luckystrike

One useful resource: (Just in case, if you have not seen it before.)

http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/

Some previous related discussions here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41308

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37112

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244009

Hacker News is bookmarked on my Firefox, and i did get a question (and a smirk) about it during a demo. The word 'Hacker' has been blown out badly by the media, and i don't know how long would it take before regular people start looking at it positively.

No offence meant edw519, but i thought it might be good to reproduce their entire text here, so that people like me who often read comments first might get a better picture.

  It’s got to be software aimed at software developers or sysadmins. 
  We specialise in Microsoft platforms, but will consider others too.

Just in case you are not aware about it, here is how this 'venture' started:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-w...

Updates:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/30/update-on-the-techcrunc...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/19/techcrunch-tablet-updat...

Sorry for hijacking your plan to post here first, but i found the idea incredibly cool and useful, and didn't know you guys are around here on HN. 80 legs can potentially save a lot of effort for people/companies who need to crawl web for data and analyze it.

Hope this really works out well for all of you.

p.s. Just in case you are curious, i got a reference note about your application from someone who was following Web 2.0 Expo.

  I think Ayn makes some great points, but I really think she writes like crap

Actually, i say something on these lines very often, if a discussion related to Ayn Rand is happening around me. I would say Ayn makes some good (and obvious) points, but at least for me, Fountainhead was not a "reading pleasure". It was too long and overstretched at places, when it could have been far more succinct.

Someday, i might actually get the dust off 'Atlas Shrugged' in my bookshelf, and read it.

Well written. The 'real' India is indeed far bigger than 'non-retards' working in IT industry.

And as was discussed in this forum a few days ago, teachers have the most important role to play in imparting good education and encouraging creativity and learning over marks. They can actually make a huge difference even with this current system.

All parents would like to see their children 'well settled'. Unfortunately, in our (Indian) society as of now, ticket to a well settled life is still 'perceived' to be a degree from a top educational institute. It was true to an extent in the days before economic liberalization (1991), and this mindset would take some time to change.

Rather than calling most of the pushy parents incompetent or reasoning them to be idle housewives (err homemakers), i think it's mostly the fear of the kid not getting to be as successful (by their definition) in his/her life. This fear sometimes is a product of their own perceived failure or hardships in life, or what they have seen around them.

Economic growth plus good education and thinking can go a long way in curing any society of most of such ills.

Meeting up other HN regulars seems a very good idea. Unfortunatlely, i have no plans of being in B'lore around this time. Please do put a blog post (if possible) later, on how the meet-up went for all.

From the comments:

  DHH: The whole point and problem with this is that 
  these private successes prefer to be private. 
  So I’m certainly not going to out and name the people 
  who confined in me personally about how well they are doing.

Well if some business really wants to remain private about their success, then why blame the media or anyone else for not talking about them. I would have well understood the complaint if media was not giving them enough attention even if they were looking for it and deserved it.

Little what i understand about publicity, if you have a reasonable story (of an online success) and are willing to push it, you have a fair chance of getting it covered a fair bit. Obviously, to reach Google & Facebook news levels, you have to become as big as them.

p.s. This could be an opportunity for some 'website' (not a startup) to cover successful online businesses and their stories. Or may be there already is a one ..

Very well written constructive criticism. You have brilliantly summarized the issues with ruby (and its community).

And i really liked the point about the language being not intuitive for everyone. Not many say it as it goes against the core 'cool' feature of ruby, but it's far more easier to crank up a good amount of messy code with this language, if one is not careful enough.

Quick Summary: A bunch of questions related to open source have been posed to the following people, and their answers/views are there in this article.

  Matt Asay - Vice president of business development, Alfresco 
  Andy Astor - CEO of EnterpriseDB
  Chris DiBona - Open source programs manager, Google
  Bruce Perens - Creator of the Open Source Definition and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative
  Sam Ramji - Senior director of platform technology strategy, Microsoft
  Eric S. Raymond - Programmer, author, and open source software advocate
  Dave Rosenberg - CEO and co-founder, Mulesource
  Javier Soltero - CEO, Hyperic
  Mark Spencer - Founder and CTO, Digium
  Robert Sutor - Vice president of open source and standards, IBM
  Zack Urlocker - Vice president of products, MySQL

The article is in an extremely unfriendly format. Here are the printer (and human) friendly page links.

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question No. 1: What do you see as the most pressing challenges and opportunities for open source given the current tech climate?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question No. 2: Where do you see open source heading in the next five years, 
  especially with regard to development, community, and market opportunities?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question 3: Does widespread adoption and commercialization of open source software create new challenges or pressures for open source projects?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question 4: What are the next steps needed for open source as a software production methodology to reach the next level?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question No. 5: Open source now enjoys a rich and complex history, which is largely the result of trial and error over the years. 
  What would you say have been the open source community's greatest missteps, or lessons learned?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question 6: If you could wave your wand and create the perfect software "universe," what would it look like?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Question No. 7: There has been a fair amount of controversy, competition, and dissent within the various open source communities. 
  Does this lack of agreement damage the long-term goals of open source, or would you like to see more of this?

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...

  Is there some selection bias in my data set that I'm unaware of?

Yes. You are looking for a Java Contract Developer, who happens to have a H1B visa. There is a very high chance the majority of people you would get to interview would be ones who are below average programmers, and are in to this profession only for the money bit and not for the love of it.

As mentioned in this thread, majority of H1Bs are lapped up by the big services firms and body shoppers. Not many would be willing to leave a permanent job in a big firm and apply for contractor position. But yes those who went through body shoppers and are just looking for a better pay package would queue up to interview for you. Sad but true.

So your selection set really is "mostly" bottom of the pile programmers, and hence such hard luck for you.

On your observation about general lack of creativity, these people are probably not the best ones to form an opinion, but yes our education system is to partly blame for it.

I can relate to what you are saying but let's be a little more charitable to the author. He mentioned the city having "ambitions" to be a "world center for innovation", and not exactly that it already is a one.

The key message of the article though is correct. A lot of immigrants (working in the IT domain) are coming back, surely not because they see Bangalore as a hub for innovation, but rather it gives them a good opportunity to settle back in their motherland without compromising too much on the other things in life. Not every tech worker is doing high-end research in US, and those who aren't in to it, can very well get a similar job back here.

I am not exactly sure about quality of work done in 'labs' of the big software companies, but as you said things are coming up well in the hardware companies. (I worked in Intel Bangalore for a couple of years)

Overall. at least at this stage, if one is coming back in hope of finding the same entrepreneurial spirit as in the Silicon Valley or be a part of super skilled staff in a research lab trying to cut out a next generation chip-set, the person might be in for some disappointment. (But heck, if you can settle in for lesser financial incentives, there always is ISRO/DRDO for the cutting edge technical work.)

I would prefer to hit thirty having done car rallies in Himalayas, knowing how to fly a plane, and building up some decent software as well. A bunch of 'memorable' parties would be an added bonus. :-) (And i think i should re-read my comments before posting if they give the impression that the author wrote them in a drunker stupor.)

Well i do not believe in the theory of one size fits all. If running a business works well for you at this point of time, it's great and wish you success in it. I guess i need some more convincing before i finally take the plunge. (Yeah i know there is never a right time)

tom_rath put it across very well in his comment above: "You're not wasting time if you genuinely enjoy how it is being spent."

  But if I were to do another startup, I'd be stuck with it for the next 4-10 years, 
  it'd have to be profitable within about 2 to avoid running out of money, 

<SNIP>

  I might be able to pull it off and get rich, 
  but it'd eat up all of my twenties, probably all my friends, 
  and possibly all my sanity. Not worth it.

This is one of the things that i ponder upon as well.

A lot of people would say (and correctly so) it becomes more difficult later on to start your own venture, but at this point (I'm 27) i just can't convince myself to work like crazy for the next 2-3 years and possibly spend the prime of my life in front of the screen.

I guess it's just a question what you want from life at that point in time. (Great work/money/time for other interests/good social life). Obviously all of it together would be nice :-), but till then got to be selective.

On reading this the first time, i had a strong urge to flag it, but just somehow stopped myself from doing it.

Not to say, i do not wish you well in your venture, but you might appreciate that certain recruiters might start using this forum for their objectives.

It would be great if you could add more information about your company and yourself. I guess the community might be more responsive if they come to know you are a hacker looking for good programmer(s) to build up something interesting and/or profitable.

I agree with the suggestion that submissions should be disallowed until one reaches a specific karma value. It is becoming incredibly harder now to up-vote the right kind of posts from the 'new' section. A smaller sample space would be helpful in getting mostly the right content on the front page.

Writing thoughtful comments (even if they are disagreements) to get the desired karma for submissions is as good as a pseudo-invite.

The one tricky part would be whether to allow 'Ask HN' posts or not from new accounts that haven't reached the specific karma level yet. I think they should be allowed, as sometimes one needs to create a temp account, to get some useful feedback/suggestions for some situations where one cannot disclose the identity very obviously.

  Perhaps the most frustrating part about Ruby, to me, 
  is the outrageously outdated state of the current Ruby interpreter.
  <snip>
  I wish we could change all that. I wish that we had a new, 
  exciting Ruby engine that began to rapidly iterate, was extensible in Ruby itself, 
  and really started to live the dream that Smalltalk failed to achieve in the enterprise: 
  being both cutting edge and mainstream. 

I agree with the above sentiment. A good VM is 'the' need for Ruby right now.

This is where i think Rubinius holds great promise. When Engine Yard started supporting it officially, it started looking like we would finally have a good VM 'soon', eliminating the single biggest issue with Ruby at this point. With the recent cut-down in the size of that team, we are kind of at an infection point. Either this project would flicker out (i really hope it doesn't happen) or the community kicks in a big way to help it pick up pace.

Rubinius is an open source project started by Evan Phoenix to build a new VM for Ruby. Engine Yard hired him (and a team) and was paying them for working on this project only. I guess they wanted the Ruby ecosystem to grow faster and build a goodwill for themselves in the community. (Or maybe the main decision maker (Ezra?) is a true blue hacker only who loves good software!)

These layoffs are not as bad a news for a customer. It's just that as a hacker or an open source adopter, it is a bit of a blow. It is like someone taking back half the lottery money you initially won. (Hell, it was still a lottery only.)

There are very few companies (especially startups) who go so far as Engine Yard does/did in actually hiring people and supporting an Open Source Project to this extent. And they still haven't completely pulled the plug off it yet. I sincerely hope Rubinius does become a stable implementation of Ruby, and all the hard work pays off well for the contributors.

Disclaimer: I don't work at Engine Yard, and am thousands of miles away from the place of action.

Also writes some of the most wittiest comments on HN. But for some reason, most of them get downvoted. :-)

This brought back some good memories for me. (I mean the post only). My final year project at engineering was (an attempt) to build an EEG machine (design). I was not much of a hardware guy, and did it as a last chance (at least for a while) to learn a bit more. The other option in my mind was to may write a RTOS or something but i thought that can happen any time later as well.

Joerg Hansmann (the leading hacker behind this hardware design) was simply awesome and very helpful with sharing his knowledge about the circuit design. (This was late 2001). It was actually the first time i realized the true worth of open source communities, and their role in sharing of knowledge and information.

Thanks geius for posting this, i ought to contribute back to this community for sure, in one way or the other.

Yes, we are doing something similar currently. A combination of C & Ruby is working out quite well. (The product is for the Ruby domain so the high level language choice was very straightforward.)

  People often write in higher level languages because they want lots of bad code fast. 

I assume you simply meant programmers who want to churn out something quick prefer high level languages. (Majority of them would never like to write 'bad' code intentionally)

Your second assertion is spot on. If one needs to develop a high performing solution optimized for speed and memory consumption, plus high reliability and if it also needs to be reasonably cross platform, one would gravitate towards C. Add to this the established heritage/ecosystem and the tools, and availability of a (relatively) big pool of programmers, C tends to be a good choice.

The only con is a relatively longer development cycle. (True only for mortals like me though, some people stream out C code faster than i write an email. :-) )

I agree. I happen to use instant messengers a lot (both for work and personal use), and absolutely love the 'lightness' of the GTalk client. The quality of voice chats is of the highest order, and if you throw in the browser based chat feature, plus this new video chat, the entire gamut is very impressive.

It is one of the few applications for which one might like to become paid customer wholeheartedly.

Same here. And just in case you missed this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=357647

Much that i appreciate Zoho, not sure it is a great idea to target specific individuals (especially those part of the competition). And there could have been better ways to may be highlight what apparently looks like a Salesforce's lock-in strategy.

I agree with the point that the teachers make a huge difference, especially in the formative years. (Not only in math, but all subjects).

I distinctly remember a few who made subjects like Sanskrit, Organic Chemistry, History (that itself is interesting in any case) appeal much more, and never let the curriculum dictate or slow down the learning process of fast moving kids.

  I have spent all my life in Bangalore, India and I'm nearing 30.

Thanks, this helps in putting your comments in context. My first reaction to your post was that it probably came from someone has not spent too much time here. My bad.

Sorry, but your examples do not truly reflect the situation out here. (I am not too sure how much time you have spent in India.)

My take on why an 'average' Indian kid is a little bit better than an 'average' American kid in math, is just because (s)he has done more of it and with a bit more rigor. Everyone needs to pass a mandatory math exam here (as part of what we call class Xth board exams), and only after doing that one gets a choice to pick a stream of subjects of his/her liking (that may or may not include math).

As everywhere, some kids do have trouble liking/understanding math, but they do not have much of an option initially and their parents also keep the ante up, on studies for this particular subject. (Of all the kids who are not able to clear the Xth board exams, the percentage flunking in math is the highest). Another reason that helps getting this subject more priority, is that for most of the better paying professions, it is a must. (Sadly, majors in humanities mostly have more trouble getting in to top earning bracket).

A similar example is about learning the English language. Kids in India do it more than kids in China/Japan, and hence do it better on an 'average'.