
Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX - jpallen
https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex
======
primitivesuave
You're doing a great thing by making your platform open source. Even though
you make it incredibly easy to get set up with a well written readme, I'd much
rather purchase this service because it's not expensive and I know I'm
supporting good people that care about contributing to the open source
community. Plus, your product is awesome.

~~~
beck5
Thanks, we were a bit worried that people will stop using the site but we hope
everyone is wise like yourself! I think overall the main people who will set
up there own versions are those who want to work on a private network which is
an group of people we have been unable to help so far.

~~~
jancborchardt
Do you have a logo for the app? I would really like to add it to the directory
at [http://libreprojects.net](http://libreprojects.net) :)

------
jpallen
James from ShareLaTeX here. I'm hanging around all day today ready for the
barrage of pull requests that we're about to receive(!) so feel free to ask me
any questions.

~~~
hootener
Great work, James. I think I'll fork this code and give it look-see.

I manage the dissertation/thesis template for my department on github. The
assembly and dissemination of this template is a purely student-run effort.
Typically the task of managing it gets passed to a new student when the
previous manager graduates.

The problem I've found with managing it this way is that I'll invariably get a
slew of emails from students throughout the semester wanting me to
troubleshoot their LaTeX installs to make the template work. 99% of the time
the problem is on their end, 1% of the time it results in something that
actually improves the template somehow. It would be awesome if I could just
point them to your service where a hosted (and guaranteed to work) version of
the template resides.

Can I just shoot you a github link[1] to get it incorporated or is there some
other process I should go through? (e.g., would you prefer me to send you a
zip? I figure what's the point since it's already on github, but if you prefer
that approach I can get you a zip)

[1] [https://github.com/hootener/LaTeX-Vanderbilt-Dissertation-
Fo...](https://github.com/hootener/LaTeX-Vanderbilt-Dissertation-Format)

~~~
jpallen
I've put this on our template todo list, thanks!

~~~
FraaJad
Could you please add the Purdue thesis/dissertation template on that list?

[https://engineering.purdue.edu/~mark/puthesis/](https://engineering.purdue.edu/~mark/puthesis/)

Thanks.

------
grittathh
Thank you for open-sourcing this! At the moment I'm using sharelatex to keep a
version of all my equations "alive" since every time someone tries to resave
my word documents, the equations become rendered to images.

Unfortunately for me, Latex hasn't gained traction in our department. I think
the main barriers to entry, for our lab at least, are:

1) Local installation is more difficult than installing Word. Sharelatex and
other cloud-latex solutions solve this.

2) Word's comment and review tracking system is more intuitive. If you're
reading a document electronically and want to insert a comment or make an edit
in word, you just do it right there. With latex, you can use synclatex to go
back and forth but this extra step is actually a non-insignificant barrier.
Also, with latex, is there a way to make and see comments in the pdf/preview
but have the comment also live somewhere in the source, AND have the comments
be editable in both places? I suspect the answer is yes, but I just haven't
found the right tool?

I haven't unlocked the "history" feature in sharelatex but does it come close
to this?

~~~
hootener
> Word's comment and review tracking system is more intuitive.

This. The first person that makes a LaTeX comment and track changes system as
intuitive as Word's can have all my money. No, the comment and todo LaTeX
packages don't count. There's just too much resistance in getting someone to
go through the LaTeX install process just to use packages in a syntax they
don't want to take the time to learn.

~~~
alxndr
Could version control get you part way there?

~~~
hootener
The issue really isn't me tracking my own changes. In that case, version
control does great. The problem is adoption by collaborators, particularly for
PIs that don't want to take the time to sit down and learn something new.

The problem with Word's track / review features isn't necessarily that they're
good, it's that they're so entrenched in academic writing (even in the
sciences), that attempting to do anything else gets zero traction from most
PIs and collaborators. Even PIs that use LaTeX themselves are hesitant to
collaborate using it because of the extra friction it introduces as compared
to Word's track/review tools.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think the only way to migrate some
collaborators away from Word and to LaTeX in a collaborative setting is to
basically duplicate Word's track/review/comment features and incorporate them
into a LaTeX-based system.

~~~
alxndr
I meant to suggest that git could be used as the "backend" for a track/review
system. I'm imagining being able to write standard LaTeX, but have your editor
expose the git history in a way that looks like Word's track/review.

(I'm not familiar with LaTeX or the packages you mention, so maybe I'm
reinventing a broken wheel here.)

------
einhverfr
It's really great to see perpetual interest in collaboration on LaTeX
documents. I hope you have great success (not sure I have a use for it now but
will keep you in mind if I ever do). I also expect to recommend it.

Unfortunately a lot of my own documents are really hard to handle with editors
-- I tend to write very long documents split across multiple source documents
in a tree for easy management. I wonder if there is room in an offering like
this for something more like an online IDE rather than just a editor for a
singular file.

~~~
jpallen
You can split your document into multiple files on ShareLaTeX too, just like
you could on your own computer with LaTeX. There is still a lot that we'd like
to add into our IDE, but providing an experience that compares with offline
editing is an important priority for us.

~~~
einhverfr
That's very good news, indeed. Definitely will be using this on my next major
LaTeX document project.

------
RA_Fisher
My wife started out with www.writelatex.com to write her dissertation. The
auto-compilation really slows down once you get beyond 30 or so pages.

Also they don't have Git integration either, which was a deal breaker for my
wife.

She's since moved to using RStudio locally + Git.

She says, "If you have Git integration, the auto-compilation feature would get
me back from RStudio."

We've also thought about using Grunt to build our own auto-compilation
feature.

~~~
anonymouz
Check out latexmk. With it's -pvc option it has continuous preview (=auto-
compilation).

~~~
RA_Fisher
Thanks!

------
adsche
Awesome! I happened to stumble upon ShareLaTeX just a couple of days ago, when
I needed a CV and had no LaTeX installation available due to my personal
laptop being broken.

I found it easy to get started, fast and overall a pleasure to use. :)

------
jtreanor
This is really great. Thank you! What made you decide to open source it?

~~~
jpallen
Basically, we wanted to! We've benefited hugely from open source projects
ourselves, and have always enjoyed being part of the community surrounding
them. It seems like the default state is to not be open source, but we
realised that since we own and run the business behind ShareLaTeX, we had the
freedom to play by our own rules. We also think it makes sense from a business
point of view as well, since it will (hopefully) make us accessible to a wider
audience, particularly onsite installations that we don't have the resources
to support as a proprietary 'enterprise' system.

We've written a bit more about our motivations in our blog here as well:
[https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2014/02/21/sharelatex-is-
now...](https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2014/02/21/sharelatex-is-now-open-
source.html)

~~~
theallan
I (and I suspect many others here) would be very interested to know what
effect this will have on your turnover. I guess you will get some increased
revenue as others have indicated in this thread, but also loose some for those
who just fire up their own installation.

Presumably you won't really know until your try it, but do you have any data
to support that it might increase your revenue (assuming of course that is a
goal here - rather than just growth of the number of users of your software -
I realise that the two can go hand-in-hand!).

~~~
jpallen
We don't have any hard data - this is based on our personal vision, and our
understanding of our user base. People mostly use ShareLaTeX because: 1) There
is no installation, 2) You can access it anywhere, 3) You can collaborate
easily and effectively without needing to be technical and know git/svn/etc. I
don't think being open source will threaten any of those points, but it will
make ShareLaTeX accessible to the large group of people who want to run a
local version but haven't been able to so far.

It will be interesting to see how things look in a months time. I'll try to
post an update!

~~~
craftsman
Please do post an update. I have a side project I'm starting that will be a
paid service, but I'd like to AGPL it in keeping with the free software
philosophy.

------
malnourish
I use ShareLaTeX for all of my computer science and mathematics homework and I
convinced many of my peers to as well. Thank you for the excellent product.
When I saw the email in my inbox earlier today I was shocked, but I am glad
that you have reached this decision.

------
kriro
This looks excellent. I'll certainly try it for my next paper and will see if
I can lobby our university to pay for the hosted version.

I'm assuming universities are what you are aiming for? I think you should
focus on CSy departments.

Could also target conferences/journals i.e. allow them to offer access to the
hosted version for people collaborating on a paper for that
journal/conference.

From a business development POV, I think it would make sense to wade through
university pages and collect departments that offer Latex-Templates to their
students as potential contacts.

~~~
greglindahl
Historically, TeX and LaTeX have had their best penetration in Math, Physics,
and Astronomy departments. Many journals in these fields only accept papers in
TeX, and have their own templates.

------
pseut
Just tested this out with a 150 page document split across several folders; it
compiled quickly and I really like the way you display the logs and warnings.
Looks great! And I really appreciate your making it opensource.

Integrating this with github a la travis-ci would be great, obviously one
would need to be able to make commits to the repository too; I'm not sure if
it would be great enough that it would induce people to start paying for the
service if they weren't already, though... although I'd sure like it.

I'm not sure what sort of use-cases you are seeing already, but this seems
most useful to me personally for last-minute edits to coauthored papers &
grant proposals right before submission. Nailing down the final version can be
a real pain in the ass.

A few other minor observations:

* uploading a zip file didn't work, but I'm on an old version of RHEL and made the zip with Ark, so... who knows

* after accidentally drag and dropping a bunch of .bbl, .log, .toc (etc) files, I didn't see a way to delete more than one file at a time, or how to undo a file deletion.

* I also couldn't figure out how to move a file from a subdirectory to the top level directory

~~~
beck5
we have spent a lot of time working on our compiler, it is good fast!

We currently have a internal jenkins ci server, we should make the build
status available some how. Although we are militant that builds are always
green.

The zip sounds unusual, it should work.... The drag and drop stuff is not
great, we really need another person to join the team and spend some time on
our front end (plug, remote welcome).

~~~
pseut
Oh, I meant that I want to link a github repo containing latex for a paper to
sharelatex; I.e. You'd be Travis-ci for latex repos.

------
benjamta
A fantastic move! I've been using ShareLaTeX for quite some time, it's a great
service. This move to open source really shows you're pushing your product in
the right direction. Thanks :)

------
beejiu
This is awesome. A group of us used this to write a project for University a
couple of years ago. It certainly made collaboration a lot easier, without
everyone learning how to use git, for example.

------
shrikrishna
I used your product to write my resume, and could finish it without having to
learn latex top-to-bottom. Really an amazing product guys. Wish you all the
best and hope you achieve great success!

------
imroot
I'm really excited by this. I've been a big fan of ShareLaTeX and teach a
LaTeX class at my local Hackerspace for EE/CE students at the Universities
near Cincinnati and I always use ShareLaTeX in our class as an easy way of
getting started without needing to install TeXLive on your system. This allows
me to run our own version of the service at the Hackerspace -- nothing sucks
more than trying to teach an online class when 25 Engineering-heavy students
are using the 5M Down Internet connection...

------
silveira
I'm a big fan of ShareLaTex, I'm always showing it to friends. It was very
useful for me during my studies. I'm extremely happy knowing it is now under
the GPL Affero license.

------
sauravt
This is awesome, really appreciate you guys open sourcing this app.

------
yrochat
Congratulations James & Henri! I'm very happy that my lab has been financially
contributing to your work for nearly a year :-)

Anyway, I'm currently writing my thesis and I've had to stop using your
product. The dropbox sync is lame (I know that the problem is on their side)
and working on three different computers (usually two at the same time) is a
problem. But in case of collective writing, then shareLaTeX is the most useful
tool. Thank you for that and for your move!

~~~
jpallen
Thank you for your support! There is a danger of sounding like a broken
record, but when it comes to Dropbox sync: We're working on it, I promise! :)
Dropbox recently released a new API end point that allows for long polling
which should allow us to do instant synchronisation both ways. It's on our
todo list!

------
stevejb
This is fantastic! I am planning on showing this to my undergraduate students,
because 1) it will help them be more professional in the long run, and 2) I am
incredibly sick of trying to read their handwriting and inconsistent
documents.

I am wondering, what would be the best way to have students create accounts
and have their accounts be populated with templates for all of the homework
assignments?

I am really excited by this announcement. I hope that it leads to even more
success!

------
bookworm101
Well, i have been working on something similar for a little while, what is the
biggest challenge when getting started with this type of SAAS? what do you
wish you knew when you were getting up and running? Would you recommend anyone
to try out the same venture you guys have done? Is there some worry about what
this might do to revenue? or was there already some evidence this would do
nothing evil to your business model?

~~~
jpallen
Phew, lots of questions :). I've only really done this once (with ShareLaTeX),
and it feels like a constant challenge in many ways. I think I'd have to try
it a few more times with other products to understand which challenges are the
important ones. So no big insight there, sorry.

I'd definitely recommend trying to start a business with monthly recurring
revenue. It makes things quite stable and predictable, and watching it grow is
like crack.

We're not that worried about this impacting our revenue. Most of our value
that people pay for comes from being a hosted service.

------
phireph0x
I used ScribTex for my dissertation and have used ShareLaTeX for papers as
well. Both were/are great services backed by a great team. Having experienced
the pain in configuring and maintaining a local LaTeX installation in the
past, it was a pleasure to have a web-based version that was backed by git.

I'm glad to read that the code behind ShareLaTeX is being released as open
source!

------
blueblob
Thank you so much! I wanted to use this initially but my advisor didn't agree
with storing unpublished papers on another server than the localhost/our
servers. As a result I was using flylatex[1] which is nice but not as mature
as this. Now I can give this a try!

[1] [https://github.com/alabid/flylatex](https://github.com/alabid/flylatex)

------
leoedin
Brilliant! I used ScribTex (which I believe has now merged into ShareLaTex) a
few years ago for my dissertation and it was brilliant! So much easier than
maintaining a local LaTeX installation, plus being computer agnostic when
working on my disseration was a huge bonus.

------
xanth
I have been meaning to use LayTeX for my assessment and now that my second
year of university is rapidly approaching this product looks perfect. I would
love to use this but github intergeneration is a must for collaboration. What
is the time frame for git integration?

------
kaybe
Our method of choice is local latex installatons + git, but this certainly
looks interesting. It might be a good alternative if a less tech-savy member
joins the group since it looks as if it was better for teaching and assisting
people.

------
habosa
This is great. ShareLatex is an excellent service and they are always
improving. They're the only company I can think of that sends useful,
interesting emails that are for my benefit and not just theirs. Keep up the
good work!

------
onalark
This is incredible news! Congratulations, and thanks so much for contributing
back

------
geekam
Kudos! Having your source available and ability to peek into it gives me more
confidence in your service and I'd rather use that. Thank you for doing this.

------
newsoundwave
I've been using this for my Senior Design project's docs, and so far I have
had no issues.

Thanks for open sourcing!

------
cliveowen
writeLatex.com offers a live preview and it's faster overall. I really hoped
this would be a better alternative because I'm already a bit disappointed in
writeLatex.com's performance.

An online version of Latex sure beats the hell out of setting up a local
installation though.

~~~
jpallen
We'd love to hear any things you think we could improve. And of course a pull
request would be amazing as well!

------
cies
I love the service! I've used it for several documents so far; with great
success.

Thanks for opensourcing!

------
thearn4
Thanks for open sourcing! Looks like a pretty great concept, best of luck to
you guys.

------
brickcap
Share latex.....

Open source.....

I will just come out and say it. I had funny thoughts in my head when I read
that.

The official site as well as the products looks well designed (love the idea
of templates). Here is the clickable link

[https://www.sharelatex.com/](https://www.sharelatex.com/)

~~~
jpallen
You're not the first (and I doubt you'll be the last) to think that we're some
sort of social media site based around prophylactics :)

------
huherto
Awsome! I almost want to learn LaTex. Perhaps this is the push I need.

------
jordigh
Ooh, neat, AGPL! Are you planning to sell exceptions?

------
mrcactu5
is there any consistent way to turn LaTeX into HTML?

~~~
jpallen
There isn't a perfect way that I'm aware of. In LaTeX, the commands end up
translating to direct formatting commands that only make sense in a fixed
layout document, so HTML conversion will be an approximation at best. I think
Pandoc
([http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)) does
a reasonable job though.

------
antonydenyer
This is awesome

------
jre
This is awesome

------
avaku
I love it!

