
Update on Heml.is - dgavrilov
http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/
======
joshstrange
So this pisses me off more than a little. I've had multiple ideas that would
be good for crowdfunding projects but never executed on them because I never
mapped out enough of what I would do with said money. It felt wrong to ask for
money without a solid plan of how to move forward. Just saying "this sucks
give me money to fix it, and oh yeah, I have no plan but money + no plan =
success right?" felt wrong (and I think it IS wrong). Also losing 30K is not
small amount of money and the fact it got a single sentence is really weird.

People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else, they played on emotions
to raise a significant amount of money (whether or not that amount was enough
to complete the project at hand does not matter) and have nothing to show for
it. Sure "We have apps but they are bad so we don't want to release them" is
"something" but by not OS'ing them or releasing them as-is they have
effectively nothing that they delivered on.

If they realised they were in over their head at the start then they should
have sat down and planned it out instead of throwing money at the problem till
it is all gone. They should have turned around and refunded at least a partial
amount of each pledge (sans fees/processing) once they realized this was
beyond what they could do.

This "Give me money" and then "Yeah... about that money, it's all gone..." is
akin to theft in my mind. If I pay into a crowdfunding campaign I am buying
into the idea you sold me. If you didn't think through your idea all the way
then that's your fault. It's little better than ponzi scheme with the
difference being intent to defraud customers in my opinion...

Lastly I've seen some comments about how crowdfunding is not a certain thing
and some things fail. I don't disagree but if a project goes silent then
that's theft in my eyes, not just failing. If a refund is not possible then at
a very least donate what is left to the EFF (publically) or similar because to
keep that money is just dead wrong in my book.

~~~
Confusion

      People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else [..]
    

People like this will cause crowdfunding to mature. It would be good if we got
to the point where you will only get funded if you first demonstrate you have
a reasonable chance of succeeding. There's currently a lot of money going to
doomed projects, initiated by people with only an idea. That money would be
better spent on similar projects by people with a concrete plan and relevant
skills and experience in addition to ideas.

It's not that people are malicious: they are just unprepared. Which is why
many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into.
At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning
through free money hurts a lot less.

~~~
mhomde
Couldn't you have a kickstarter where you only get part of a lump sum in the
beginning for investments, and then minimum-wage for each employee each month?
Keep the start-up lean and hungry and perhaps intrinsically motivated. I guess
there's many problems and ideas that couldn't be funded this way but for those
that can maybe they'd stand a higher chance of succeeding.

Even better was if you had a startup mentor that approved expenses.

~~~
derefr
I presume that the kind of people needed to do most of these things won't work
for minimum wage. And, make no mistake, Kickstarter is mostly about _hiring_
people to do the things promised using the money, not about the people
pitching the idea doing it themselves.

------
Grue3
Snowden, kickstarter, bitcoins within the first few paragraphs. I see where
this is going...

 _scrolls to the bottom_

Yeah, thought so. It's amazing how you can raise more than $100k with this
bullshit without having even basic qualifications to accomplish your plans.
It's amazing how people fall for this kind of crap again and again. See also:
Ritot watch, Arist coffeemaker and so on.

~~~
ryanisinallofus
It is almost as if not every single project is a success.

~~~
Grue3
It's almost as if you have project masterminded by "idea guys" without any
regard for its technical, or even physical feasibility, designed to appeal to
the lowest common denominator to attract people with little experience in
investing, it is likely to end up being either a scam or a total failure.

~~~
NathanKP
Which frankly is the same thing that many Silicon Valley startups do, except
the investors have far more experience, yet still put money in.

Frankly investing is a risk, and if you aren't willing to take that risk then
you shouldn't do it. Not every Silicon Valley startup is a success, not every
Kickstarter is a success.

It's just how the game works.

------
Amir98
Ow:( This may be the saddest thing I read in a long time. I'm a very active
person online (more than 10 hours/day) and have many friends in many countries
that I communicate with on daily basis. Aside from Email, due to privacy
concerns, I avoided any messaging platform (whether on FB, TW, Whatsapp,
Viber, Skype, and any other platform) since 2003. I was eagerly waiting for
the moment to introduce Hemlis to all my friends who have been complaining
about my presence in online messaging platforms for more than a decade! Some
of the issues you raised for the closure are very valid while I believe this
project was more than just a secure messaging app. Its about an extremely
respectable group of people (with spectacular track record on creating a
better, open and free internet for everybody on this planet) start to work
another project for the same better internet for all idea. I'm absolutely sure
you all have thought about these points for a long time and all I want to say
is even though I'm extremely disappointed, I will be the first one to support
you on any other project that you guys are a part of (I really hope there is
one soon) and I'm sure you did your best to prevent this from happening. Good
luck to all of you:) Amir

~~~
dewey
Why are you not using Signal / Textsecure or any other of these new apps which
have privacy in mind. IIRC they even said Hemlis won't be open source
according to their FAQ so I don't think these 3 guys would've pulled this off
any better than Telegram even with their dubious encryption.

~~~
Amir98
I can use these apps but in order to be able to recommend it to my friends as
an app that can replace Whatsapp or Viber, it should have a comparable UI/UX.
I too was concerned about their source availability approach. What will you
suggest that meets these criteria?

~~~
dewey
I'd suggest WhisperSystem's Signal [0], it's currently available on iOS and
Android [1] and open source [2].

[0] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/signal-
iphones...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/signal-iphones-
encrypted-messaging-app-now-supports-text/)

[1]
[https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/)

[2] [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
iOS](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS)

------
herbig
I actually forgot I contributed to this.

Pretty disappointing, but it sounds like a totally reasonable series of events
so I don't have hard feelings.

Signal / Textsecure are great apps, so I'd look to that if you're looking for
security.

------
mpeg
"Just think – verification by SMS for all of the potential users would be
millions of dollars even at a few cents per SMS."

What? They received $147,210 from 10074 backers, even if every SMS sent costs
you $0.04 (pricing from twilio for my country) you can send 50 millon before
it's costing you "millions of dollars".

Do you really think that 10k backers is going to translate into whatsapp-scale
from launch?

Maybe try blaming it on server prices next, because the thousands of servers
you will surely need are going to cost you millions too.

------
buster
"I personally had other issues as I got kidnapped by the swedish government
and locked up for my work with another project – The Pirate Bay. In the middle
of the kidnapping, my father died."

Ouch... sincere condolences.

P.S.: I contributed and i understand your reasons to let it go. Fine with me.
At least you tried, which is someting most of "us" don't even do.

------
slac
Bitcoin wallet stolen. Isn't this gambling with the money of the people that
funded?

~~~
MaximillianII
I wonder how the heck it happened... How can we expect someone to build a
secure messaging system if they can't even secure their bitcoins?

------
dates
i feel like a secure messaging app should be OS in the first place though ?!
textsecture / smssecure has been walking a slow and steady pace forward for
years now, to me it seems like a project with vision/smart people that is
worth putting resources into in wake of this one dying, if the product is
something you are interested and believe in.

~~~
orthecreedence
There's no excuse not to open source an app if it's privacy oriented. It's not
enough to open source the part that does the crypto either, because how do you
know it isn't accidentally logging plaintext data to a file somewhere before
the crypto happens?

There are other ways to do lock-in besides closed-source clients. If it has
"private" or "crypto" anywhere in the title, it _needs_ to be open source.

------
justinsb
I hope they at least open whatever source code exists.

~~~
flurp
They will according to the comments section
[http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment-1957)

------
flurp
For those asking/wishing for open source, according to the comments section[1]
they will.

"We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most
free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for
it)."

[1] [http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment-1957)

[Sorry for the multiple comment replies, I realized a top-comment might be
better]

------
Fogh
They could at least open source the code that has been made as part of the
project.

~~~
flurp
They will according to the comment section[1]

"We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most
free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for
it)."

[1] [http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-
is/#comment-1957)

------
orthecreedence
I have a similar project I'm working on, and have thought about going after
crowdfunding, but decided not to. It came down to a) not having any
mentionable competitors in the space and b) not wanting to be one of those
people who takes other people's money and ends up wasting it. So I am still
working on it, as a side project, a few years later. Sometimes I wish I could
devote myself full-time, but providing an open-source privacy app for the fun
of it and for its own utility without thinking about paying the bills has made
the project a lot more inspiring for me. I don't have to think about the
bottom line, just "what would be useful to build next?"

This is what people did before crowdfunding. Maybe we all don't need $100K
just to start and publish something useful.

------
_cpancake
> I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with
> another project – The Pirate Bay.

That's called "being arrested for breaking the law."

------
Gurrewe
So, whats to say that they didn't take the 100 000 USD and gave to themselves
the first day and barely haven't cared about Hemlis since then?

~~~
Touche
It seems like it would be better if crowdfunding sites didn't give you the
entire lump-sum up front but instead gave it to you incrementally as you
completed pre-defined milestones.

So if you have 8 milestones you get 1/8 of the money up-front and then each
time you achieve a milestone. If you take twice as long to achieve that first
milestone and run out of your initial payment.... welp then you have to go
back to the community and ask to renegotiate the arrangement.

~~~
rvschuilenburg
Sounds like a solid plan. The backers could be given the option to vote if a
certain milestone is met or not.

------
Globz
This is a very sad news, I was checking their website on a regular basis for
updates...oh well at least they are honest instead of delivering an incomplete
product with missing features. Hopefully someone else will take over or create
something new with the same vision.

