
Ask HN: Poetic.io, super easy file transfer – make it open source? - poetic
Hey guys, I need some feedback from you!<p>Few months ago I’ve deployed poetic.io (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;poetic.io), a super easy file transfer with a simple and nice UI.<p>Before trying to charge for a PRO version, I started thinking to make it open source and change completely the business model, making it much more like gitlab or wordpress. A free and community version (and later an enterprise version (paid) and paid support... let&#x27;s see)<p>The main reason behind this is because I think there is a lot of good technology in poetic.io and I want to share it with the community. I think the community could also improve it and give to the project a boost and good ideas.<p>Main details:
- It’s mainly built in ruby on rails, angular. 
- It uses s3 and direct upload for multipart resumable upload. With multipart upload the only limit is the s3 storage and the user bandwidth.
- There is a built-in preview system which uses aws lambda to create previews. The previews can be viewed straightaway from the transfer page. 
- The user can download the single file or a zip of all the files of the transfer.
- There is an admin panel where you can have the control of the transfers, customise the background, close the page with a password, set expiration time and many other things.<p>I would like at first to make it less dependent from aws (s3, lamda) giving the option to choose between a own server or s3&#x2F;lambda.<p>Do you suggest to make it open straight away and only then start building a wizard setup, write documentation and polish the code, or the other way around?<p>Do you have any advise on this big pivot?<p>Thanks!<p>Alvise
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benwerd
Hello! I've created two open source projects (elgg.org and withknown.com). I'd
advise you to wait.

Also, I wrote a long post about open source businesses.
[http://werd.io/2015/open-issues-lessons-learned-building-
an-...](http://werd.io/2015/open-issues-lessons-learned-building-an-open-
source-business)

And here's a different take, from Lightspeed Ventures.
[http://venturebeat.stfi.re/2015/12/06/its-actually-open-
sour...](http://venturebeat.stfi.re/2015/12/06/its-actually-open-source-
software-thats-eating-the-world/)

Note that we both argue against a support model. That's a very difficult,
unscalable model. Instead, I encourage you to think of your hosted version as
the primary, main version of what you do, and the open source version as
something that you also release. And remember to hold something back for
enterprise open source customers who need something more.

~~~
poetic
Thanks for your feedback!

