
Goread - Open Source Google Reader clone in Go - obilgic
http://www.goread.io/
======
skrause
For me the end of Google Reader meant that I could finally stop using my
Google account altogether since Reader was their only service I was using.
It's a shame that so many of the Google Reader alternatives want me to sign in
with my Google account again. In that case I simply won't use them (I'm
looking at you, Feedly).

~~~
kazagistar
Well, if you find it worthwhile, feel free to submit a merge request that adds
the authentication method of your choice, right?

~~~
levosmetalo
This attitude is what's wrong with the open source software. It is important
to him, but not that important to spend time getting to know code base in a
language he might not be familiar with in order to implement it himself. Or he
just might not be a programmer.

If you want actual users for your project, not developers, than either
implement what they ask for or say you don't want to. If enough people
complain, it is a good sign that you are missing important features that
prevent adoption. Build it yourself is not an answer to those users, and is
just plain annoying.

If you want to be able to answer with "send me a pull request" then just stop
creating end users software, and build some library instead that is used by
developers.

~~~
kbenson
I'm in no way sure who you replied to was the owner, so your entitlement rage
may have been aimed incorrectly.

That said, maybe the software isn't targeted at you? One of the beautiful
things about open source is that contributors get to contribute on their own
terms. Unlike many commercial products where targeting anyone and everyone
willing to purchase it is the goal, having a completely free product allows
the author to do away with all of that if they desire.

This isn't the market you are used to. You, as an end user may have very
little power. I understand that the complete change of being catered to by
commercial products and then ignored in an open source product can be
frustrating. Just keep in mind, that frustration is built by your own
misunderstanding of your place in the open source ecosystem. The sooner you
accept your place, or change it, the better.

~~~
GhotiFish
Entitlement? That's abusing the term. Users are within their right to ask for
features, and within their rights to throw their hands up in the air and say
"WTF" when a dev turns around and snaps "Well make it yourself"

After all, go read never said "The is MY rss reader"

it's tagline is "this is an rss reader." rss readers normally don't require
single sign on.

~~~
jlgreco
Users are well within their rights to do just about anything, including insult
the developers mother. The issue isn't what their rights are, the issue is
with etiquette.

Politely requesting features from developers you are not paying is not a
breach of etiquette. Saying "No." in response to those requests is not a
breach of etiquette. Making demands of developers that you are not paying _is_
a breach of etiquette.

------
obilgic
Website is powered by Go and AngularJS. Source code is available on Github [0]

[0] : [https://github.com/mjibson/goread](https://github.com/mjibson/goread)

~~~
rodgerd
Thanks. I was wondering why it being powered by Go would be relevant when
there appeared to be no way to self-host or contribute...

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fooyc
This is the most approaching clone of Google Reader I've seen so far.

It has one big problem, however:

A feed can have only one tag (or, if you see a tag as a folder, a feed can be
only in one folder).

This is a big problem because Google Reader's UI encouraged to add multiple
tags on a feed (you didn't moved a feed from one folder to an other : you
selected a list of tags the feed appear in). And the OPML format allows this
too.

So, if you import an OPML export, half your feeds may _appear_ to be missing.

\---

An other great Google Reader alternative is
[http://yoleoreader.com/](http://yoleoreader.com/) . Apart from its UI
sometimes freezing for a second (maybe due to synchronous I/O or too long
script execution), it's an other great Google-Reader-like RSS reader.

~~~
shrikant
I personally use [https://www.inoreader.com/](https://www.inoreader.com/) and
found it to be a simple and brilliant Reader-like replacement.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I've been enjoying [https://digg.com/reader](https://digg.com/reader) as a
"close-enough to Google Reader" substitute, as well. They launched a mobile-
browser-friendly update a few days ago, and the Android app is supposedly
"very soon" to release.

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jc4p
Very cool to see my co-worker's pet project front and center on HN when I wake
up :) Matt's also working on an Android app for Goread at the moment, which is
also open source: [https://github.com/mjibson/goread-
android/](https://github.com/mjibson/goread-android/)

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davidw
Do you have to self host? If not, how are they going to keep it around once
more people start to use it? Looks nice and clean. Thank you!

~~~
loumf
It's hosted on Google App Engine. He has ads on the free version and an ad-
free subscription option. You can self host if you want and it would probably
stay under the free tier on AppEngine if it's just you (depending on the
number of feeds and update frequency)

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MattSayar
I switched to Goread.io as my full-time Reader replacement since I first heard
about it after the announcement of Reader's demise. It's been a decent
alternative, but it lacks the polish that Reader had, especially when it comes
to read/unread stories.

After weeks of use, I haven't bothered to figure out the consistency of how to
mark a story as read, so sometimes it will take frequent clicks on "Mark all
as read" to register that I've read something. When you click a story, it
awkwardly jumps your scroll position around.

These are minor complaints, and it's still very usable otherwise, but I'm
thinking about upgrading my subscription to encourage development.

~~~
mjibson
The jumping around got fixed last week. No one has reported the read/unread
issues you've had. Could you report them to the github issues page?
[https://github.com/mjibson/goread/issues](https://github.com/mjibson/goread/issues)

------
kodr
Well... since everyone are sharing their readers, I'll share mine:
[http://theoldreader.com/](http://theoldreader.com/)

The one feature that most others don't have, sharing and commenting with
friends.

~~~
anovaskulk
On the other hand this one is closing its registrations, and deleting users
registered after some date X.

~~~
pronoiac
They were talking about letting unpaid customers go, but they found backing,
to let them keep up the good work:
[http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/57274499607/the-new-old-
re...](http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/57274499607/the-new-old-reader)

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circuiter
Looks like Matt Jibson is on a front page roll.

~~~
mjibson
Yeah. I was surprised to see these since they are both old news.

------
kzahel
I tried to import my feed.ly feeds to this but the page stuck on "OPML import
is happening. It can take a minute. Don't reorganize your feeds until it's
completed importing. Refresh to see its progress." and I got no errors in the
javascript console. It looks promising though. I find feed.ly to be too
gimmicky and noisy. I like the minimal style of go read.

One thing that's missing from every google reader replacement I've tried is
the ability to infinite scroll through a feed history. Somehow google knew how
to request RSS feed pagination parameters.

~~~
mcantrell
I made a feed reader called Bulletin that has infinite scroll that works just
fine. Can't see why others couldn't do it as well. We also went for minimal on
the UI.

bulletin.io

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WayneS
I really wanted to like this but it was missing a couple key features for me.
I described by problems in the github issues page and wondered back the
theoldreader. When theoldreader got slow and was down for over a day I came
back and found he has continued to make fixes and addressed most by my issues.
Very happy now, and the website is consistently responsive which I care about
much more than fancy layouts.

------
egeozcan
The only thing I don't understand about this otherwise awesome project is that
it being tied to the Google app engine.

~~~
mjibson
That's why it's so awesome. What don't you understand? I get infinite scaling
and the datastore. When goread hit the HN front page and the gizmodo front
page a few weeks ago, it wasn't any slower: everything scaled perfectly.
Consider some of the other readers that have hit the HN front page - they
became unusable for a day or two until the traffic died down. App engine is an
incredible platform for developing scalable websites.

~~~
egeozcan
Yes, that's true when you want to scale. What I'm looking for is something
that can run efficiently in my cheap VPS, me being the only user. For that
purpose, I'd guess, App engine would be an overkill.

------
stinos
Does someone have a more in-depth description of what exactly happens when I'd
log in with a google account there, besides "Google will share your email
address with Go Read" and "Go Read may use your email address to personalize
your experience on their website"? Or is that really all there is to it?

~~~
patrickaljord
Yes, this permission only shares your email.

~~~
unwind
Sharing an email _address_ is not the same as sharing _email_ , is it? At
least your reply just confused me more. :)

~~~
patrickaljord
You're only sharing your email address. Anyway, this is well documented and
this level of paranoia is rather ridiculous anyway.

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SkippyZA
Great job. I have been working on a similar Google Reader replacement using
Ruby and Ember.

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caiob
Reader clones are the new Todos.

~~~
jfb
And written in Go? HN catnip.

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rly_ItsMe
I tried fever [http://feedafever.com/](http://feedafever.com/). Its a nice
selfhosting feed reader. But after a while using online feed readers i still
use Operas build in Reader.

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rkalla
Matt, this is really kind of fantastic... nicely done! Would love to see a
breakdown blog post of how you architected/implemented this... extremely
responsive, pleasing UI, no surprises. Just works.

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jqgatsby
This is really awesome. I've been using this for a few days now and really
like it. I've been programming in Go alot these days, so the fact that it's in
Go is a big plus for me.

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piyushranjan
I have been using this as google reader replacement. Very happy with it.

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spurgu
It looks nice and it's FAST! Plus it has a clean mobile UI. I think I'll have
a Go and leave Feedly on the shelf, at least for a few days.

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joshbaptiste
Wow goread.io is much more responsive then when I first tried it around a
month ago .. definitely will start contributing on Github.

------
squidi
HTTPS URL is [https://go-read.appspot.com/](https://go-read.appspot.com/)

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ForFreedom
Are the unread RSS feed entries stored in db then called to be read later?

~~~
mjibson
Sort of. goread tracks a global unread date. Anything newer than that is
unread. Any item you have read since then is added to a big list that is used
to filter returned items. When you've read everything, it moves up the unread
date and clears the list.

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specto
So far very impressive. Definitely worth $30 a year

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ForFreedom
Can I set this up on my own server from github?

~~~
mjibson
Yes. [https://github.com/mjibson/goread](https://github.com/mjibson/goread)
has details.

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chankey_pathak
It's a nice alternative.

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camus
Very good ! i also checked [http://yoleoreader.com/](http://yoleoreader.com/)
which is amazing too.

i'm building my own with nodeJS. As usual my requirement are that it should
work without javascript on , so i implemented the static site first ,the rest
will come later :

[http://feedpress.herokuapp.com/](http://feedpress.herokuapp.com/)

click on about for the source code.

