

Hackpad released as opensource, then nothing - skimmas
https://github.com/hackpad/hackpad/issues/1

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tylercubell
What warrants the outrage here? An announcement doesn't create a binding
obligation with a rigid timetable. The sense of entitlement is unreal.

~~~
scintill76
Well, the announcement dated >2 months ago[0] does say "few weeks". It's past
most definitions of "few weeks"... I think "entitlement" is too strong, but
maybe it's impatience verging on concern that it will never be released.

Is it really entitled to hold someone (even a company) to their plain word,
even if not legally binding? At least, in the absence of further communication
I think it's reasonable to start making some noise at this point. If Hackpad
were to say they need more time, that would be another issue. (I have no stake
or familiarity with this project.)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9352249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9352249)

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rattray
I think Dropbox is the entity we should be disappointed in here. They clearly
want to be good citizens of the community, but this is a sign of "evil
megacorpdom" that rather contrasts with "employs Guido Van Rossum to work on
Python and sponsors Pyston".

I hope we're able to demonstrate to their M&A team that moves like this hurt
their reputation and make it harder for them to hire & acquire.

~~~
eli
I'd be really careful in assuming malice.

~~~
rattray
Thanks for clarifying - this is much more likely a sign that "dropbox doesn't
have their shit together, and acquiring things is hard" than "dropbox is
trying to be evil".

But I would expect a company at their stage to communicate clearly and
consistently about promises they make to the community, execute against them,
and then issue prompt apologies with explanations and timelines when they
don't follow through.

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shiven
Moral of the story? Use GPL.

If only Etherpad had done so in the first place.

~~~
gst
You probably mean AGPL
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License))?
The GPL wouldn't have made a difference, as it doesn't require you to release
the source of something that you run as a web service.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
The Web is the Ultimate Copy Protection

[http://advogato.org/article/216.html](http://advogato.org/article/216.html)

~~~
PebblesHD
Fascinating article, and with original comments from 2000, neat! It's
interesting to see the arguments for and against protections of these sorts
haven't changed in a long time.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
I emailed the link to RMS. (He's very good about replying to mail.) He
responded by saying that he was aware of the problem, and wanted to solve it
but could not do so anytime soon.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
To be clear, I mailed him the link in 2000.

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kriro
This is the kind of stuff that you just can't let happen if you're Dropbox.
There have to be people in the company that read tech news regularly. Worst
case you issue a statement that the release will be delayed indefinitely (or
won't happen) due to the integration of Hackpad after the acquisition etc.

Just not answering, not answering mail etc. is the worst thing you can do.

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HelloNurse
Maybe Hackpad is a very unimportant and low-priority part of Dropbox, and
marketing/PR efforts and expenses over it are so out of the question that they
don't care about their open source promise. Not even replying here is a sign
of total neglect; I'd attribute this neglect to persistent emergencies
diverting resources and management attention, or to incompetence, but not to a
deliberate "evil" intent because the only thing to "steal" is a little amount
of vague goodwill.

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bhaumik
They're probably just waiting until Dropbox Notes (which looks like a clone of
HackHands now) is live.

notes.dropbox.com

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kierank
Not as bad as Lightworks which has been on its way to being open source for
years.

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Sharma
It is called "Hackpad". You might need to hack it to see it.

