

Ask HN: Is it "dirty" to have an "Import from [competitor]" feature? - callmeed

Considering a feature in one of our products that would ease migration from a competitor's product. After reading the Loic Le Meur post on here recently, I'm wondering if such a feature is unethical, dirty, low, or un-nice.<p>Thoughts?
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bdmac97
Uhm... no? Why would it be "dirty" to do that? As long as you have a valid way
to access the data you're just doing your customer a favor.

I think it's only dirty if you're not upfront with the customer about what you
are going to bring in from your competitor and/or what you're going to do with
the data.

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run4yourlives
My thought is that it is "dirty" to not allow your customer to easily export
their data from your project.

If a customer chooses to use a competing product, and you make it hard for
them to do so in order to keep them, you've already gone from being a help to
being a barrier to your customer.

If someone else comes along and removes your artificially erected barrier at
their expense, so be it. Perhaps next time, it would pay to work with your
customers, and not against them.

~~~
dpcan
This is sometimes easier said than done.

We have a system that is made up of about 30-40 tables of associated data. The
software itself allows many levels of reporting on the data, and we take
nightly snapshot backups of the data for restores. So, the customer need not
worry about the integrity of their data or getting it back out in a meaningful
manner.

However, developing a system of export would not only be extremely expensive,
but would be done so to allow our customers to leave.

We are working on an API that would allow some interaction with the data, and
I suppose someone could write a form of export tool from the API if they
choose, but I don't think we are going to do this.

I can see how important it might be to have export tools for a contact
manager, or other small, single-use apps, but it's just not realistic, nor
does it make good business sense when you have massive data sets and invest
greatly into support and data backups/management.

~~~
run4yourlives
The choices you make for you and your app are yours alone, and each must be
weighed against your other needs. I didn't mean to imply that exporting your
customer's data was an easy or priority job.

However, you don't operate your business in a sandbox. We're moving, ever so
slowly into a world where ownership of data is becoming a very real concern
for many of your would be customers. You will run the risk that either a new
customer finds your terms unacceptable, or even worse, that your competitor
does this extremely expensive task for you.

There are many situations and each deserves it's own investigation. I'm merely
stating a design principle that is good to practice.

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aplusbi
Not at all, as long as you provide an easy and open way to export your data
for your users (and potentially your competitors) to use.

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Edinburger
Check whether you would be violating the Terms of Use of the competitor's
product (e.g. by screen-scraping their site). Of course, if you are small you
are less likely to be sued so you might want to take the risk.

~~~
jacquesm
You know what, if that would be in their 'terms of service' then they can go
jump of a cliff. To lock in your users data may be in your terms of service
but that does not mean it will stand up in court. Portability is pretty much a
given, whether you're the phone company or a web site it should not matter.

Any website that wants to play nice opens up their users contents at their
request and competes on quality, not lock in to make sure as few users as
possible make use of it.

~~~
falien
"To lock in your users data may be in your terms of service but that does not
mean it will stand up in court. Portability is pretty much a given..."

It is a given in terms of best practices in various regards, but not in law
(at least not in the US or other jurisdictions with similar IP frameworks).

~~~
run4yourlives
I'd be willing to bet it is, given 10 years or so.

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Anon84
As long as you have a "Export to [competitor]" feature as well I don't see
what the problem is.

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MichaelApproved
I don't even think you need that. Let your competitor break his head writing
that code.

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tedunangst
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html>

~~~
mlowe
Wow! Great article! This pretty much sums up why you want to make it
convenient for users to export your data.

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egl
I second the support for "export from your app". This signals that you're
confident that customers will stay with you because they like your product,
not because they are locked in. It may not be easy, but it's a way to reduce
the risk of entry.

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caffeine
I think you should probably shoot the competitor an e-mail and mention to them
that you're doing it (and tell them about your useful export API, and ask if
they can reciprocate!)

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chengas123
Not at all. Especially, if you also offer an export feature. Trapping the
user's data in your product is not nice.

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timcederman
Gmail are a very obvious example of a large-scale product doing this.

