Beg HN - last day for my open source crowdfunding campaign (neo4django) | Hacker News Reader

Beg HN - last day for my open source crowdfunding campaign (neo4django)

bountysource.com

125 pointsmhluongo38 comments

Without following more links, it's completely unclear to me what this project does, who you are, or why I should give you money.

Maybe it's just inside-baseball that I don't understand, but I think you need rework your pitch page.

Sorry! I hadn't expected much non-niche interest in the campaign when I wrote the copy. Neo4django is a Django ORM replacement for the Neo4j graph database. I'm the primary dev, but since our startup supporting the project is on hold, I'm trying to find time to keep up development- this campaign will help me complete the next milestone.

Yet you promote it on a non-niche forum. What else could you have possibly expected?

Do note that I wrote the copy 30 days ago- this is the last day of a month-long campaign. I'd love any actionable advice on the copy.

IANACW, but for me, something energetic and concise like "Help support bringing the world's leading graph DB to Django" helps me get my head in the game a lot faster. I'm closer to "he's making a DB interface for Django" instead of "what is neo4j".

Or even just your opener in your README "neo4django is an Object Graph Mapper that let's you use familiar Django model definitions and queries against the Neo4j graph database" is useful for identifying the players.

Considering the HN audience Django would be known but I'm not sure how many people would know about neo4j. (I hadn't heard of it)

Maybe I'm a little jaded, but isn't feedback "your copy is confusing, doesn't explain the project or why I should support it" sufficiently actionable advice?

If you really care about this project, I recommend taking the initiative on everything instead of waiting for someone to give you the answers.

He was expecting someone browsing Hacker News, familiar with the content of his software, to gain interest and donate. He was not expecting John Smith the Front End Guru to donate.

What else could you have possibly expected?

Thanks for that.

I still have no idea what it does.

Django has an ORM that works with Postgre, MySQL, and other relational databases. Neo4django mimics the Django ORM, but connects to a graph database- Neo4j. It's a way to use Django with Neo4j, while supporting Django nice-to-haves like the auth library and admin site, in a way that's already familiar to Django developers.

Great. Slap that at the top of the page.

Here's an idea: Go contact everyone on your stargazers list and ask them if neo4django is used at their company. https://github.com/scholrly/neo4django/stargazers

What does $1000 get you? Time off to work on the project?

In general, I think begging posts are in the best interests of HN.

I'm really sorry for not being able to back you. In fact, I don't even have a credit/debit card! Else, I would've helped.. So, sorry about it.. but I tweeted it..

Maybe instead of begging you could try to find someone that needs it willing to fund development?

A number of users have contributed to the campaign so far- this is the last day, thus the begging :)

You're missing his point.

Scrap the crowdfunding completely and find SERIOUS (defined as "$1K is nothing") backers for the project -- perhaps a company that wants it.

No, I understood. I chose this format because I'd rather be funded by more, and smaller, contributions than one large sponsor. That might not always be the case, but I think that's where the project is right now.

Being picky about funding is an interesting concept. If one large sponsor picks up the tab why care about the source of the money? Unless it comes with strings attached but that need not be the case. I still don't get it.

More people giving less money means less pressure for deliverables, and less pressure from a single large entity. He wants to do what he wants to do because he wants it, and as a bonus get paid for it. He's not doing it primarily to make money. That's the way I take it at least.

Exactly, thanks for clearing that up :)

He is primarily asking (begging even) for money.

Interesting, so are you saying you actually really don't care a whole lot about this Neo4j thing one way or the other, such that "If enough random folks will sponsor it I'll work on it, otherwise I'll go do something else." ?

Your actions and your words are not in alignment and so there is some confusion around this whole thing.

The original point was if you care about this project, then make it happen by finding someone willing to pay you to make it happen. If there is value in the project then this will be helpful for them, and paying you $1,000 is chump change (seriously its like a couple of hours of a mid-tier lawyer's time, for example).

If you don't care one way or another, then you don't need to "Beg HN" you just say "BTW, I had this out there, it doesn't look like it is going to fly, but I'd mention it one last time here before it expires to see if someone missed it." If on the other hand you actually do care, (which the wording suggests) then, as the progenitor of this thread suggests you should use a different funding approach.

Of course I care- otherwise I wouldn't have devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours building and maintaining the library, supporting it all over StackOverflow, and participating in the Neo4j mailing list. Your other points are addressed by sibling comments.

I tried pledging like 10 times but bountysource authentication is sucking majorly. Sorry, man.

Hey, I'm from Bountysource and saw you're having troubles -- sorry about that.

Can you tell me where you're getting stuck? Which method are you using to sign up (or sign in)? What browser/OS?

Personally, I authed via GitHub, but still got a weird flash message along the lines of "Unable to create new account" and then was redirected to the funding page (the one with amount and rewards, etc) and was able to donate via PayPal without further problems.

I wish I could give you better details, but it's Friday night and my attention had wandered before I realized what happened.

Sorry about the trouble- Thanks for sticking it out!

I'm really confused why I would want a ORM for a graph database. Seems like its a totally different usecase

Not really- objects map better to graphs than relational databases, actually! I typically try to market the project as an OGM - Object Graph Mapper - but there's a bit of confusion there, since it uses the DSL established by the Django ORM.

In addition to providing the familiar data-access DSL established by Django for Neo4j, the project also enables auth and admin support atop the graph.

In Neo4J, every node and every edge can have a label and a set of key-value pairs. A label maps very naturally to a class, and its keys map very naturally to fields of that class. Thus, ORM (ehh, OGM really?) makes a lot of sense.

Thanks so much for the contributions and comments folks. I didn't quite reach the goal for this milestone, but I can now afford to take some time on the project. Updates pending.

How does this compare to Bulbflow?

http://bulbflow.com/overview/

Bulbflow is great, but a little lower-level and doesn't offer much Django-specific integration (eg auth, admin, signals). It expects you to learn more about Neo4j, for better or worse.

bulbflow avoids vendor lock-in via rexster.

Good point. One of these days, I'd love to decouple the DSL in neo4django from the query building, and allow eg a Rexter backend.

this is integration with Django, not only an abstraction layer. Also it use Cypher querying language instead of Gremlin.

We use Gremlin for some of the more complicated stuff as well.

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