
Why Balanced is an open company - zende
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3008944/open-company/why-i-made-my-payments-startup-an-open-company
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shurcooL
I just want to say this kind of future really gets me excited! I love it when
a product/service I use is open enough that if I ever spot a typo, it's easier
and faster for me to fix it in the source and submit a PR (and enjoy a more
perfect product) than to ignore it.

That's the kind of future I want to live in. I'm very thankful to Balanced,
Gittip for being some of the ones paving the way there.

~~~
shurcooL
Here's a few counter-examples of easily fixable bugs in closed systems that
really bug me.

GitHub has a few tiny bugs that could probably be fixed with a few lines of
code within a day (best case scenario), but they haven't for months now since
I've reported these issues. <http://shurcool.github.io/bettertogether/>

The latest version of Chrome for iOS has a shadow not appearing properly when
you open a new tab in the background. Once you switch to it, it's fine.

Chrome [1] for OS X has a small area around the close tab button where the
hover animation occurs (button highlights red), yet clicking the mouse does
nothing. You have to move the cursor a few pixels closer to the center before
clicking will have an effect. This discrepancy between hover and clicking
action is annoying because I often (several times per day) run into it. OS X
dock has a similar issue.

I'm very picky when it comes to the smallest details... I'd rather fix them
and move on than keep running into them every day.

[1] I know this one is open source, but because it's a huge project, I never
got around to compile it, etc.

~~~
whit537
The Chrome example brings up a good point: it's a lot easier to fix niggling
details on small projects than big ones. We could probably stand to see some
innovation in architecting open products to be easy to install only part of
into a development environment. The GitHub editing interface helps here,
though project culture is another barrier. I fixed a typo on AngularJS and
started to discover a heavier project structure than I'm used to:

<https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pull/2374>

Maintaining a culture of innovation at scale is a challenge for both open and
closed companies.

~~~
shurcooL
I absolutely agree. I think we need to try to innovate how large scale complex
software can be written.

One of the approaches I'm currently investigating and have high hopes for
composition, pure functions, and explicit two-way dependency tracking. I'm
trying to put this to the test in my work. The idea is that I hope even huge
software can be decomposed into smaller independent (meaning all the
dependencies are explicit) chunks with pre- and post-conditions. So fixing
many bugs could boil down to navigating to the code responsible and fixing it
there. It's too early for me to say how it'll work in reality, but I will find
out with time.

------
eksith
Open isn't an on/off switch. Open is a slider.

There are varying degrees to which you should expose your inner workings. Some
of it may be intriguing for investors to be comfortable enough to throw money
at you knowing you'll turn a profit. Some of it would be enticing for your
customers who can see whether you've got your act together.

But this "Open" as a buzzword is something we have to be careful with.
Transparency can be good for business, but only within reason. Also, be
careful of how much tint you use on those rose colored glasses. It's not that
you present the truth; it's how you go about doing it.

------
thu
I find the topic really interesting. However it is the first time I see that
Balanced is involved in this vision. From their homepage, I don't see any link
about their openness. What did I miss ?

~~~
zende
It's been about 9 months now that Balanced started the approach towards
openness: [https://github.com/balanced/balanced-
api/issues?direction=as...](https://github.com/balanced/balanced-
api/issues?direction=asc&milestone=&page=1&sort=created&state=closed)

Building an open company wasn't part of the initial vision. It's something
that we've embraced as we grow Balanced.

Regarding the homepage, that's a great suggestion.

