clicked 'What have I missed' which seems to actually be 'I've not missed anything please click this button' - <USER3> think this could be better worded to just 'Go' or something similar once the file is selected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - I've changed it to 'Analyze'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cool idea!

From a privacy perspective -- what info can you glean from someone's library file? (other than the obvious artist/track information)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a paste of a small library.xml file: <https://gist.github.com/d61db3dcfd07ad093abf>

Looking at it quickly, I can get some idea of how your filesystem is laid out (or at least how iTunes thinks it is), as well as probably guessing your username on your computer if you haven't changed your music path. Doesn't look like much more than that.

<comment><USER31> Looking at my own iTunes library, the names of some of my playlists actually leak quite a bit of private information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> the iphone app "nomis" does this well: <http://www.nomisapp.com/>

</comment><comment><USER33> What's the data source for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> The iTunes store for now. Future sources are last.fm, Amazon, Insound, and eMusic.

<comment><USER33> Any plans to support MusicBrainz? That would seem like the obvious choice :)

<comment><AUTHOR> On the list!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 2010 Inc. 500: The Fastest Growing Private Companies in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2010/index.html

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for new business ideas, reviewing the Inc5000 is a great way to get started. It's ranked by 3-year percent revenue growth, which is good way to identify industries and sub-niches currently being disrupted.</comment>


Ask HN: Pace of life post startup - <AUTHOR>

It's been about 5 or 6 months (unbelievably) since I moved on as a startup founder. I've found that the pace of life in a semi-normal non-tech, non-startup job is quite slower and less stressful. I also find that I'm afraid to embrace it, even though I think it's done me good. A big part may be the move from the "big city" back to rural/suburban life.<p>How have you coped with the transition from the frenetic pace of startups to normal life? How do you keep your startup chops up? (because, you know, who knows...) <comment><USER2> <begin: rambling catharsis>

My startup (UsableHQ) failed.

We did the whole accelerator program thing, landed decent post-accelerator funding (decent for the UK anyway), and spent 2 years working on it. I've spent a great deal of time thinking about what we did wrong, and, honestly, we did a lot wrong. All the usual things that people warn you about in fact. We built a product that no one _really_ wanted. All the feedback was tremendously positive, but the reality was that the problem we were trying to solve was merely annoying rather than painful, so we failed to get any sort of proper traction. We spent far more time on product than on marketing or selling. We added features that were amazingly clever and cool, but that only affected 5% of the users. We used the newest technologies. We deluded ourselves that our idea was huge when it really wasn't. And so on. It was a catalogue of errors.

Then we ran out of money. Obviously.

Since I've been tremendously 'down' in what can only be described as a "mourning period" that felt _very_ much like grieving. I felt like I'd failed entirely and won't ever succeed at anything. My confidence in writing code took a huge knock. I didn't have a clue what to do next. Life slowed waaaaaaaay down. I needed it to.

Thankfully though, through the amazing and supportive network of friends and family, I think I've bounced back a bit. I learned a tremendous amount during UsableHQ about running a SaaS company, building a product, and _what makes me happy when I 'm working on things_. Experience of failure and learning from it is a valuable lesson.

So... I've started a new startup - [http://pitcher.io](http://pitcher.io) ... doing it all again. This time though, no accelerator and no funding unless it's actually going to help rather than because it's "the thing you should do".

<comment><USER3> I think I've stumbled on usable HQ before. Why do you think it was just annoying pain? The pain Project management software solves is huge I think, also evidenced by the gigantic competition in that space.

I have a similar experience with making the same mistakes everyone warns you about. Actually, I've experienced them first hand at building my own product (a file sharing platform for small businesses). Then, I've experienced them in the startup I've been working for a year (today is my last day) and tried to nudge the founders in not blindly following their vision. Alas. Confirmation bias is a huge problem.

I think Patrick Mackenzie said before "no startup ever said they spent too much talking and selling to customers".

Focusing on strong pain and talking and selling to customers is what's on my mind for my next products.

Good luck with pitcher.io!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been through this transition as well. I actually moved from a big city in the U.S to small city in the middle of Europe. I am just about to emerge on the other side with a new venture with funding already lined up. I have been where you are; making multiple adjustments and feeling like it's all temporary. Anyway here is my advice. Embrace your new position as a new adventure and put as much as you can into doing the best work you can. Doing good work is a positive feedback loop that sneaks into other areas of your life that maybe lacked attention during your extreme focus on your start up. This time is a gift to your life as a human being. Additionally, unplug from the start up scene. One, it's not going anywhere and when you are ready you will find your place in the market. Also at the moment it can only cause you confusion about your current position or choices and perhaps pain or envy. However don't mistake that advise with not reflecting. Please do take time to reflect on your past venture and the mistakes that were under your control and accept the learning from them. Hell you paid for them already, right? Especially key in on the moments or decisions when you let your instincts be overruled due to doubt, lack of knowledge, board members, co-founder, etc. This helped me find my "signpost" internally and led me out of the fog an into my best self again. If you withstood the pressure of a start up then you can push though this phase of your life and into the new. Good Luck!</comment>


Running ASP.NET Core on GoDaddy's Cheapest Shared Linux Hosting - <AUTHOR> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/RunningASPNETCoreOnGoDaddysCheapestSharedLinuxHostingDontTryThisAtHome.aspx <comment><USER2> Interesting that cross-platform builds are available on .net core.

<comment> james-skemp That's actually the main selling point of .NET Core.</comment></comment>


Schiff's Surveillance State - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/schiffs-surveillance-state-11575506091 <comment><USER2> Hardly "Schiff's", phone metadata has been collected for years. See Snowden.

IANAL, but wouldn't a witness (Parnas) statement count as probable cause?</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Will Be Served a Summons If He Sets Foot in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5wvxy/mark-zuckerberg-will-be-served-a-summons-if-he-steps-foot-in-canada <comment><AUTHOR> Of particular interest is that Kevin Chan was sent instead as he could answer any questions... except he doesn't:

"Erskine-Smith: Why are you not complying with privacy laws in Canada (in the opinion of the privacy commissioner, who will be taking Facebook to court).

Chan: I'm limited in what I can say.

Erskine-Smith: No you're not."</comment>


Show HN: Progressive Resume Generator - <AUTHOR> https://resume-nation.github.io <comment><USER2> Quick feedback:

Having the Next buttons not also save your information is counter intuitive.

Wasn't expecting to lose everything I typed in every time I hit Next.

Same with the Add button vs Next button.

<comment><USER3> It's simpler to just make every field always save all input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was expecting to be able to just click _give me another resume_ at the end, but it just lets me input data to generate a resume from 3 templates.

The project itself is pretty cool. I really liked it, despite expecting something different from the name.

If you're interested in feedback: let people download the data as json and reimport it later.

Give interested people a link to a guide for creating new templates. yours are great, but I think a project like this would have way more potential with significantly more templates to chose from. Though there probably will be very few (if any) contributors... Maybe not worth the effort after all ;)

<comment><USER5> JSON Resume ([https://jsonresume.org/](https://jsonresume.org/)) allows for JSON export. It would be nice if Resume Nation adopted that, or a similar, export format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought that "objective" statements on résumés are considered rather gauche.</comment>


Angel, VC, or Bootstrap? - <AUTHOR> http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/06/angel-vc-or-bootstrap.html

<comment><USER2> i think the best way to think about this is to start with bootstrapping and do everything in your power to avoid the need for funding... it should be with deep regret (and because you have no other options) that you move up the chain toward angels and vcs.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is more a personal question, it all depends on your start up & your current situation.</comment>


The Problem with the Mutation-Centric View of Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-problem-with-the-mutation_centric-view-of-cancer <comment><USER2> A well argued, thought provoking perspective. A practical issue with factoring in the contribution of microenvironment in causing/ sustaining cancer has been its diffuse nature- not amenable to define, measure or count...there is no straightforward metric of "inflammation" even- and environment likely encompasses more than that. Hopefully following next generation sequencing boom, when all the mutations have been counted and accounted for, the microenvironment will begin to get its due..</comment>


Ask HN: Review my app, Gossipopolis - <AUTHOR>

It seems a little silly, but I've been working on a celebrity news aggregator for a little while now, and I would be curious what your thoughts are about it. It isn't a mind-blowing concept, but it is my first solo webapp/iPhone app, so don't be too brutal :). I was trying to keep the design clean and functional because the others in the space are pretty distracting. I would also be curious how to make the landing page "punchier", because I think my lack of designer-y skills is hurting me.<p>You can see the site here: http://gossipopolis.com and the iPhone landing page is here: http://gossipopolis.com/app. <comment><USER2> A bit more, if you don't mind:

Having a simple 'about' page would help, though the site is very self explanatory.

A menu at the top, even a simple one, can probably be useful.

How about making the names of celebrities (or other keywords) into links, wherein clicking on them would load a list of articles related to them?

Got a bit more, but you didn't want it to be brutal :).

Nah, just joking. Its a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about something similar to making celebrity names into a related article link, but it might turn ugly since there are so many nicknames involved, and more get added all of the time. I'll see what I can hack up, though -- it's definitely a good idea. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Containing the content in some div tags giving it some left and right margins, could be good.

Since this is a 'fun' site, it could be probably do well with some more color and jazz.

Based on the type of crowd it is likely to attract, it would be better to have 'cool' colors than sober colors.

Pictures always help.

How about a search?

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

The color scheme is definitely more what I'd like, rather than the audience so that's a good point. I'll definitely add in pictures soon.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A simple workout tracker - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I recently got back to the gym and I was really happy to have my old training plans. Are any simple workout trackers that I could use to record these plans?
I'd like something that is: - usable via the web and mobile - has some basic tracking - flexible in allowing me to input data the way I want it - something better than excel :) <comment><USER2> I've been through a number of systems for this. I think where I've landed is that this is probably the ideal code-it-yourself opportunity. People often suggest todo lists as very easy, but I find those even more complicated than workout tracking. You need to track multiple lists, update existing records, etc. Workout data is pretty "append only".

For my workouts, which are fairly simple (and usually involve body weight, a simplifying assumption), a shell script to log the data and a python script to analyze the data works great. When I do 20 pushups, I say "log_exercise pushups 20", with autocomplete and all. It just adds a row to a 3 column file with the epoch timestamp, exercise name, and quantity. With that log, it's very easy to analyze my pushup/chinup/plank/running activity over time. I generally limit my analysis to things like "am I able to do more of xyz than a month ago?" or "how many pushups have I done on average over the past 6 months?" (seeing "avg 2 pushups a day over the past 60 days" gets me embarrassed!).

As for web/mobile, I just put my workout in Google Keep on my phone (notes like "10 chinups, 2 miles running, 6 more chinups...") and just enter it in when I get back. For me, this pain is outweighed by having complete control in other areas.

I initially thought "oh, this must be a solved problem", so I would look for apps. Over time I realized that a lot of features just weren't necessary for me. I found that graphs of my pushups over time didn't give me additional information. I could see from a table whether or not I was doing a lot or a little. Syncing across devices or seeing it on the go wasn't important. Sharing with my friends wasn't important. Nor was seeing percent increases or goal setting. The biggest benefit was from going from keeping no records to consistently keeping records, and adding a tiny bit of structure.</comment>


As Winters Warm, Blood-Sucking Ticks Drain Moose Dry - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-winters-warm-blood-sucking-ticks-drain-moose-dry/ <comment><AUTHOR> Living over 20 years in the rural Ozarks I can say with confidence we had a tick explosion this year.

It's always tough battle here though. I spent some time this working on how to get rid of them in my yard that didn't involve "nuking" our entire yard (several acres) with pesticides but it's an ongoing battle because we have so many "critters" that visit our yard from the surrounding forest.

I did hit on one method that worked pretty good at reducing the numbers, but still a long way from eradicating them. I use a method that's called "Tick dragging" by Health Departments to estimate tick populations which is basically just dragging a piece of cloth over the areas where ticks are. I used a terry clothe towel treated with permethrin which makes it easy for them to latch onto the towel and when they do the permethrin kills them pretty quickly.</comment>