

Djangy is shutting down - endlessvoid94
http://blog.djangy.com/2011/02/27/final-djangy-newsletter/

======
SkyMarshal
Did you guys even try to sell it, even for a firesale price? I ask because
recently Xmarks went through a similar decision - didn't want to continue
running the service, and announced they were shutting it down.

After an outcry from the user community, and a quick survey to see how many
would be willing to pay for it, they offered it for sale instead, and it was
bought, gained a premium component, and continued existence.

I hate seeing promising work like this just eradicated from existence without
even considering whether there might be another organization out there willing
to take it on and continue developing it.

And surely there's some value in the name, market presence, email list of beta
hopefuls, and current work/infrastructure. Despite listing other services that
provide cloud hosting for Django projects in your announcement, Djangy is the
only one I'm personally aware of. Surely there's value in that.

------
shimon
Shimon from DjangoZoom here. I wish the best for Dave and Sameer in their new
directions. For anyone looking for Django hosting, we're working every day to
build the best Django deployment and hosting solution, and will have big news
real soon now. Although we've been quiet lately, it's because we've been
heads-down developing the latest version of DjangoZoom, and we expect to send
out more invites in a couple of weeks.

It's odd to see a competitor give up. We think this is a very promising space
and are personally very excited about it. We're in it for the long haul, and
welcome any suggestions or questions.

------
StavrosK
Aw, that's too bad. Can we at least get a quick overview of your stack and how
everything worked now? I'm always curious to hear how people design these
setups.

~~~
endlessvoid94
That can probably be arranged.

~~~
bl4k
considered just pushing all your code to GH ?

------
senko
If there's already a built platform and some traction, wouldn't it be better
to sell it to someone who would/could continue to grow the service (assuming
that someone exists)?

"Flipping the site" might sound cheap, but I imagine the users would be better
of with a service that may have a future instead of the one that doesn't (and
at least a longer data retention period for their data), and the founders
might somewhat recoup their time/money/energy expenses.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a beta Djangy user, nor have I been using other similar
services yet, but I am a Django user and find those really interesting).

~~~
jnoller
I'd sell the platform and business. There's an increasingly large number of
services aimed in this area, so folding into another, being bought by one, or
something like that seems better then a total shutdown.

Ep.io, Gondor.io, DjangoZoom, the list is growing daily.

------
alanh
Is one month really adequate advance notice to tell people on a platform that
their data is going to be permanently deleted? I think I’d be upset that I had
so little advance notice — what if I was about to go on vacation? I understand
they had a “zero lock in” architecture, so maybe it isn’t that big of a deal.
And yet, what can you really compare this to? (Etherpad? They gave users a bit
more time.) Thoughts?

~~~
yuvadam
Well they we're in private beta...

------
pyter
Would you please opensource the code?

It will help the python/django community a lot.

------
swanson
There is still a large gap in this market. Looking just at Python, none of the
5-6 cloud hosting providers have even launched into public beta.

I've signed up for at least four, and finally got into one -- just to find
that it was like pulling teeth compared to Heroku.

~~~
epynonymous
app engine is surely in public beta if not production? although agreed that
it's a stripped down version of core python.

i imagine it's difficult for companies like these to compete with the likes of
a google.

------
antihero
What exactly went wrong? I might be being dumb, but from what I can gleam from
the blog post, the main reason you shut down is that you didn't want to pursue
the business, despite opportunity that was there. Was that the case? How can
we learn from this?

~~~
elithrar
I'm interested to know this as well. With the success of Heroku for Rails
deployment, there's definitely room for a parallel player in the Django market
— and probably the opportunity to make a lot of money, too.

~~~
Klonoar
The post states, in a pretty clear manner, that nothing really went wrong,
they'd just rather do something else than run with this for years and deal
with the investment headaches it'd inevitably produce.

I think what they just did was awesome. Do what makes you happy, striving for
money is utterly pointless in the end.

------
chr15
Are there any plans to open source any of the code?

~~~
mtrn
That would be interesting. Particularly, I'm curious about the python
sandboxing.

------
jonknee
The post mentions they didn't want to make a multiple year commitment by
taking investment dollars, but I have to imagine there are others out there
willing to take the risk. Sell the business. Cloud computing is hot
everywhere, but doubly so with VCs. Heruku's huge exit only helped fuel this
fire and should make something like Djangy attractive to look at.

------
vessenes
What's confusing to me is their 'thanks' to investors.

I'm not clear that one _can_ raise money from investors, and then wholesale
just decide to leave as a team. At the very least just to fulfill fiduciary
duty, the company should be listed as 'for sale' and go on the block, even if
just on ebay.

Some guesses:

a) Acqui-hire in the works with money for early stage investors

b) serious, serious, serious team problems / investor problem, so toxic that
they can't be solved in the current structure

c) 'investors' is like mom and dad, so no big deal.

Anyway, best of luck to the team, and I'm hoping for something big and
exciting next!

~~~
endlessvoid94
We never took money -- just met with quite a few different investors over the
course of a few months. They gave us invaluable advice.

~~~
vessenes
Got it. Hope you have some good things in your future!

------
kljensen
Quite respectable that they knew what they wanted and made the tough decision.
Nothing wrong with striving greatly and failing, as long as you're in the
arena.

<http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html>

~~~
ericflo
That's the thing though: they didn't fail, they quit.

~~~
kljensen
Fair point. I feel like it's somewhat similar here. If djangy was [becoming] a
success the team may have made a different decision.

------
Skywing
i quit following djangy once i quit using django. i had been signed up for an
invite for what seems like years, though. too bad i never got one. :(

edit: feel free to continue down voting, but this was not meant at sarcasm. i
genuinely looked forward to using it. i still seek a high quality python app
cloud deployment solution. although, now i'd ideally like it to not be tied to
any particular frameworks.

~~~
cdr
Past a certain point, I doubt they gave out any more invites via signups. I
think everyone I knew who had an account got invited by an existing beta user.

Kind of a shame they shut down - they had a good name to help distinguish
themselves from competing offerings.

------
tuhin
I believe it was a perfectly logical and most importantly fair decision to
make. Rather than having taken the investment and not really being passionate
about the work. However the alternate course of action that they may take are:
1) Sell it to someone who would like to buy it and is passionate about it for
the right reasons (not money) 2)Open Source the codebase 3) Simply write a
post about the architecture

What I mean to simply say is "hand over your legacy". Don't just leave it to
be forgotten.

------
lappet
i loved djangy - it was as simple to use as heroku was. too bad you are
shutting down :(

~~~
mattmillr
I completely agree. I wrote and deployed a project to Djangy on Saturday, in
large part to try out my beta account. It was a simple app, but deploying to
Djangy's cloud was trivial. (I think I spent more time figuring out GoDaddy's
domain control panel than setting up Djangy.) It's sad to see such a promising
service go away.

I wish you guys the best in whatever it is you choose to pursue next.

------
kilian
Well, that explains my unanswered support emails! Sorry to hear this guys,
Djangy was a good service and I'm sad to see it go.

------
felixchan
Dave, too bad it didn't work out. I really wanted to try it! Good luck, I look
forward to your next product.

------
orenmazor
The really nice thing about deploying with a git push is that you always have
a backup.

I'll miss djangy. it quickly became my go-to for a quick django prototype.
hopefully zoom/gondor take off.

------
xiongchiamiov
Huh, that looks like it would've been cool. Sad that I didn't hear about it
until it shuts down.

------
lhnn
Note to self: don't use a product these devs create. Or, don't ever depend on
'beta' programs for anything.

I get that you have to do your own thing for your life, but what a way to let
people down. You had two options for supporting existing users, then you say,
"No, we're just shutting it down."

Could have given it away, even.

~~~
baddox
> _don't ever depend on 'beta' programs for anything_

Surely you already knew this principle.

~~~
edanm
I agree with this in principle, but in our Web 2.0 world, "beta" has become
almost meaningless half the time. Gmail has only come out of beta last year,
hasn't it?

~~~
loire280
Perpetual public beta is a problem, but there's a huge difference between a
public beta from a huge corporation and a small private beta from a startup. I
think it's pretty easy to judge based on company size, service momentum,
number of competitors, etc. if a service is likely to last.

