helloanoop

I think the core reason is their monopoly and having over 20 million developers using their tool, and the hope that they can monetize this in future.

But yes $5.6b is nuts.

Hi there! This is Anoop. Glad that you like Bruno. On the import issue you mentioned, its due to the architecture choice of Bruno where every request is stored on the filesystem as a file. I don't have a solution in mind, perhaps the a reasonable approach is to fallback to "Untitled" at the time of import.

Here is how we avoid that in v1.0.0

I have penned down some thoughts: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/269

Would love you to hear your thoughts and perspectives.

Yes MIT license is a great plan b. But forking is hard and painful. Elastic/MongoDB/HashiCorp and many more OSS keep moving towards Business Source License to protect themselves from bigtech monetizing the original creators hard work.

What we need is a better approach. One that doesn't involve VC funding. One that keeps the all the incentives of the community, contributors and the creators aligned.

Will share a draft of this approach soon (likely tomorrow) and open it up for community discussion. I want Bruno to be there for the long term.

Yes, The language itself went through many iterations. You can look at these 3 iterations here: https://ibb.co/8j8yM1f

First was break a giant collection json and save it as individual files, second attempt was to convert into a dsl (was a bit like xml), the third attempt that is used today to make it even simpler.

The key driving force behind the language design was to make sure that it was simple and readable enough to be able to do a PR review flow in git.

Also, simple enough so that you can open the collection folder in a editor (like vscode) and still be able to make changes

Json didn't support multiline strings. Yaml was indentation hell. I wanted something neat, no need for quotes around strings. And lot of nuances, like how do you store a query param as disabled.

you can read more about the lang design at: https://docs.usebruno.com/bru-language-design.html

Yup, the JS glue code is something that I am very proud of. You can install any npm package via package.json. Require them inside your scripts and it just works.

In every other tool, they treat a collection like something that can be modified only via GUI. In Bruno, its more of a developer mindset. Even if you don't have Bruno GUI, you can open it in an editor and make changes to it - just like code

External npm package installation is unique to Bruno and afaik no other tool has this.

Yes Auth is a big task that I am working on. Glad to see that some folks use scripts and directly implement oauth2 https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/issues/178

Many users are surprised when they find this capabilty, It opens up a lot of possibilities - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/issues/233#issuecomment-17...

Not yet. It's at a very early stage.

yup! every postman alternative just follows postman playbook

starts as offline

vc funding

enables cloud sync for collaboration with teams

deprecates offline as scratchpad

deletes scratchpad

Its been like this for a decade now.

With Bruno the key insight was to store collections and requests as folders and files, and design a markup language that makes it easy to collaborate with your team. I wrote about this here: https://www.usebruno.com/blog/the-saas-dilemma

> There is telemetry.

yes, its miniscule. one ping (and that too once in a day) that indicates that an anonymous user opened the app. No other usage details, micro interactions or anything else is tracked. Sure - in the future we will provide option to turn this off too.

> Could you quantify? I never saw a lightweight Electron app.

relatively, compared to the other electron monsters out there. You are definitely not going to native performance and fluidity, but it's a tradeoff that I made to support multiple os.

Also, currently Bruno is just me developing it for the last 2 years. Recently a community has formed around (nice to see) and we have a flurry of new contributors.

I see. If you don't mind, can you post an issue here on our github tracker - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno and any screenshots of the issue

> if you rename a collection with existing requests in it

I am assuming you are renaming directly using the filesystem. I think this is the is issue you are talking about - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/issues/28

We don't talk about Bruno. no. no. no :)

We don't talk about bruno.

BTW, GRPC will be supported soon. Will create a roadmap section in the docs.

Exactly!

> I see the claim of saving everything on the filesystem and collaboration via git.

yes, ALL IN on git :) based collaboration

> Is there a way to handle secrets outside of this flow?

Check: https://docs.usebruno.com/secrets-management/overview.html Two ways of handling secrets.

> collection A sets a variable, collection B uses it.

In bruno collection is the first class citizen, environments reside inside a collection. There is plan to support global environments for the use case you mentioned.

> moving requests in a collection via drag/drop isn't obvious and it's actually a pain if you're trying to replace the top item.

yes, this ux needs to be improved and there is a bug in drag and drop which should be fixed.

Oauth2 flow is missing (which should be released by tomorrow), Otherwise you shouldn't encounter any pain points. The app has been in development over 2 years, and community (early adopters) has been using it for over year. It's fairly stable except the occasional blip.

I built the tool for myself, I wanted my collections to co-exist alongside my backend code and be able to version it via git. So I ended up creating a human readable markup language to represent requests so that we can use git to version it.

I hope you like it :)

Try Bruno - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno - Free and Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs

- It is lightweight with MIT license

- Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem

- Use git for collaboration

- No cloud sync. Fully offline.

PS: I am the creator of this project. Happy to answer any questions here.

Try Bruno - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

- Free and Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs

- It is lightweight with MIT license

- Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem

- Use git for collaboration

- No cloud sync. Fully offline.

PS: I am the creator of this project

Yes, we need more tools that are cit friendly. If you are looking for a good GUI based client that works on top of plain text files, do checkout Bruno.

https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

Yes, we need more tools that work on top of plain text files. And use git for version control.

Currently working on a project to solve this https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

If you are looking for an alternate, please checkout the new and innovative api client Bruno

https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

It's free, open-source and fresh with some radical ideas challenging the current status quo.

Oh, BTW we support infinite collection runs.. lol..

This was depressing. I read through most of the post.

I would never recommend sacrificing your personal life and well being for the sake of opensource.

Use opensource as an outlet of your creativity and urge to create something, but don't let it destroy you.

I made a video on why the OSS project Bruno is a paradigm shift in the API Clients ecosystem as well as why collections should be saved in your api code repository

https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

It's time for a revolution in API client technology. The status quo, represented by Postman, has become bloated and unwieldy. We refuse to be shoehorned into a proprietary version control system for collaborating on API collections. We are an opensource project, rising up against the monopoly of bloated and closed systems. We believe that API collections should be co-located within your source code repository, serving as a living set of examples on how to use the API. But we realized that the current tools on the market export collections as giant JSON files (a.k.a ugly blobs), difficult to version control and diff. So we created the Bru Markup language, saving information about your API requests using plain text files. With Bruno, collections become first-class citizens, co-located with related information and easily version controlled. We say goodbye to bloated workspaces and global environments, and embrace the benefits of co-location. We dream of a world where developers can clone a code repo, get it up and running, use bruno to browse the examples on how to use the api and start playing with it. No more horror stories of "Tim had the collections for the payment-api service, but he left the company last month." Join us in our mission to create a better API client for developers. Say goodbye to bloatware and hello to simplicity, efficiency and freedom. Try Bruno today and experience the difference for yourself.

I feel you brother. The gut wrenching feeling of having waited far too long.

So true brother. Partial traction is the worst.

If you enter business, either go big or go home.

Ive said it before, I'll say it again. The thing that is harder than starting a startup is quitting it.

You are brave, my friend, to even have attempted at building a startup. All people talk, very few have the conviction to give it a shot.

The experience you gained while trying to build a business will pay dividends in the future. If you are a software engg, a lot of companies would love to hire you. And you can make great money, and you know what - You can mentally checkout at 6pm - salary will fall into your account on time everytime - You can enjoy your weekends

PS: I am also a failed entrepreneur (sort of). The biggest thing my startup journey taught was how easy 9-5 is. And be grateful in life for having a job that pays well.

All the best brother!

Thanks! Will add this functionality soon.

Thanks for the shoutout. I am the author of Bruno :)

A unique things that seperates bruno from the rest is that it is a "local first" api client.

The collections get stored as folders and files on your local files system (imagine git repo), thereby allowing the developers to use the version control of their choice.

Thanks !

IMO, The main benefit of opensourcing this is giving the companies and developers a choice to self host the platform internally (once the work on sync server gets completed).

Also, it opens up space for community contributions to make the product better over time.

Appreciate your feedback on highlighting the benefits of OpenSource on the site.

Here is a 4 min demo video of the product walkthrough - https://youtu.be/wwXJW7_qyLA