[heretohelp]

This is why I refuse to use external services hosted by small/tiny companies that haven't open-sourced their tech.

Even in this moment, they still don't seem to be bothering to open source any of it.

There's a lesson to be learnt here in terms of gaining buyer trust when you're small.

I continue to use our own setup for IRC.

[jkaljundi]

There is no difference between large and small tech companies shutting down their services. Google has shut down close to 50 services in recent year if I remember correctly: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/03/google-shutdowns-continue-i...

[njr123]

These things are not really on the same level. Google usually gives more than a years notice, and always has a way to export your data. These guys are shutting down in the month and it looks like the only help you get with your data is a link to a gist on github.

[mibbitier]

> Google usually gives more than a years notice, and always has a way to export your data.

Hahahahaha no. They don't. If only they did anything remotely as nice as that.

[heretohelp]

The Google API I was using had a 6 month lead time, no recommendations for graceful transition, no offer of data dumps, and the final shutdown date was never communicated.

[mibbitier]

You got lucky.

The API I was using, was shutdown without any communication. (Adsense for ajax - announced at Google I/O 2010). They simply closed my account without paying the money I was owed (substancial sum). I later found out from a Gooler "yeah they decided to shutdown the product".

Beware of relying on anyone, even a big company who says they won't be evil.

[heretohelp]

Google is notoriously bad about this by now, though. There isn't much excuse anymore after the last 3-4 years.

[heretohelp]

I am in the middle of moving an API over from a Google one that got shutdown recently. This has cost me a substantial chunk of time, more than it likely has cost you.

I'm viscerally aware of inverterate corporate capacity for volatility.

[pbiggar]

Its a self-fulfilling prophesy. You can't get big without customers, but customers won't use you because you're small.

How do we overcome this?

(Edit: I was asking a rhetorical question to counter the parent. But great discussion below.)

[crag]

No NO.. it's not because they're small. It's because tech start-ups have a history of shutting down or selling, and leaving their users in the dust.

The list is long. Another recent example was Sparrow. I broke my rule about buying/licensing software from small companies (unless I got the source) with Sparrow. I didn't just buy 1 copy, I (we) brought 15 (for the office). And of course, I got burned. Again.

It will not happen again. Period. Unless you tell me up front your plans - what you plan to do for me, the user, when/if you fail or sell.

[throwa]

It is not only tech start-ups that do that. Big tech companies regularly kill or sell off divisions or product lines. Most times, a start-up might still be on its first product line, which makes you think selling off their single product line or single division in this instance the whole company to be different from what the tech giants do when they sell or kill off product lines or divisons.

Start-ups with more than one product line, sometimes sell off one product and keep the rest acting thesame way big companies do. So, Yext a start-up sold their Felix product line to IAC eg:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/iac-buys-yexts-pay-per-call...

An example of a giant doing thesame thing:

http://techland.time.com/2012/04/26/google-sells-sketchup-wa...

I have shown above, an example of start-ups and giants selling a product line. You can Google around for example of tech giants and start-ups with more than one product, killing off a product line.

[jonursenbach]

Did you really get burned with Sparrow though? You bought software, not a service. Them being bought, and shut down, by Google has zero effect on you given that you can continue to use their software. Forever.

[_neil]

According to a friend, the most recent version of Sparrow is essentially broken (100% CPU and crashes). I haven't upgraded in a while for this reason, and I'm not expecting that issue to be fixed, ever.

That said, I'm still using Sparrow on my laptop and desktop machines as well as my iPhone. But probably not for a whole lot longer.

[hzy]

I don't know about your friend, but I'm happily using the latest version of Sparrow with no issues whatsoever, maybe he has some other unrelated problems...

[tijs]

"Forever" being until Google changes their service which is probably about every few months.

[pilif]

Sparrow is essentially an IMAP client. I don't see Google turn off IMAP support any time soon. Way too many clients are actively using that.

[tijs]

Well yes, but doesn't it's usefulness come from the tight integration with gmail only features? disclaimer; i only used Sparrow for a bit a long time ago so perhaps they've made these features work in regular IMAP as well..

[madflo]

I don't know exactly the protocols behind Exchange (IMAP ? MAPI ?), but it seems to me that it is, for now, Google's prefered way of accessing emails & calendars from a mobile device (at least from iOS).

[tylermenezes]

You paid $150 for software which still works, which had no promise of updates forever anyway, and you're upset?

Not that your point is invalid talking about Grove - suddenly everyone who used it has to move in under a month. But I don't get the upset over Sparrow. If it helped you at the time, it should help you now.

[crag]

I don't want to rehash Sparrow. But, if they'd had fixed long standing bugs, and added the features they promised I would not be so upset about it. But they didn't. They dropped the project and went on to Google.

Leaving with with a ridiculous "feel-good" blog post.

My point though, this isn't uncommon. And this kind of user treatment is one of the big reasons many tech start-ups have a tough time making the sale.

Now of course, if said company manages to get momentum (like a Dropbox, Github, FB - to name a few) - I guess they are no longer startups.

[flatline3]

Sell software and a service. Make it so I can install your code and run it indefinitely. Provide your source to paying customers.

See Atlassian for an example.

[ericingram]

Open source with a service is an exciting model, a lot of network effects but also greater up front investment. We are doing this with getfwd.com

[joe_the_user]

Did you miss the "that haven't open-sourced their tech" part in the parent?

[mibbitier]

You overcome it by offering something valuable for users that they can't easily setup themselves.

As far as I can see, Grove.io didn't do this. They didn't have any easy means to grow quickly.

Also perhaps they're paying a lot for hosting (At rackspace). I don't know, but there's no reason they shouldn't be making some profit if they have a few paying customers. Shame they can't build on that.

[iamdave]

You overcome it by offering something valuable for users that they can't easily setup themselves.

Why can't traditional IRC services be used for this? I'll preemptively counter the end-user configuration side of this by saying it's increasingly easier in a managed workstation environment to deploy images with software required for that worker's tasks preconfigured. Even in a non-managed environment, an IT staff willing to build the packages and make the configuration edits can make accessible an installation candidate stored for access in an infrastructure library so users can save (after proper credentialing and auth checks have been satisfied), install and login.

Security, perhaps? That's always a valid concern to have, but if that's the case I would hope that an adequately planned and designed audit of any service not being managed internally gets the same look. Corollary: perhaps one should not be using anything not managed internally for sensitive matters to begin with; collaboration and non-secure communication where a failure of this system wont halt production or cause the company to incur significant loss however are par.

If I'm off base here, I'm willing to discuss it further. While I loved IT, I had to run for the door after getting burned on multiple opportunities to manage programs and create user friendly but secure policies. And by burned I mean hired to do exactly that, only to end up in hyper-glorified purchasing support roles. shudders

[robryan]

It takes time. Some kind of competitive advantage over everything else in the marketplace will help to. People need a reason to bet on your company which overcomes the risk in instability.

As time passes and your service stays solid more people will come on board. Something like github is a good example. I doubt many big companies would have considered relying on them early on, but their track record has changed that now.

[crag]

Yeah but, Github is a different sort of product. You don't lose much if it shuts down (assuming you have your code). You can push your code someplace else.

[robryan]

I disagree, maybe that might have been a point that allowed more people to give it a try in the early days. A lot of companies have integrated APIs and built workflows around the github specific way of doing things.

[mibbitier]

Surely most of the value of using github is the web UI?

[frabcus]

You're totally locked into the issue tracker.

[pbiggar]

I really meant my point to be a counter to its parent.

But since we're on the topic, presenting social proof is also pretty useful. Show customers that people know, show the press that featured you, show them who you are, who your advisors/investors are, show them whose tweeted about you.

(Maybe writing this will be a catalyst to take my own advice for CircleCi)

[ricardobeat]

But that's hacking trust. It's opposite to just being honest and having a publicized contingency plan, or open-source code.

edit (since I can't reply): logic being that social proof is good for business, but has no substance. It doesn't make it any better for users when it comes to shutting down.

[dchuk]

The substance of social proof is that it shows that a lot of people have faith in your product and trust you enough to pay you to use it. It's not just a gimmick, it's a concrete psychological trigger.

[ricardobeat]

Yes, of course social proof has substance as marketing strategy. But gaining trust is orthogonal to actually being reliable. (this is still about the top comment)

[pbiggar]

I would like to hear the logic behind that assertion.

[heretohelp]

>I really meant my point to be a counter to its parent.

I don't believe I've ever seen you do anything else on HN. I know you to be a reliable person, no reason to think you'd suddenly get fickle and take something I said seriously.

Do you mean to tell me that if somebody rolled up with a check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire and run for the hills? Realistically the only people who are cared after in any acquisition are the investors so that no bad-blood is in the water for the next acqui-hire. Customers are always left in the dark.

If you want any credibility to the contrary, you'd better start presenting your customers with an SLA that guarantees a detailed transition with a timeline in the case of company failure/acquisition.

Or you can just play PR games. Whatever bare minimum your sense of honesty necessitates.

I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base, but I never thought I'd become a millionaire anyway.

I just want to help people.

[pbiggar]

> check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire

> I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base

So everyone else is just in it for the money, but not you? If you can believe it about yourself, perhaps you'd be willing to extend some of that credulity to others?

[heretohelp]

The track record of everyone else is very poor :)

[zhoutong]

There are always early adopters that are passionate about every new product they can find, and there are also skeptical customers that refuse to use anything provided by startups. That's actually how sustainable startups grow.

[zeeg]

Why should anyone create software just so you can have it for free? You're not entitled to open source software, or the goodwill of others. If they decided that they didn't want to continue running their product, they can choose to shut it down.

This is exactly the same as Sparrow, TextMate, etc. None of these companies owe you anything to where they should be required, or even expected, to open source their work.

[heretohelp]

I don't demand anything of them, but they won't create a dependency where I previously had none and expect to be rewarded with money for it.

I am making founders aware of this attitude so that they can

1. Realize that there's a problem

2. Distinguish themselves among their competitors by addressing this concern

I'm not aiming to prescribe solutions, just describing the heuristics I presently rely on to determine if a service is likely to become a liability. I always do a fluid cost-benefit analysis beyond the black-and-white I described in my top comment.

That you believed what I said had anything to do with "demanding" free labor of anyone is telling and indicates a defensive posture on the subject.

Not a surprising reaction to have, given that Sentry (your errors-as-a-service project) depends on people trusting you not to just shut it down tomorrow.

[zeeg]

Sentry is also open source, but for very different reasons than what you describe. I treat it like part of the business value, but that also means that many people can simply run their own, which means potential value lost (I wouldnt argue that there is value lost, but its not something that can be ignored).

[heretohelp]

>Sentry is also open source, but for very different reasons than what you describe. I treat it like part of the business value, but that also means that many people can simply run their own

Then there's no issue in the hypothetical scenario I laid out.

I'm a Sentry user (of the hosted service) because it's open sourced. I wouldn't have given you a seconds notice otherwise and I doubt I'm alone in that.

Why be so defensive when you're clearly not in a position to be guilty of leaving all your customers up the creek?

[huhtenberg]

How's being an open source a requirement?

One would want to use an external service, because... well... it's a service. You are paying for someone else to maintain the system and care about the uptime, scalability, security, etc. You surely do not imply that you would pay grove.io simply because you can't bring your own IRC server up, do you?

[heretohelp]

I already have IRC for our company.

[rcsorensen]

Maybe you touched on the solution.

If you're a small startup, putting forward a statement that all the code will be open sourced if you shut down should increase the level of comfort your customers have in the product.

What are the downsides I'm not thinking of? Companies that reuse code across multiple products, perhaps. Product A dies, but uses component Foo in Product B that still exists, and represents some kind of special-value-add.

[chc]

The most obvious downside is that it creates perverse incentives -- potential customers benefit if you fail. It also telegraphs a lack of...I don't know what the word is. Tenacity? It's kind of like putting a bounty on your own head so that at least somebody can benefit if you die. You really want people to be invested in your survival.

It also limits what you can do with your program. If your program uses code you don't have a license to release, you can't open-source it.

[mmahemoff]

It's debatable customers benefit if a company fails and open sources their product. The customer, assuming they're willing and able to install it, misses out on any further upgrades (rare is the salvaged open source that goes anywhere) and support. Though I don't discount that there is _some_ benefit and that many customers might over-estimate that benefit.

[justincormack]

Escrow clauses are perfectly normal for commercial software and services, for enterprise contracts.

It probably needs to be a contract, as the liquidators might ignore it if it is just a statement, depending what happens to the company.

[protomyth]

Escrow clauses also get rid of the incentive not to use the product since it will be open sourced anyway. The code only goes to those who paid for it.

[pbiggar]

I thought about this earlier - putting a statement on circleci.com saying that if we shut up shop then we'll open source everything. However, I think its dangerous to plant that seed in a users' mind - I think it suggests that there's a danger of that happening (which there isn't, CI fans).

I actually think the solution is to ignore customers with this view. We'll get their business when we "cross the chasm".

[lazerwalker]

It gets tricky if your exit path ends up being the sort of combination talent/product acquisition where your new employer wants to keep your tech proprietary (see: Apple acquiring Siri, Facebook buying Face.com and shutting down their public API).

[plusbryan]

When your favorite restaurant closes down, do you demand they post all their recipes?

[heretohelp]

Only if they demand I make them my sole source of food and stop cooking for myself while I'm their customer.

[samengland]

But you wouldn't do that though, would you...?

[mibbitier]

If they open sourced it, they'd likely feel obligated to support it.

So it would kinda defeat the point of shutting grove down maybe...

[heretohelp]

>If they open sourced it, they'd likely feel obligated to support it.

That's their psychological bugaboo, not mine.