After a year of struggling, my startup is now open source | Hacker News Reader

After a year of struggling, my startup is now open source

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144 pointsabeiz57 comments

The last 12 months have been pretty interesting. My partner and I were making enough off LogicPull to work on it full time. Most of our clients are Legal Agencies in or around Ontario. Due to the sensitive nature of the information collected in LogicPull, it was only possible for these agencies to use LogicPull if, and only if, it was installed on their own servers. This has been an uphill battle from the start. Version control was non existent at these agencies, and any updates and/or bug fixes had to go through a formal code review, which could take up to 3 weeks! We decided to open source our software, and just consult with our existing clients. Its been a great ride!

I'm sure this is a byproduct of who your clients are, but the fact that you took the time to catalogue not only dependencies, but to document the applicable license of each[1] is really cool and is the kind of thing that makes it easy to adopt new open source software. Well done!

[1]https://github.com/ChrisZieba/LogicPull#software-requirement...

Why not distribute a vm image with all your stack and then just update the image with new features/fixes?

This was against IT policy of the agencies we were working with.

The open source / consulting strategy may actually prove more lucrative from the sounds of it. Best of luck.

Thanks for open sourcing this!

I have to say though, it seems like there are a lot of easier targets for this kind of software outside the legal realm where it wouldn't have to be installed on their own servers.

I don't know about the competitive layout of your industry, but I was wondering if you considered switching into other market segments that wouldn't have things like formal code reviews up front for a product like this.

>My partner and I were making enough off LogicPull to work on it full time

So the struggle was entirely technical? If you were only working on this a year and made enough revenue to work on it full-time, it seems more successful than most startups!

Our main struggle was finding clients to use our hosted version of the software. As we quickly found out, no company wants to have important client information living on a different server. We really didn't like having to create a new branch of our software, then deal with all the licensing involved of it being installed on a remote server we didn't control. In the end, open sourcing was the best option available.

Did you consider going the appliance route? Leasing commodity boxes that can mount network shares via Samba or NFS and reselling them as CPE seems like it would work for this particular software.

That way you would control the software load and be able to manage the quality of the product. And you could use a PPA to manage updates etc.

I'd be really interested to know if you considered this but did not do it and would like to hear the obstacles.

That's exactly the problem we have at https://commando.io/

No one wants to give us SSH keys to their server. So we have a great product but it's very hard to sell.

"we have a great product but it's very hard to sell" - how can that be true. If it's a great product it would sell.

Obviously nobody in their right mind would hand over their ssh keys to you.

Also the name probably puts some people off. I also don't see any need for what the product does.

"Never type the same commands into multiple terminal windows again!" - I can easily do that already with ssh (or clusterSSH) - I don't want a UI for server commands, I want to script this stuff. When you analyze a little deeper, I think you'll see why the product isn't selling. I hope you are able to make a go of it, but my gut instinct tells me that dashboards and apps like yours are too hard to make into anything substantial.

Well Commando.IO has a hosted version. But I don't believe that rakes Command.IO in much money. If people had more trust, Commando.IO would be covered in cash. It's a great product!

I like how your response to criticism is to ignore it, and say how great your product is in the third person.

Wow. Seem like a great product. Maybe you could license it to cloud hosters? I'd love Linode to have an interface like this.

(off topic) your logo looks very similar to the crunchbang linux logo: http://crunchbang.org/

Founder of Commando.io here. First, I'm not exactly sure who you are, but your not officially associated with Commmando.io. Second, we generate SSH keys, and users then add our generate pub key into their servers authorized_keys. Users can revoke the commando.io pub key at any time from authorized_keys.

"no company wants to have important client information living on a different server."

Let that be a lesson for the startup people out there.

I work for Bank of America. There's stuff on our servers we don't let other teams in our building have access to.

Look. I've worked in enterprise software.

You sound like you did it all wrong.

That you think that 'Version control was non existent' is bizarre is just, well, naive.

Why did your clients need version control? Was your code not extensible?

You do the install. You sell a support contract. You make it extensible in a repeatable, not modifying the core code, kind of way. You have tools to find out if the client has modified parts of the code they shouldn't have.

A bug pops up, you fix it locally. You then log in to their instance. You deploy the fix.

That's how it works.

That's where you went wrong.

It sounded to me like the legal firms wanted to do the formal code review themselves, independently.

How much of the software they run do they do their own code reviews on? That sounds weird (not impossible, just weird).

I imagine it's the only way lawyers could off-set liabilities onto someone else if something else ever did happen where confidential information was breached - and they'd be the best ones to know.

The lawyers I worked with years ago never even thought to ask for code reviews of WordPerfect, and later MS Office or Windows. And they sure as hell knew they had 0 chance of suing MS should anything ever go wrong.

I haven't looked at the source but I did try the online demo and I too do not understand how upgrades/bug fixes would be so problematic. Or why specific branching for individual customers would be required.

Since LogicPull was conceived to be a SAAS, I can see how certain design decisions may have been overlooked that would make supporting a self hosted solution a lot easier. I also think a lot of people who have never worked in an enterprise environment, do not fully understand how customizable a solution has to be. Politics, quality control standards, etc. all play a role and your solution has to be able to adapt. Unless you are in a position like IBM, Microsoft, etc., where you can advocate certain ways of working, your solution really has to be insanely flexible. And if you take this into consideration, you'll design your solution accordingly.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I wish the process for updating or releasing fixes was as easy as logging into their instance and deploying the fix. We were never allowed near their servers. No ssh, no in-house install, nothing. The instructions for installing LogicPull were documented and then sent off. We were pretty much in the dark the entire time, and there was no way around it.

I had an old account and set the procrast to a trillion seconds to stop me from commenting. (run4yourlives) I made a new account just for this.

Are you aware of just how valuable this piece of software is? While I commend you for open sourcing it and giving it to us to use, a part of me feels that you are undercutting yourself.

Let me highlight a problem for pretty much every company (that is larger than a few people) in existence: The information needed by administration and accounting teams to register a new client is never properly collected by sales teams, so you have haphazard implementations and processes and all sorts of weird and wonderful ways of making sure the various business specific answers to questions are delivered to the people that need them to be.

You've created a solution to that problem. The upside of it is, well, HUGE.

I'll simply thank you for giving me that solution to run with, and hopefully I'll be able to do so within my space. Personally I don't think you should have done what you did if you were to look at it selfishly; you didn't though and for that you should be commended I think.

Thanks for commenting. Coming to the decision to release this was more than arduous. I know their is a massive market out there for this type of software, and I know how valuable it is, or can be. In the end, I'm just a guy who loves to write code, and if other people can make use of my software than I'm a happy guy!

Looks pretty cool, good luck. If I have the time next year I might try to use this for the "entry interview/mentoring" process at our university :)

I used to work at a company that built a FLOSS ERP. You can still build a nice company around offering this if you want to. You can spin the fact that it's open source to your advantage and emphasise that they will have full control over their software stack. People still gladly hand you fists full of money if you solve their problems...doesn't have to be hosted. And don't worry about "but they'll just replace us with inhouse folks". If it works they'll usuall just pay you to make sure the system doesn't fade away.

Also on the https://logicpull.com/tour page: "The Problem. Creating a customized question and answer interview, and using the data to populate a form is very time consuming and costly, and needs to XXX created by a software developer." XXX= missing a "be"

Don't really have a use for this but kudos!

When I jumped into my current project, I made a point of going with nginx 1.4+, for the websocket support, which really simplifies the stack. It just feels good to have less moving parts.

Ya, we were very happy when nginx finally supported websockets, but we had the same stack deployed to multiple servers (which we did not own) so upgrading all our clients would have been crazy. But ya, I would definitely recommend using nginx 1.4 for a fresh install.

I'm a little unfamiliar with the space (also I'm not american), but I was conversing with someone about this sometime back on open source governance.

http://www.a2jauthor.org/drupal/

Yes, the main idea is the similar.

Thanks for posting this up -- can you clarify the reason for using AGPL as opposed to something a little more friendly to SaaS businesses, like BSD or MIT licenses? I only ask because it seems like from reading the license that any changes to the source code must be provided for download, thereby making it difficult to build a defensible business with this tool (I guess with this tool alone).

You can always buy up his startup if you want to run your business around his tool. I'm going to guess he'd be very amenable to this.

ha! I'd love to see a paid license model, where you can use this software in any proprietary way for an annual/one-time fee.

Yikes, "First commit" is a beast! Were you using something other than git at first, or did you squash the history up to that point?

That is a really nice README, by the way.

I was using svn for the revision control, up until about two weeks ago.

One issue with open sourcing the code from a startup or any internal app is exposing sensitive info such as credentials. Starting a fresh repo is a way to solve that.

rm -rf .git && git init .

ha i had similar project but right now i'm publish job offer site on github: https://github.com/dawjan/pracanowo.pl

Check main CV builder:

http://cv.pracanowo.pl/cvprzedstawicielhandlowy.html

No by google and new engine i;m on position [serp] 945 So i don't see any reasons to still support my project

I like the look of your http://help.logicpull.com docs.

Is it all styled via Bootstrap?

It seems way too responsive and clean for it.

The docs are styled using TB3. There's nothing fancy going on to make it responsive. The trick is I just change the position of the sidebar from fixed back to static when the width is <768px. The width also goes back to auto and I set a height so it doesn't take up too much space.

Wow this is awesome! So the only issue was being able to upgrade client installs.

Thanks! Yeah, dealing with updates for government agencies was becoming an extreme burden, but was our only source of revenue so we put up with it. We had trouble finding clients for our locally hosted version of the software. I've since moved on to other projects and would be happy if someone else took this project over.

Don't feel too bad, this is a common problem. Something that isn't talked about in HNews in the age of the cloud, but proprietary data, hosted on each customers data center (or server in closet), is still something a lot of business wants to control.

This is awesome! Are you guys still working on this? (i.e. the start-up)

The site is still being worked on. My co-founder has since moved on, but I still consult for the clients we have. This involves releasing bug fixes, patches, upgrades, and adding features.

Just cloned your repo and launched a competitor. Thanks.

Here is a link to get you up and running http://help.logicpull.com/portal/articles/installation-serve...

Thanks for sharing, although I don't have any use for it. Kudos for making it open source.

By the way, what is the wiki software being used on the link you posted?

It's just a custom node app I made, nothin' fancy.

Wait a minute, I want to toss my name into the hat too.

Thanks abeiz. Got me ready to run code; bro, can you commit some example documents for your customers so I can use it too, kk thx.

Seriously, kudos to you for making a public Github repo. Gl.

1) git clone 2) launched competitor

* shit HN says

Scumbag Steve: Clones repo, creates competitor, still reports issues and expects them to be addressed asap from root repo.

Had a good laugh with this one!

Those docs are pretty well done. Nice work!

Great work! Kudos for the perseverance.

Many thanks!

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