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Comment by KomoD | Hacker News Reader

These guys have been spamming issues in repos trying to promote this project and no disclosure whatsoever that they are associated with the project.

https://github.com/search?q=%22cloudinabottle.toml%22&type=i...

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(author here) I'm checking with my team to confirm these came from us, but if so I apologize for this - posts like these should come from a real account with proper disclosure, but also these sorts of requests feel premature for a project like ours that doesn't yet have a sizeable user base.

The user was called adl-collab, when it forked repos to add implementations it made them under a branch called "andrew".

The biggest contributor to the project in the last 3mo is andrewlaack... and we can also just take a guess that "adl" in adl-collab is AnDrewLaak.

Yeah, I'll make sure this doesn't continue. To be clear there were 11 total issues posted; this was a mistake, not some huge spamming campaign.

Possibly andrewlaack’s clanker run amok

At least this is more informative than "Thanks Andrew".

> posts like these should come from a real account with proper disclosure

This line makes me think you are running a spam campaign and andrew just isn't part of it

I used to work for this company many years ago, and it's highly unlikely they're running a (centrally organized) spamming campaign of any type. Zack's a good guy and I'm sure he'll get it taken care of promptly.

If this is a spam campaign, it’s not a very effective one. I think you’d do well to apply Hanlon’s Razor here

You are also characterizing another project that was open-sourced (sandstorm) and is under active development as "long abandoned". Open source is difficult and requires a fair amount of cheerleading to engage users and make them part of the community. As a result it's hard to see your project in a positive light.

They also called out Sandstorm for requiring changes to the applications for them to run on the platform.

Which is true. There's no issue with honest criticism, but when it's careless or disingenuous then it it's a put reflection on the speaker.

Right, I wouldn't have mentioned it if their own platform didn't apparently have the same issue.

I mean, to be honest it does look like sandstorm development has almost stopped for the past couple of years...or am I missing something? https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/graphs/code-freque...

No, sandstorm was deprecated years ago. I was building a platform that was similar to/inspired by sandstorm, and I closely followed it until its creator deprecated it. They now work for Cloudflare and released the 'WorkOS' project a couple weeks ago through them/for them.

I believe you mean Cloudflare OS: https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572

Current status explained here:

https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-sandstorm-org

Our current work is in the dev branch, we are preparing for a new release soon.

"Long abandoned" is a fair characterization of Sandstorm.

There is a loyal community of enthusiasts trying to keep it alive, but realistically not a lot of progress has been made. (Though, AI has helped them make more progress lately.)

But the original creator of Sandstorm (me) did indeed abandon it long ago (sorry).

More here: https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-sandstorm-org

There is no need to apologize for building a fantastic tool that was ahead of its time.

But "abandoned" in this contexts makes it sound like it's dead. Even if it's factually correct that the original (very busy) author stepped away and it is literally/factually true that you "abandoned it", it is also fairly misleading.

I disfavor maligning open source projects based on a misleading framing.

Looking at the issues, do I understand it correctly that you have some way to install directly from repositories if they contain a `cloudinabottle.toml` file?

If yes, regardless of who made the issues, that seems like terrible architecture/design there...

Please don't require app cooperation for getting apps into a bottle. I don't want to have to fight to get a file in, nor maintain my own fork.

I feel like with the capabilities of AI, I feel like they should be able to just figure this out..

It's evidence of bad abstraction if you need everyone else to make changes and couple themselves directly to you.

If for some reason your services can't speak an already common language, I think it's on you to add those shims into your own project.

I don't think this approach is bad. The issues are asking if the project will accept contributions to add support, not demanding the maintainers add it.

Let's assume that they didn't have these container restrictions and could just use an ordinary docker-compose.yml, they'd still probably want to use something like OAuth2.0 for centralised login which a lot of these services won't have.

What would be better, making a massive PR to add support for it, or opening an issue to discuss it with the maintainer first?

Co-op Cloud, which has similarities, creates separate repos for its "packaging recipes". https://docs.coopcloud.tech/maintainers/catalogue/

It's 11 issues total and by one person, and the project says here in the thread the issue is being addressed. Please put down the metaphorical pitchforks and torches.

Hardly seems worth the pitchforks.

shouldn't we hold back with allegations while there's a non-0 chance this is just a user wishing their other services were supported too?

I checked, it's an Imbue employee (or someone impersonating one, which seems a bit far fetched). I could could cite my sources but it feels like doxxing / drawing too much attention to the mistake of an individual. My read is that it was a separate github account that they let an agent control.

project literally launched yesterday... come on

Disclosure would be nice but 11-12 issues in entire GitHub is hardly spam.

Looks like the account in question is deleted now - do you have the original username?

adl-collab

It's only 11 in the last 48h, on lesser known projects.

11 in 48 hours is way too many and I'd call that spam.

Yep, sarcasm is tough via text. Oops. I should've done /s but it's too late now.

Sounds like a fun llm that’s “fixing” things.

This github search returns just 11 results, and the issues are more or less reasonable. Doesn't seem that egregious.

Tell you what though, thank you for providing such a comprehensive list of cool projects to nerdsnipe me on a sunday morning!

The person doing this doesn't understand how pull requests work. The issues all say "I have a version in my fork". Open a pull request then! That's the whole point of forks on GitHub. Creating an issue first is pointless spamming akin to the classic "asking to ask". Just seems completely out of touch with open source to me.

> Creating an issue first is pointless spamming akin to the classic "asking to ask"

Many projects disagree with you on this one. It is quite common to have a policy that forbids PRs without an issue or discussion first.

I've never actually seen this. Can you link an example?

Some projects require opening an issue first.

On the plus side, I learned about some interesting projects from that GitHub query.

It's not spam if it's the first time I heard of it and it's useful. It shows they care about their project. This makes me want to try it out even more.

Meta and Google can spam their unsolicited ads to a billion users but regular people aren't allowed to promote their own projects on niche forums? This is bs. You're the problem here. Self-promoting your harmful values. You're the spammer.

Spam is, rather definitionally, undesired marketing.

If they don't desire it, it's spam for them. And they rather clearly do not desire it.

(You could also go with the stronger "unrequested marketing" definition, which makes this even more "definitely spam". CAN-SPAM rules define it this way, so that seems fair too)

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