
We Open Source Everything - discordianfish
https://blog.latency.at/2018-03-28-we-open-source-everything
======
rawrmaan
Good stuff. Sentry does this too and I think it benefits everyone.

On the other hand, man that custom font is tough on the eyes.

~~~
ch4s3
Wow, you weren't kidding, that font is rough.

~~~
smoyer
But you have to love "Reader Mode" (Firefox Aurora aka Developer Edition
60b06).

~~~
Vinnl
Why the version reference? Reader view has been available in Firefox (among
other browsers) for quite a while now.

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smoyer
I couldn't remember whether it was in ESR yet.

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nautilus12
So the idea is that they are so confident in their human capital, clientele
and business processes that even with all of the code no one could potentially
compete with them? Or that they want to create more competitors?

~~~
meredydd
They're selling an operational service that their customers can't easily
replicate, even with the code.

Their product is a globally-distributed monitoring system. Running these
systems all over the world, and keeping them running, is a serious operational
headache. It's probably at least as complex as operating the service the
customer wants to monitor - perhaps a lot more, given that most services are
_not_ globally distributed.

As long as they price below "double your ops budget", they'll remain value for
money - even if the code they use is free.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Or in short: They're selling a service, not a product, so they can give away
the products that they happen to use.

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discordianfish
Hi,

I'm the guy behind latency.at. So far it's really just a little side project.

Since few people asked: I mainly open sourced it because I believe it's useful
to have a complete, real life service as an example/inspiration.

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bazooka_penguin
Does open sourcing everything affect software developers' job prospectives in
anyway?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I have mixed feelings about it, it seems to me giving away your code for no
return indicates you don't really value it that much. Whether it will have an
affect on the industry I don't know.

There was an interesting paper linked on HN a couple of years ago that
indicated a lot of the money is disappearing from software sales. The
inference was the availability of mysql depresses the revenue from MSSQL, the
availability of Linux depresses the revenue from Windows and so on.

~~~
oblio
If you think about it, software is a tool, and more than that, it's usually a
brick in a construction. I wouldn't expect bricks to go up in price.

~~~
adventist
Software isn't a brick though, it is changing and updating and is a brick that
has to be maintained. When you put software bricks together you get a
construction that is more powerful than the sum of its parts. It is something
inherently valuable in and of itself.

~~~
oblio
If I need 1000 software bricks I need for my house, you can’t really convince
me to pay a premium for each. Especially since I often have alternative
bricks.

Psychology plays an important part in how markets work.

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stevekemp
Which immediately resulted in a bug-report noting that their mailgun API key
was committed into code:

[https://gitlab.com/latency.at/latencyAt/issues/36](https://gitlab.com/latency.at/latencyAt/issues/36)

:)

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oferzelig
Hope they read this: they have a typo: provides -> provide.

~~~
Mononokay
Fourth paragraph, "sites performance" -> "site's performance"

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ryandrake
“builting upon”?

Proofreading works, everyone!

~~~
royjacobs
It's a good thing they open source everything, then :)

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0xfaded
I'm going to hijack this thread to mention that I'm thinking of open sourcing
a SLAM system I've been working on under BSD or MIT.

Ive been working on this because I'm interested in underwater drones (uuvs),
and hope to commercialise this in the form of services.

My current understanding is as follows:

\- most open source systems come from universities and are GPL, with the
option for licensing. (PTAM, ORB SLAM, DSO, SVO, LSD)

\- Optimistically, it would require $1-3 million to build a compedative system
privately. The sky is the limit here.

\- No one, neither the universities nor private entities, is making serious
money by licensing just a SLAM system. The well performing startups are
somehow coupled to a product or a service.

\- All systems basically solve the same problems, but mix and match different
solutions. For example for initial motion estimation, you could rely on
constant motion (DSO, ORB SLAM), image alignment (SVO), or solving directly
for rotation between cameras (GSLAM).

\- As a researcher, to implement a new idea, you either need to implement an
entire system from scratch, or modify a GPL'd system. This is great in theory,
but since everyone is playing the GPL or pay game they are reluctant to accept
contributions.

I'm imagining something like opencv, with implementations of common algorithms
accompanied by wiki pages describing high level details. Components could be
mixed and matched into different reference SLAM systems targeting different
use cases, do you want something that will run on a MAV or a self driving car?

From a commercial point of view, companies could worry more about tweaking
things to work for a particular use case without needing to start from
scratch. I believe that universities, with their many departments, have more
opportunity than anyone else.

My belief is that it's time for a liberally licensed SLAM system. Has anyone
come to a similar conclusion or care to comment to the contrary?

Thanks HN

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stealthcat
Can companies really get away for not licensing properly with GPL? I mean
selling your product without buying the commercial license. How to get
yourself caught? Different SLAM solves the same problem anyway.

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the_mitsuhiko
We (sentry.io) open source everything as either BSD/MIT or Apache2 and we not
only get away with it but also think it’s the best way :)

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kureikain
Do the code to handle paymet system, user management, plan etc open source as
well?

I'm not really familiar with Python yet and try to find some example of these
code.

Thank you.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
No. Nobody who runs sentry on prem needs that functionality.

