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by brilliantcode 3421 days ago
ironic that this will be the move that actually propels rethinkdb...

it's my feeling that software licensing day's are over for the little guys. If you are Oracle or Microsoft and have that brand recognition great.

Coupled with commoditization of developers, I think it'd be great if we had a kickstarter site where you could request a commercial project to be open-sourced, pitch in some money to support the developer.

For instance if somebody released an open source version of Hootsuite I think that would put a severe dent in Vancouver's tech scene-Hootsuite customers wouldn't even think twice about switching to a zero cost solution, as it's not a pain killer but a vitamin. Free vitamin is always better than an expensive one. Pain killers on the other hand are less flexible because it's an emotional buy.
1 comments
lewisl9029 3421 days ago
I'd love to be able to pitch in some money to turn Datomic into an open-source project. As much as I'd love to use it for my own projects, commercial licenses tend to causes huge pains for deployment, and poses as an insurmountable philosophical barrier for use in my own open-source projects.
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brilliantcode 3420 days ago
I worked with Datomic but it was such a turn off to use because of it's limiting license plans. I'm also worried that they might not be around in the future and what then?

An open source Datomic would be wonderful. I worked with Datomic last year and while I enjoyed clojure and datalog, it was also a big pain in the butt to be googling "how do I do X in clojure/datomic/datalog".

A really sharp developer might be able to master it (I'm not) given ample time but it's very expensive both to ramp new developer's up and pay clojure devs which aren't cheap due to their limited supply.

If there was a website like Kickstarter that had a way for people to vote (with money) on open-sourcifying an existing commercial project, would people come?

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brilliantcode 3420 days ago
hey lewis9029,

just wanted to let you know we are working on exactly that: a way to crowdfund open source alternatives to commercial software like Datomic.

Do a search for "letsopensource" on the thread here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591321

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