Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mellosouls 907 days ago
I couldn't immediately find the repo for this, and get the impression its not open source.

Considering it seems to be constituted significantly of open source libraries and tools (which you commendably are up front about), I would want to see a lot more justification for why this is closed (e.g. those third party elements are only a tiny fraction of the product), and what significant value is being added. Or if I'm wrong, a clearer link to the repo.
3 comments
LarryClapp 907 days ago
Correct, it's not open source. I did mention that it's a commercial product, but of course some commercial products are also OSS. Mine is not.

> I would want to see a lot more justification for why this is closed

I'm not sure what justification I can offer besides "because I want to try to make a living selling my own software, starting with this product, and I think that'll be easier if it's closed source".

We might certainly differ over price points or value added. Pricing is a bit of a black art and this is my first commercial software product. (As I mentioned in another comment, I'm happy to offer a discount code, if that would help and not get me banned.) Like, would you be happier if it were 1, 5, 20 dollars? Or does the price, as such, even bear on the open-vs-closed question?

I'm unclear on how you (or I) would correlate "added value" or "private lines of code" vs. "justification for being closed source".

Thank you for your comment, this is an interesting discussion.

link
arp242 907 days ago
I'm not the previous poster and I don't think you need to "justify" anything, but the main reason I'd like the source code is so I can fix my own problems and don't need to rely on you. I care a lot less whether that's under an open source license or NDA or whatever: as long as I can build it and include any changes I want.
link
jyxent 907 days ago
The licenses for the three libraries / software they mention are MIT or BSD. They don't need to make it open source.
link
lucideer 907 days ago
EULA https://huckridge.notion.site/Hucksh-EULA-5f69019f12a04487a9...
link
seanhunter 907 days ago
I see the section on "Fees". It is certainly a ballsy move to try to charge fees for a shell in 2023 when shells have been free for like about 50 years at this point. This was a "no" from me just based on the description of the web based point and click yadda yadda but it's a "hell no" from me baed on reading that EULA.
link