

Joel is giving away his software to Y Combinator startups - mhp
http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/YCombinator.html

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SwellJoe
We've been giving away our software to YC startups for nearly two years now. I
never thought to make a website about it, though. I guess that's what sets the
folks like Joel apart from the rest of us. That's a guy who knows how to give
away software with style.

Seriously, though, it's cool and really good marketing. I've only seen Fogbugz
in passing (it was trialed at a Python shop I worked in a few years back, but
wasn't adopted), but I've heard good things.

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xg
Solid of them to do that, but FogBugz is terrible. Our dev team found it to be
tedious (4 developers).

We've switched to Pivotal Tracker (also in free beta) and find it much more
suited to rapid development and "agile" practices. In particular, we find the
predictive tools actually useful.

~~~
modoc
Can anyone compare FogBugz with Jira (my current fav)?

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cstejerean
If you like Jira you might not like the simplicity and clean UI of FogBugz. We
switched from FogBugz to Jira at my last job and I personally didn't like it
very much. But management liked the flexible reporting and complicated
workflows they could invent.

Personally I think Jira looks like it was written 10 years ago and can get
quite slow at times, which together with the fact that there's no AJAX and
every click reloads an entire page means it can be a very unpleasant
experience.

~~~
modoc
I haven't gotten to use FogBugz so I can't compare the use of the UIs. AJAX
would be really nice, although I haven't had any performance issues. We
replaced Mantis and Bugzilla with Jira at one place I was at, and it was
significantly faster than either of them.

I'm in love with the ability to very easily create different issue types with
different attributes, states, and work flows. That lets us use the same system
as a project management tool with release schedules, features, sub-tasks,
reporting on hours breakdown by resource etc..., and a customer facing issue
reporting/tracking system, and an internal bug tracker, etc...

edit--- Also love the great integrations with Confluence, Eclipse, SVN,
Hudson, etc....

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arockwell
There's also a new student and startup version that is free to use for up to
two people (the YC version is the same deal, but unlimited people).

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13ren
This differential pricing helps satisfy demand (like student movie tickets).
Most of the poor students/startups could not afford to buy anyway, so you lose
little by giving it away.

But you gain potential customers, like MacDonalds targetting children: "get
'em while they're young [and poor]". Lock-in is stronger with software: UI
familiarity (e.g. vi vs. emacs); data on their server.

If you had a dominant market position, this differential pricing can help a
scorched-earth policy: by denying no-one, you don't start the seeds of copy-
cat competitors - they have no fuel to burn (i.e. no customers, no interest).
The danger with copy-cat competitors is that as they grow, they often
differentiate into genuine alternatives in their own right. Better to nip 'em
in the bud (or not enable the bud to grow in the first place).

Joel isn't in that position (there are several bug-trackers): here, it's just
an earlier arena for the fight for customers (like employers interviewing
earlier and earlier at university). For example, the Jira people offer free
products for open source projects.

The above is a business interpretation, based on cynical self-interest, but I
think the result is healthy: customers get high-quality yet affordable
products; you get customers - to each according to his need; from each
according to his ability (to pay). Meeting needs is a good thing.

But for customers, it's just as important to evaluate what they are getting,
even though it's free. Otherwise, you watch free TV, browse free websites, and
buy supermarket "specials" without making a decision about what you're really
buying. You might have chosen to buy it anyway; you might not.

There are vulnerabilities with hosted data; e.g. if Joel had to change his
policy, how would customers get their data out? These are questions common to
all vendors, and it's not just because it's free - it's just then when it's
free, it's easier to not consider these questions properly. It's up to
customers to do their due diligence. All Joel can do is work hard to create
something useful, and let you know about it. He can't tell if it's right for
you and your specific needs or not.

Note: I think it's great Joel is doing this, and it's beneficial all round.

~~~
babakian
To the point about getting your data out. FogBugz On Demand lets you download
a snapshot of your database, at any time, in three different formats: MS SQL
Server, Access, and MySQL. The FogBugz database schema is open and fully
documented here:
[http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.htm...](http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.html)

~~~
13ren
That's fantastic! Thanks. <vader>impressive</vader> My esteem for Joel just
went up a notch.

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sanj
Bummer. Not a YCombinator company, but in a startup and attempting to
contribute to this community.

Hey Joel, any chance of a HN-karma-based lifting of the 2-person limit?

Say >1000 Karma and you can use more people?

~~~
Alex3917
That would actually be an interesting idea for a social news site, partnering
with companies to give away schwag to users who hit certain karma thresholds.
I wonder what would happen.

~~~
jcl
More "Make Karma Fast" schemes?

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ph0rque
Or "buy my karma" offers on ebay...

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netcan
Seriously though, you could probably do it without karma farmers if you
announced a free X for all users currently over a karma threshold. Could be a
cool tool for building social news sites & there are all sorts of companies
that want to give away their stuff - magazines.

~~~
whatusername
Isn't that kinda what Calacanis did at Netscape? ie - Free Money for the top
contributers at Digg / Reddit?

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nickb
We've been using <http://Acunote.com> for agile issue tracking and it's been
performing well. But going forward we're looking at Mantis
(<http://www.mantisbt.org/>) and Jira. Jira's very expensive and Mantis is GPL
and does most of what Jira does.

Could someone, in a sentence or two, explain how FogBugz compares to Mantis or
Bugzilla?

~~~
gleb
Glad you are happy with Acunote. You probably won't have a reason to switch
away from it, not in Mantis/Jira direction anyway :-) That's functionality-
wise, the open-source angle is always valid of course.

~~~
nickb
Cool :) And yes, Acunote is great!

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comatose_kid
I've never used FogBugz. Why would a hacker choose it over the usual open
source stuff (Trac, bugzilla)?

~~~
cstejerean
I would choose an open source product, but trac and bugzilla are both
terrible. hopefully some better options emerge (or I become aware of them).

~~~
kirubakaran
How about Mantis? <http://www.mantisbt.org/>

Demo: <http://demo.mantisbt.org/my_view_page.php>

~~~
tomjen
Mantis is okay - we used it for a (school) project last year, but for what we
needed it for it was overkill.

~~~
kirubakaran
I use a plain text file.

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fallentimes
God damn it - we already paid for it.

Seriously though, FogBugz has been awesome and well worth the one time charge.

~~~
bestes
This is for the "On-Demand" version, which is hosted and costs $25/user/month,
not the standalone version.

~~~
apgwoz
So, really what your saying is that Joel is giving away his software so he can
keep tabs on what YC Startups are doing? Suddenly, the idea seems more evil.
:)

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dustineichler
This is astounding. Another reason I respect this guy so much.

~~~
jonnytran
Yes, it's really an ingenious marketing scheme on Joel's part.

~~~
whatusername
it worked. We're all talking about it on here.

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kirubakaran
Wow text book example of win-win.

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kaiserama
Score!...now to get accepted by Y Combinator...:-\

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hooande
Thanks, Joel!

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t0pj
Bravo.

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ii
_FogBugz integrates with VSS, SVN, Mercurial, CVS, Visual Studio, Eclipse,
Perforce, Vault and SnagIt._

No Git support makes it unusable for me.

~~~
mhp
[http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git-
Integration.as...](http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git-
Integration.aspx)

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dchest
Screw it, use Redmine.

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subbu
Give us something casual. Bug tracking need not be painful.

