
After a year of struggling, my startup is now open source - abeiz
https://github.com/ChrisZieba/LogicPull
======
abeiz
The last 12 months have been pretty interesting. My partner and I were making
enough off LogicPull to work on it full time. Most of our clients are Legal
Agencies in or around Ontario. Due to the sensitive nature of the information
collected in LogicPull, it was only possible for these agencies to use
LogicPull if, and only if, it was installed on their own servers. This has
been an uphill battle from the start. Version control was non existent at
these agencies, and any updates and/or bug fixes had to go through a formal
code review, which could take up to 3 weeks! We decided to open source our
software, and just consult with our existing clients. Its been a great ride!

~~~
mattmanser
Look. I've worked in enterprise software.

You sound like you did it all wrong.

That you think that 'Version control was non existent' is bizarre is just,
well, naive.

Why did your clients need version control? Was your code not extensible?

 _You_ do the install. _You_ sell a support contract. _You_ make it extensible
in a repeatable, not modifying the core code, kind of way. You have tools to
find out if the client has modified parts of the code they shouldn't have.

A bug pops up, you fix it locally. You then log in to their instance. You
deploy the fix.

That's how it works.

That's where you went wrong.

~~~
loceng
It sounded to me like the legal firms wanted to do the formal code review
themselves, independently.

~~~
mgkimsal
How much of the software they run do they do their own code reviews on? That
sounds weird (not impossible, just weird).

~~~
loceng
I imagine it's the only way lawyers could off-set liabilities onto someone
else if something else ever did happen where confidential information was
breached - and they'd be the best ones to know.

~~~
mgkimsal
The lawyers I worked with years ago never even thought to ask for code reviews
of WordPerfect, and later MS Office or Windows. And they sure as hell knew
they had _0_ chance of suing MS should anything ever go wrong.

------
run4_too
I had an old account and set the procrast to a trillion seconds to stop me
from commenting. (run4yourlives) I made a new account just for this.

Are you aware of just how valuable this piece of software is? While I commend
you for open sourcing it and giving it to us to use, a part of me feels that
you are undercutting yourself.

Let me highlight a problem for pretty much every company (that is larger than
a few people) in existence: The information needed by administration and
accounting teams to register a new client is never properly collected by sales
teams, so you have haphazard implementations and processes and all sorts of
weird and wonderful ways of making sure the various business specific answers
to questions are delivered to the people that need them to be.

You've created a solution to that problem. The upside of it is, well, HUGE.

I'll simply thank you for giving me that solution to run with, and hopefully
I'll be able to do so within my space. Personally I don't think you should
have done what you did if you were to look at it selfishly; you didn't though
and for that you should be commended I think.

~~~
abeiz
Thanks for commenting. Coming to the decision to release this was more than
arduous. I know their is a massive market out there for this type of software,
and I know how valuable it is, or can be. In the end, I'm just a guy who loves
to write code, and if other people can make use of my software than I'm a
happy guy!

------
kriro
Looks pretty cool, good luck. If I have the time next year I might try to use
this for the "entry interview/mentoring" process at our university :)

I used to work at a company that built a FLOSS ERP. You can still build a nice
company around offering this if you want to. You can spin the fact that it's
open source to your advantage and emphasise that they will have full control
over their software stack. People still gladly hand you fists full of money if
you solve their problems...doesn't have to be hosted. And don't worry about
"but they'll just replace us with inhouse folks". If it works they'll usuall
just pay you to make sure the system doesn't fade away.

Also on the [https://logicpull.com/tour](https://logicpull.com/tour) page:
"The Problem. Creating a customized question and answer interview, and using
the data to populate a form is very time consuming and costly, and needs to
XXX created by a software developer." XXX= missing a "be"

------
aktau
Don't really have a use for this but kudos!

When I jumped into my current project, I made a point of going with nginx
1.4+, for the websocket support, which really simplifies the stack. It just
feels good to have less moving parts.

~~~
abeiz
Ya, we were very happy when nginx finally supported websockets, but we had the
same stack deployed to multiple servers (which we did not own) so upgrading
all our clients would have been crazy. But ya, I would definitely recommend
using nginx 1.4 for a fresh install.

------
sandGorgon
I'm a little unfamiliar with the space (also I'm not american), but I was
conversing with someone about this sometime back on open source governance.

Is it similar to this - [https://www.kentlaw.iit.edu/institutes-
centers/center-for-ac...](https://www.kentlaw.iit.edu/institutes-
centers/center-for-access-to-justice-and-technology/a2j-author)

[http://www.a2jauthor.org/drupal/](http://www.a2jauthor.org/drupal/)

~~~
abeiz
Yes, the main idea is the similar.

------
ageyfman
Thanks for posting this up -- can you clarify the reason for using AGPL as
opposed to something a little more friendly to SaaS businesses, like BSD or
MIT licenses? I only ask because it seems like from reading the license that
any changes to the source code must be provided for download, thereby making
it difficult to build a defensible business with this tool (I guess with this
tool alone).

~~~
herge
You can always buy up his startup if you want to run your business around his
tool. I'm going to guess he'd be very amenable to this.

~~~
ageyfman
ha! I'd love to see a paid license model, where you can use this software in
any proprietary way for an annual/one-time fee.

------
pseut
Yikes, "First commit" is a beast! Were you using something other than git at
first, or did you squash the history up to that point?

That is a really nice README, by the way.

~~~
sleepyhead
One issue with open sourcing the code from a startup or any internal app is
exposing sensitive info such as credentials. Starting a fresh repo is a way to
solve that.

------
usrnam
ha i had similar project but right now i'm publish job offer site on github:
[https://github.com/dawjan/pracanowo.pl](https://github.com/dawjan/pracanowo.pl)

Check main CV builder:

[http://cv.pracanowo.pl/cvprzedstawicielhandlowy.html](http://cv.pracanowo.pl/cvprzedstawicielhandlowy.html)

No by google and new engine i;m on position [serp] 945 So i don't see any
reasons to still support my project

------
powertower
I like the look of your [http://help.logicpull.com](http://help.logicpull.com)
docs.

Is it all styled via Bootstrap?

It seems way too responsive and clean for it.

~~~
abeiz
The docs are styled using TB3. There's nothing fancy going on to make it
responsive. The trick is I just change the position of the sidebar from fixed
back to static when the width is <768px. The width also goes back to auto and
I set a height so it doesn't take up too much space.

------
wehadfun
Wow this is awesome! So the only issue was being able to upgrade client
installs.

~~~
abeiz
Thanks! Yeah, dealing with updates for government agencies was becoming an
extreme burden, but was our only source of revenue so we put up with it. We
had trouble finding clients for our locally hosted version of the software.
I've since moved on to other projects and would be happy if someone else took
this project over.

~~~
taude
Don't feel too bad, this is a common problem. Something that isn't talked
about in HNews in the age of the cloud, but proprietary data, hosted on each
customers data center (or server in closet), is still something a lot of
business wants to control.

------
bushido
This is awesome! Are you guys still working on this? (i.e. the start-up)

~~~
abeiz
The site is still being worked on. My co-founder has since moved on, but I
still consult for the clients we have. This involves releasing bug fixes,
patches, upgrades, and adding features.

------
theflubba
Just cloned your repo and launched a competitor. Thanks.

~~~
abeiz
Here is a link to get you up and running
[http://help.logicpull.com/portal/articles/installation-
serve...](http://help.logicpull.com/portal/articles/installation-server)

~~~
briankim
Thanks for sharing, although I don't have any use for it. Kudos for making it
open source.

By the way, what is the wiki software being used on the link you posted?

~~~
abeiz
It's just a custom node app I made, nothin' fancy.

------
kinger
Those docs are pretty well done. Nice work!

------
ibsathish
Great work! Kudos for the perseverance.

~~~
abeiz
Many thanks!

