Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jack-r-abbit 4750 days ago
This is the first I'm hearing that "soylent" is "an open-source food movement". I thought is was one guy that tried some stuff and now is starting to build a start-up around it. It also seems weird that what is labeled as the flagship “distro” of this so-called open-source movement is not actually open-source. So now I'm confused. Is this just a wording issue I'm confused about? Are we using "open-source" for everything now?
3 comments

Just 20-somethings with too much time on their hands and no clue trying to be 'food hackers' in the midst of a gigantic bubble. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I am 22 but in fact I don't have enough time on my hands which is the exact reason I am trying Soylent. Trying to work my day job and my side project leave me very little time and Soylent is offering a cheap, fast, easy method to consume the needed nutrients everyday. I'm not sure what you have against it.
I'm actually 30 : ) And I actually have zero time on my hands because I'm in school (as stated in the post).
Rob has confirmed that he sees this as a movement, and is down with people DIYing soylent, even though his company is the only big-S Soylent.

And he is going to open-source his recipe, he just hasn't done it yet, I think because he's still putting final touches on it. A preliminary list of ingredients was recently posted to blog.soylent.me if you're interested.

I think the author is a little confused. The Soylent Corporation (soylent.me) has not said anything about publishing or "open-sourcing" the recipe. I doubt they would.

They will be required publish the nutrition facts and ingredients, but that's not the same as a recipe.

Also, "Soylent" at this point refers to their product, so using their name for your DIY version risks serious trademark infringement.

EDIT: They do plan on publishing the "formula" (http://discourse.soylent.me/t/will-the-official-soylent-reci...)

That is what I was thinking. I'm not sure who even owns the "Soylent" mark since it comes from a book that was also made into a movie.
For food purposes, I think Rob does now.