

Beg HN - last day for my open source crowdfunding campaign (neo4django) - mhluongo
https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/423-neo4django-0-1-9

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showerst
Without following more links, it's completely unclear to me what this project
does, who you are, or why I should give you money.

Maybe it's just inside-baseball that I don't understand, but I think you need
rework your pitch page.

~~~
mhluongo
Sorry! I hadn't expected much non-niche interest in the campaign when I wrote
the copy. Neo4django is a Django ORM replacement for the Neo4j graph database.
I'm the primary dev, but since our startup supporting the project is on hold,
I'm trying to find time to keep up development- this campaign will help me
complete the next milestone.

~~~
shmageggy
Yet you promote it on a non-niche forum. What else could you have possibly
expected?

~~~
mhluongo
Do note that I wrote the copy 30 days ago- this is the last day of a month-
long campaign. I'd love any actionable advice on the copy.

~~~
lobotryas
Maybe I'm a little jaded, but isn't feedback "your copy is confusing, doesn't
explain the project or why I should support it" sufficiently actionable
advice?

If you really care about this project, I recommend taking the initiative on
everything instead of waiting for someone to give you the answers.

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civilian
Here's an idea: Go contact everyone on your stargazers list and ask them if
neo4django is used at their company.
[https://github.com/scholrly/neo4django/stargazers](https://github.com/scholrly/neo4django/stargazers)

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bdcravens
What does $1000 get you? Time off to work on the project?

In general, I think begging posts are in the best interests of HN.

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aminbandali
I'm really sorry for not being able to back you. In fact, I don't even have a
credit/debit card! Else, I would've helped.. So, sorry about it.. but I
tweeted it..

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jacquesm
Maybe instead of begging you could try to find someone that needs it willing
to fund development?

~~~
mhluongo
A number of users have contributed to the campaign so far- this is the last
day, thus the begging :)

~~~
Nate75Sanders
You're missing his point.

Scrap the crowdfunding completely and find SERIOUS (defined as "$1K is
nothing") backers for the project -- perhaps a company that wants it.

~~~
mhluongo
No, I understood. I chose this format because I'd rather be funded by more,
and smaller, contributions than one large sponsor. That might not always be
the case, but I think that's where the project is right now.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting, so are you saying you actually really don't care a whole lot
about this Neo4j thing one way or the other, such that "If enough random folks
will sponsor it I'll work on it, otherwise I'll go do something else." ?

Your actions and your words are not in alignment and so there is some
confusion around this whole thing.

The original point was _if you care_ about this project, then make it happen
by finding someone willing to pay you to make it happen. If there is value in
the project then this will be helpful for them, and paying you $1,000 is chump
change (seriously its like a couple of hours of a mid-tier lawyer's time, for
example).

If you don't care one way or another, then you don't need to "Beg HN" you just
say "BTW, I had this out there, it doesn't look like it is going to fly, but
I'd mention it one last time here before it expires to see if someone missed
it." If on the other hand you actually _do_ care, (which the wording suggests)
then, as the progenitor of this thread suggests you should use a different
funding approach.

~~~
mhluongo
Of course I care- otherwise I wouldn't have devoted hundreds and hundreds of
hours building and maintaining the library, supporting it all over
StackOverflow, and participating in the Neo4j mailing list. Your other points
are addressed by sibling comments.

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film42
I tried pledging like 10 times but bountysource authentication is sucking
majorly. Sorry, man.

~~~
rappo
Hey, I'm from Bountysource and saw you're having troubles -- sorry about that.

Can you tell me where you're getting stuck? Which method are you using to sign
up (or sign in)? What browser/OS?

~~~
nantes
Personally, I authed via GitHub, but still got a weird flash message along the
lines of "Unable to create new account" and then was redirected to the funding
page (the one with amount and rewards, etc) and was able to donate via PayPal
without further problems.

I wish I could give you better details, but it's Friday night and my attention
had wandered before I realized what happened.

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kanwisher
I'm really confused why I would want a ORM for a graph database. Seems like
its a totally different usecase

~~~
skrebbel
In Neo4J, every node and every edge can have a label and a set of key-value
pairs. A label maps very naturally to a class, and its keys map very naturally
to fields of that class. Thus, ORM (ehh, OGM really?) makes a lot of sense.

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mhluongo
Thanks so much for the contributions and comments folks. I didn't quite reach
the goal for this milestone, but I can now afford to take some time on the
project. Updates pending.

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zeckalpha
How does this compare to Bulbflow?

[http://bulbflow.com/overview/](http://bulbflow.com/overview/)

~~~
mhluongo
Bulbflow is great, but a little lower-level and doesn't offer much Django-
specific integration (eg auth, admin, signals). It expects you to learn more
about Neo4j, for better or worse.

~~~
amirouche
bulbflow avoids vendor lock-in via rexster.

~~~
mhluongo
Good point. One of these days, I'd love to decouple the DSL in neo4django from
the query building, and allow eg a Rexter backend.

