[HN Gopher] Sourcegraph is no longer open source
___________________________________________________________________
Sourcegraph is no longer open source
Author : CAP_NET_ADMIN
Score : 376 points
Date : 2023-07-04 10:21 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| return_to_monke wrote:
| Hey dang, you might want to point to this comment instead:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu...
| sqs wrote:
| Sourcegraph CEO here. Sourcegraph is now 2 separate products:
| code search and Cody (our code AI). Cody remains open source
| (Apache 2) in the client/cody* directories in the repository, and
| we're extracting that to a separate 100% OSS repository soon.
|
| Our licensing principle remains to charge companies while making
| tools for individual devs open source. Very few individual devs
| (or companies) used the limited-feature open-source variant of
| code search, so we decided to remove it. Usage of Sourcegraph
| code search was even more skewed toward our official non-OSS
| build than in other similar situations like Google Chrome vs.
| Chromium or VS Code vs. VSCodium. Maintaining 2 variants was a
| burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for
| anyone.
|
| You can see more explanation at
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu....
| The change was announced in the changelog and in a PR (all of our
| development occurs in public), and we will have a blog post this
| week after we separate our big monorepo into 2 repos as planned:
| the 100% OSS repo for Cody and the non-OSS repo for code search.
|
| You can still use Sourcegraph code search for free on public code
| at https://sourcegraph.com and on our self-hosted free tier on
| private code (which means individual devs can still run
| Sourcegraph code search 100% for free). Customers are not
| affected at all.
| xenago wrote:
| > charge companies while making tools for individual devs open
| source
|
| Stop using the term Open Source. It's not open source if you
| apply restrictions like this, it's pretty easy to see that
| you're being disingenuous. These licenses are not OSI approved.
| dahart wrote:
| I'm a fan of OSI, and their definition of "open source" is
| widely recognized, but still, language policing usually turns
| out to be incorrect. OSI didn't invent the term open source,
| and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don't
| meet OSI's standards. The term doesn't belong to any one
| organization. I don't understand the confrontational stance
| either, with code being offered to individuals. That far
| exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open
| source community, no?
| mod50ack wrote:
| The term doesn't _belong_ to the OSI. But the basic tenets
| of the OSI definition are very important to devs. And
| source being available but not able to be legally reused
| makes it useless for the vast majority of FOSS projects.
| dahart wrote:
| I agree. I'm not arguing against the value or the stature
| of OSI's definition _at all_ , I'm only reacting to the
| demand to never say the words "open source" unless you
| mean OSI's definition. The Robustness Principle applies
| to language; be conservative in what you say, and liberal
| in what you hear. It's fine to point out when a license
| or particular software isn't OSI-approved open source.
| It's fine to ask if people mean OSI when they say "open
| source" without a qualifier. It's fine to add a qualifier
| too.
| mod50ack wrote:
| There is a difference between strictly following the OSI
| definition and the general idea of "open source." For
| instance, while "open source" and "free software" are
| effectively interchangeable category definitions, there
| are some minor technical reasons why the FSF definition
| allows a few licenses the OSI definition doesn't and vice
| versa. If we were talking about "oh, this is accepted by
| the FSF as free software, but not by the OSI as open
| source," then OK, sure. And you could go on with Debian
| and Fedora approvals and so on.
|
| But we're not talking about technicalities here. We're
| talking about the _vey basic_ idea of what it means to be
| "open source." I'm not telling anyone that they can't use
| words however they want. They _can_. But the way they 're
| using the term "open source" is just fundamentally
| incompatible with how the vast majority of people in the
| field use it. So it's at the very least going to cause
| some confusion to use the term "open source" in the way
| they are.
|
| Besides, I think people have a bigger problem with the
| licensing change itself than any wordsmithery.
| dahart wrote:
| > I'm not telling anyone that they can't use words
| however they want. They can.
|
| It sounds like we are in full agreement, and you're with
| me that @xenago's demand to not use the phrase might be
| overstepping a little bit, no? Isn't this confusion
| easier to clear up with a single short question than with
| assumptions or demands?
|
| There is a slight problem with claiming using "open
| source" is confusing to the people who know about OSI. To
| the lay person who's not a software developer, "open
| source" does mean 'source is visible', and "free
| software" does mean 'software that costs no money' (and
| these definitions are included in dictionaries and
| Wikipedia, next to the OSI and FSF versions). The OSI and
| FSF definitions are terms of art that these orgs are
| trying to establish and control, and they deviate from
| what the literal words alone imply, both in meaning and
| level of specificity, therefore they will always be
| confusing to people who are neither developers nor
| lawyers. Wouldn't it be better if FSF and OSI relied not
| on co-opting everyday words, but having phrases that are
| more obviously terms of art and more obviously attached
| to the orgs? Even something as simple as "OSI Open
| Source" or "FSF Free Software" would go a long way. OSI
| does on it's site use "OSD - Open Source Definition"
| quite a bit.
| sqs wrote:
| I am referring to Apache 2 here. We license a subset of stuff
| (a smaller subset after this change, but still all of
| client/cody*) as Apache 2.
| chungy wrote:
| Apache 2 doesn't require that companies are charged. It's
| proper open source (meets all the criteria of the Open
| Source Definition).
| sqs wrote:
| Yeah, and we aren't charging companies for our Apache 2
| code. We have some open source (Apache 2) code, and some
| non-open-source code.
| grayhatter wrote:
| You seem to be confused about the common meaning of open
| source. Open Source only means the source code is available.
| It doesn't mean it's license or TOS is also open. That's why
| the acronyms FOSS and FLOSS exist as well.
| ezekg wrote:
| The readers may not like it, but you're not actually wrong.
| Go ask 100 developers if BSL or ELv2 are open source and
| the majority of them will say that it is -- because the
| source code is available, and for the majority of users,
| _these licenses are less restrictive than AGPL_. Not Open
| Source (tm*), but open source -- FOSS vs OSS.
|
| (I do understand that Solargraph is now using a proprietary
| enterprise license, so this comment is directed at the OP
| mentioning "OSI approved" licenses, not at Solargraph's new
| license.)
|
| * it ain't trademarked.
| smarx007 wrote:
| That's why there a separate term for what you are
| describing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-
| available_software
| ezekg wrote:
| I'm on mobile and with family today so I can't respond
| in-depth (happy independence day!), but have ever
| wondered why the term "source-available" has changed
| meaning, yet the term "open-source" is not 'allowed' to?
| (And I'd argue it already has, much to the OSI's dismay.)
|
| The term source-available has been shoehorned to mean
| everything-not-OSI-approved, instead of what it used to
| mean: a proprietary license for a project that has its
| source available (e.g. Sourcegraph's license).
|
| In reality, "open source is a broad software license that
| makes source code available to the general public with
| relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and
| modification of the code." Which is the definition the
| majority of developers would say is open source.
|
| The ELv2 and most uses of BSL fall under the "relaxed
| restrictions" on use and modification, similar to GPL.
| I'd argue they are open source.
| altairprime wrote:
| "Open Source" is a proper noun defined by OSI, not to be
| confused with the general phrase "open source" which
| predates OSI. You use both interchangeably in your reply,
| which is invalid (apples/oranges). Please be more specific:
| do you mean the OSI definition or the pre-OSI
| colloquialism?
| dizhn wrote:
| I've heard the term "source available" for that. Nowadays
| they also have "open core" which means you can't do shit
| with the source you do get. But that's another thing
| entirely.
| reedciccio wrote:
| Open Source has a very clear meaning in the context of IT,
| understood by developers and lawyers, judges and policy
| makers alike: it means that the code is distributed with a
| license approved by the Open Source Initiative.
| strus wrote:
| I am pretty sure that for most developers open source =
| source code available, and nothing else.
|
| Anegdotally I have been a professional dev for 10 years
| and this is the first time I hear your definition of open
| source.
| thayne wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've also been a professional dev for over
| 10 years, and have been involved with open source
| projects longer than that. And in my experience, "open
| source" almost always means you are free to modify and
| redistribute from the source (possibly with a requirement
| that you also release the code for your changes, in the
| case of the GPL). The exceptions are mostly companies
| that want to claim they are open source for marketing,
| without actually following the spirit of open source.
| wheels wrote:
| That's probably because you've _only_ been a professional
| developer for 10 years. Here 's a quick history lesson:
|
| If we go back, say, 25 years, when the term Open Source
| entered common usage, it was a way of describing the
| things that had thusfar been labeled "free software", but
| as a way of deemphasizing the notion of the Free Software
| movement that saw non-free-software as immoral. It was a
| term to describe things that met the Free Software
| Definition, but without harping on morality.
|
| It was very much a counter-culture (it was, after all,
| the _Free Software movement_ and the _Open Source
| movement_ ), and very much not a generic term for having
| access to the source. That was already _super common_ in
| enterprise agreements, and nobody considered that to be
| open source.
|
| Then around the early 2000s, Linux became hot shit, and
| some large companies wanted to avail themselves to the
| rising tide and began labeling their watered down
| versions of "source available" things as open source in
| an attempt to jump on the bandwagon. But _that was an
| intentional attempt to water down the definition everyone
| already understood for marketing reasons._
|
| You not knowing this history means that to some extent
| the marketing worked. But just realize that in arguing
| here, you're participating in the astroturfing. Also, get
| off my lawn!
| rat9988 wrote:
| Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had
| this debate many many times. You may not agree with this
| point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the
| universal one.
| eganist wrote:
| > Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had
| this debate many many times. You may not agree with this
| point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the
| universal one.
|
| It practically is, and they've done a good job of
| gathering the relevant citations to make that point.
|
| https://opensource.org/authority/
|
| If you're passionately against this, feel free to make
| the relevant edit here as well:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-
| source_software#Definitio... (but you may have to have a
| litany of citations to justify why the OSI definition is
| not a _de facto_ standard if you want it to stick).
| prepend wrote:
| I've heard this line before and it confuses me. What is
| the authority?
|
| It seems to me that it's OSI (around for years,
| reputable, etc) vs some for profit companies misusing
| common terminology in the, I think false, sense that
| people think non-open things they call open are good. Not
| sure if they are deluded or just wrong.
|
| Happy to talk about some new authority for open source
| licenses, but it seems like the "OSI isn't an authority,
| nobody is" is an argument by 8th graders who just read
| the Wikipedia article on communism.
|
| OSI formed to help open source developers and users to
| better understand "proper" licenses from bullshit.
| ddingus wrote:
| Exactly right!
| eudoxus wrote:
| But "Open Source" both as a term and idea pre-dates the
| OSI's formation. The general definition of "Open Source"
| shouldn't be universally defined by a single body.
|
| The OSI has done a great job at introducing a legally
| ratified and globally recognized license format to help
| reduce uncertainty, but it is not, and has on several
| occasions been denied[0], the global authority on the
| definition of Open Source. They have a trademark and are
| the authority for "Open Source Initiative Approved
| License" (ie: "OSI License") specifically.
|
| [0]: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-
| source.p...
| prepend wrote:
| Of course it predates the formation of OSI. OSI didn't
| invent the term, it's just a group of people who formed
| to formalize and help adoption.
|
| It's not like there's some competing definition. OSI has
| been around for 20+ years and only recently did a few
| companies decide they want a different definition so they
| can make more money.
|
| But the issue isn't that there's some word police. The
| issue is that open source has a definition in use and
| when people try to overload, it gets confusing. I wish
| people wouldn't do that, but it's free country (free as
| in speech, not free as in beer).
|
| No one cares if source is "open" in that people can view
| it. In that case windows is "open." The important part of
| open is the ability to change, reuse, and participate.
|
| Why would anyone care if source is visible but not
| usable? I've been able to decompile forever. I can see
| the source if I need to. The community and reuse aspect
| is important.
|
| Finally, OSI doesn't define the term. They just certify
| licenses that adhere to open source principles and ideas.
| The community defines the term. Everyone is free to make
| up new licenses. OSI just helps the community filter out
| noise by reviewing licenses that actually are open
| source.
| [deleted]
| Patrickmi wrote:
| Open source doesn't mean active authority, because you
| have the source code doesn't you have some level of
| control on the repo that the source code is being host,
| having Go source code doesn't mean you have the right to
| just commit into the Golang repo without checks and
| decisions
| Plasmoid wrote:
| You're referring to source available licenses. These range
| from the nearly open like Mongo or ElasticSearch to the
| almost totally closed like Windows or Solaris.
|
| They're not inherently bad licenses but they aren't open
| source.
| inglor wrote:
| Great straightforward non apologetic answer props. Refreshing
| compared to what we often get here nowadays and reminiscent of
| how ceos used to reply here.
|
| (I Don like the news itself obviously but the delivery was
| good)
| sqs wrote:
| Also, I appreciate all the comments here and find them fair and
| thoughtful, including the critical stuff. You can join our
| Discord at https://discord.gg/rDPqBejz93 to chat more after
| this goes off the HN frontpage. And if anyone wants to chat
| with me directly to share feedback or complaints, let me know
| (and we can share the recording publicly if you're OK with it).
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Sourcegraph only provided non-OSS images and the build process
| was difficult and broken for a long time, the application
| itself was frequently broken in OSS version as well, searching
| issues for a few minutes brings up quite a few results. [1] [2]
| [3] [4]
|
| It's no wonder, that the usage of OSS version was pretty low,
| when few were able to build it and even if they managed that,
| the resulting application was broken every few releases.
|
| Both VS Code and Chromium are easy to build, due to their
| nature and popularity, they are available prebuilt from many
| sources. I would install "unofficial" Chromium build from my
| distribution's repository, I wouldn't keep my code in
| unofficial Sourcegraph build from some random person on Github.
| Comparing them is rather unfair, but there's another issue that
| stopped OSS adoption.
|
| For a long time, official Sourcegraph Docker image came with a
| 10 seat free license, which suited many people and they weren't
| looking for alternatives like OSS build.
|
| I would argue that announcing license change and closing of
| your product as a small block in change log file or when
| someone mentions the problem in Github Issues is not adequate
| for such a change.
|
| Not using open-first principles, restricting the product by
| using enterprise only plugins, which others mentioned under
| this post, not providing open source builds and changing
| license without preceding announcement, while previously using
| open source terminology for some feel-good free marketing
| leaves a bitter taste. Especially with so many companies doing
| this right now due to interest rates.
|
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43231
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43203
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6790
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6783
| smarx007 wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts. I am using the Homebrew version of
| Sourcegraph, which I presume to be quite dead [1]. I do this
| because there is no packaged version of the Sourcegraph OSS.
| I would happily use the OSS version instead otherwise.
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/discussions/54589
| medellin wrote:
| This is exactly my experience with SourceGraph.
| xenago wrote:
| Right. A license change like this being done in such a silent
| manner would lead me to drop usage of this product if I
| wasn't already avoiding it due to their dubious non-foss
| principles.
| bilalq wrote:
| Do you see any potential trademark conflicts you may run into
| against Google due to Codey[0]? I don't know which was
| announced/branded first, but I imagine a big co like Google is
| tough to win against even when you're in the right.
|
| [0]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-
| learning/g...
| linuxdude314 wrote:
| Announcing a major change like this in a PR screams disregard
| for your users.
|
| Are you sure this isn't just a way for you to crack down on
| license abuse?
| sourcegrift wrote:
| ask them when are they going to un-squat langserver.org
| smarx007 wrote:
| It looks like langserver.org they maintain is indeed
| serving the right content and the repo accepts PRs. What
| did Sourcegraph do wrong here?
| jdorfman wrote:
| There is no squatting happening. I personally merge PRs as
| soon as they come in.
| hv42 wrote:
| In case someone is wondering how to search local repositories
| with sourcegraph, see
| https://docs.sourcegraph.com/admin/external_service/src_serv...
| and https://docs.sourcegraph.com/admin/deploy/docker-single-
| cont... docker run --add-
| host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway --publish 7080:7080
| --publish 127.0.0.1:3370:3370 --rm --volume
| ~/.sourcegraph/config:/etc/sourcegraph --volume
| ~/.sourcegraph/data:/var/opt/sourcegraph
| sourcegraph/server:5.1.2 docker run --rm=true
| --publish 3434:3434 --volume $PWD:/data/repos:ro
| sourcegraph/src-cli:latest serve-git /data/repos
| jwmcglynn wrote:
| I am one of the few people who used the open source version and
| really liked it, and I'm disappointed by the changes.
|
| The challenge I had with Sourcegraph is that it's out of reach
| of developers working on personal projects. There isn't a
| hosted plan, and for my projects I can't easily open source
| them due to my employer.
|
| I was really excited when the Sourcegraph App was released,
| since it allowed me to give Sourcegraph a try on my project
| without going through the complex self-hosted setup. I went as
| far as getting scip-clang working with my Bazel-based project,
| and then tried out the docker-compose setup on my home lab.
|
| Now that code search was removed from the app, and this change,
| I'm concerned that I won't be able to use Sourcegraph for my
| personal projects in the future.
|
| This is a missed opportunity. I think individual developers
| using products for personal projects are powerful advocates,
| since those developers may convince their employer to purchase
| the product. If I could I'd gladly pay, but I'm just one person
| and can't justify $5k/year.
| beyang wrote:
| Hi there, Sourcegraph CTO here. Code search remains free for
| individual devs, and I hope you'll continue using us for your
| projects! https://about.sourcegraph.com/code-search/pricing
|
| We have lots to reflect on given the feedback here on HN. We
| were honestly a bit blindsided by the number of people who
| appear to be using open source Sourcegraph, or who really
| wanted to use it but found the process too difficult. Part of
| this is because we had a zero telemetry policy for the open
| source distribution. Perhaps that was a mistake in hindsight,
| but introducing telemetry there would've been another can of
| worms!
|
| Now that the usage is more visible, it's actually kicked off
| a lively internal discussion. We're going to take some time
| to gauge the size of the user community and figure how we can
| best support it. Aside from individual use being free (still
| the case) and making deployment more straightforward (through
| something like code search in App), are there other things we
| can do to make it easier to adopt? Sorry about the confusion
| here, we should have handled this better. But the silver
| lining is we realized there were a lot of users of
| Sourcegraph that we didn't know about and we're now
| discussing how best to engage and support you all. I do hope
| you'll take the chance to pop into our Discord and say hello
| and continue with feedback that can help us make the best
| decisions for our users.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Just wanted to add that some simpler option of buying the
| license would be sweet, it tends to be much easier to get
| signed up for something that doesn't require contract and
| we can just use company credit card. Maybe it could be
| available while offering something akin to previous Free
| Enterprise (without new, cutting edge features) license but
| with higher seat limits? I don't know, just spitballing.
|
| I like paying for things that I use and bring me value, but
| at the moment Sourcegraph is a hard sell due to high cost
| compared to small company size and being based outside of
| Western Europe and US.
| ynx wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'd advocated to adopt SourceGraph at work
| for a long time but the open-source version being impossible to
| deploy essentially blocked us from ever considering it.
|
| I don't doubt that your perception of the OSS version's lack of
| success is accurate, and it is definitely easier to close off
| the source, but at the same time the outcome of this is that
| one funnel into it is closing with the calculation that the
| effort spent to keep that funnel open wasn't worth the people
| coming in through it.
|
| The other possibility, and one that I subscribe to (not that it
| isn't self-serving) is that the funnel was never open enough to
| see success in the first place.
| [deleted]
| isityouyesitsme wrote:
| Their support in the demo period sucked, their complex C++
| support was lacking, they didn't integrate into modern C++ build
| systems well, and their prices were insane.
|
| They kept trying to push this "campaign" feature on us, which is
| an overly-complex auto-refactoring tool that couldn't even
| support our non-proprietary, well-known build system. For the
| cost of their license, we instead hired two developers for code
| refactors, who then went on to make other tooling, and we didn't
| need to hire someone to babysit their crappy service integration.
|
| I would not say that they had found their niche when speaking to
| us. Perhaps it has gotten better.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 2 devs for the price of the license?! How expensive are we
| talking about here?
| chefandy wrote:
| If it's true, I'd love to hear how many devs their marketing
| people say you'd have to hire to replace the functionality.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| It was 100USD per month per seat some time ago, with a high
| number of devs it may actually be beneficial to roll
| something on your own.
| isityouyesitsme wrote:
| We hired 2 junior developers for maybe 20K more total, in
| total compensation, than their original quote.
|
| But you (and child) comment made me realize that I don't
| remember the terms of the proposal, whether it was per year
| or for 2 years. So it might have been a 1:1, not 1:2.
|
| In the end, their product was just completely insufficient
| for our needs, and it was clearly just gluing open source
| tools together. The part we couldn't do as well was the front
| end, and they clearly put a lot of effort into it. It looked
| and worked nicely. But that didn't help us when they couldn't
| parse the code to populate it.
| typesanitizer wrote:
| Based on your use of "campaign" (the older name for Batch
| Changes), it sounds like you were looking into Sourcegraph
| about 2.5 years ago or before that. Lots has changed since
| then.
|
| We recently released a new indexer scip-clang
| (https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/announcing-scip-clang),
| which we've used to successfully index large codebases like
| Chromium. The indexer relies on a JSON compilation database
| (same as our older indexer lsif-clang) which is easy to produce
| from CMake, Bazel, Meson, Make etc.
|
| We've also added support for cross-repo code navigation for C++
| recently. (https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/c-cpp-cross-repo)
| isityouyesitsme wrote:
| Typesanitizer, I just want to note that I'm not downvoting
| you. I found nothing objectionable about your comment.
|
| I'm unsure what the expectation is here. I'm allowed to say
| we had a poor experience, you should be allowed to say how
| you think you're addressing it.
| __float wrote:
| What build system did you use? I thought the JSON compilation
| database is relatively well supported to generate these days
| (e.g. used by the language server in VS Code).
| isityouyesitsme wrote:
| I don't want to go into specifics.
|
| The problems we encountered were that they could not rewrite
| the targets in our build system for the automated
| refactoring, and any missing include path at all would cause
| the clang-based tooling they were using to barf.
|
| We just asked ourselves why we would spend so much money on a
| product when we still had to solve all of the fundamental
| problems ourselves. We liked the UI, but it wasn't worth the
| insane license fee.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| Gosh... Cloud9, Elastic, Sourcegraph, CockroachDB,
|
| what is it with companies making things closed source?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I fundamentally believe that open-source is a model that doesn't
| lend itself to sustainability. We all know that lots of companies
| that can afford to pay for software don't because it's free and
| open-source. I fundamentally believe that the decision to give
| away software results in less revenue and therefore less money
| for developers to work on the product and make it better.
|
| In the ecommerce world there is Magento, Shopware, and Spryker.
| Magento is open-source and massive. Shopware is open-source and
| very good and reliable. And then there is Spryker a closed-source
| platform which is very good from a product point of view. I feel
| if you look at the product development from those three Spryker
| is far ahead of the open-source options.
|
| I think we all like the benefits of grabbing a library/tool and
| using it for free for personal use or when we're starting out and
| can't really afford to pay so want things to be open-source. But
| I really think the future is source-available that mixes the
| ability to use something for free but when they have the money to
| require a commercial license. This is why I choose to go with the
| Business Source License - which allowed for additional grants as
| well as allowing free use for non-production uses. I added in an
| additional grant for if they're generating very little revenue.
| As a small independent developer who is developing a billing
| system it seems fair that people generating revenue start to pay
| for a license. While it allows those who are just starting out to
| use it for free and pay when they start making money. As I grow
| I'll be increasing the amount the additional grant allows. For me
| this seems the best of both worlds. One where those who can't
| afford can use it for free and those who can pay help fund future
| development.
|
| We keep seeing companies going from open-source to a source-
| available approach for a reason.
|
| [1] - https://github.com/billabear/billabear/blob/main/LICENSE
| ikiris wrote:
| Yeah Linux will never last against Novell.
| salawat wrote:
| Speaking of which... I've been looking for an open source
| equivalent of the old NetWare Client.
|
| Anybody know of one? Specifically interested in the "runs
| scripts at login" aspect.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| So you have one. One out of how many hundreds of thousands?
|
| "But Linux" when the talk that open-source doesn't appear to
| be a substainable model is like using Zuckerberg as an
| example as dropping out of college. Lots of people drop out
| of college and never achieve anything. There are always going
| to be rare examples that can achieve something.
|
| And the fact the open source community only appears to have
| one example of how you can build a profitable large business
| off the back of open source - Red Hat. (Who is currently
| closing things down to remove competitor.) Really kind hits
| home that it's a very bare existance for open source
| projects.
| [deleted]
| nullcipher wrote:
| It was open first. Then closed. Then open again. So, now it's
| closed again...
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| That's how you build confidence in your company and executive
| decisions.
|
| Let's see if we get the same amount of upvotes their post got
| when they open sourced the thing.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| smarx007 wrote:
| What is a good open-source system for code search if I want to
| plug 100 or so git repos into it and have it available over the
| web? GH search is not desirable because it would search too
| broadly and would not cover repos on Gitlab etc.
|
| I looked at the Debian code search [1] in the past, but for some
| reason thought it required a bit too much effort and didn't
| complete my investigation of it. Though [2] looks pretty
| approachable.
|
| Sourcegraph mentioned Zoekt [3], but I am not sure how usable it
| is. If it was pretty good, why did Sourcegraph OSS exist?
|
| Finally, from all the discussion how Sourcegraph OSS was very
| behind in the past few years, I guess there is no serious plan to
| fork it?
|
| Edit: GCS release [4] seems to have been open-sourced without a
| frontend.
|
| Edit2: Livegrep [5] and Opengrok [6] were recommended higher in
| the thread. Quite excited to try them out but if someone has
| working Docker Compose configs, I would be very thankful for the
| head start.
|
| Edit3: there is also Eureka [7]. Seems less powerful but easier
| to deploy.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs
|
| [2]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs/blob/main/howto/building.md
|
| [3]: https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt
|
| [4]: https://github.com/google/codesearch
|
| [5]: https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep
|
| [6]: https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/
|
| [7]: https://github.com/Rajeev-K/eureka
| __float wrote:
| [4] is not really a usable 'product'. Livegrep
| (https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep) was inspired by it and
| is very usable.
|
| [3] used to be a Google open source project as well, but it
| fell out of maintenance, and Sourcegraph took it over. It
| powers most of the basic regex/literal search in Sourcegraph.
|
| Mozilla's code is searchable in Searchfox
| (https://searchfox.org/) which uses the indexer from Livegrep,
| combined with their own Git indexer and language-specific cross
| reference databases.
|
| OpenGrok (https://github.com/oracle/opengrok) is also rather
| well known, but I have found it to have a slightly worse UI
| than alternatives.
| breadwinner wrote:
| If a web-based code search engine is what you need here's one:
| https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka/
| josephcsible wrote:
| Yet another concrete example of why copyleft licenses are better
| than pushover ones and why CLAs are bad. It would have been
| illegal for them to do this if the old license were copyleft and
| they accepted contributions without a CLA.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. What do you think would have
| happened if it was GPL instead of Apache? That a person would
| come out of nowhere willing to rewrite all the SourceGraph
| owned code in the repo?
| trasz4 wrote:
| [dead]
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I installed and ran Sourcegraph on my laptop a year or so ago. It
| was cool, but I didn't keep it around.
|
| There is a lot of competing technology now, from GitHub's
| improved search to new open source LangChain and LlamaIndex
| support for better document chunking of source code in several
| languages.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| That's part of the impetus behind their Cody product. It uses
| the code search system as a semantic index. It actually works
| very well in my experience.
| eurekin wrote:
| Whoa, first time I'm reading about Llama Index... How does it
| work? Where can I learn more?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| You can search for LlamaIndex docs, or you can read my short
| book for free online https://leanpub.com/langchain/read
| xer0x wrote:
| Sourcegraph explanation for the change:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu...
| rattray wrote:
| If anyone's looking for an open-source search tool for grepping
| across repos (or even one large repo) at insane speed, I highly
| recommend livegrep:
|
| https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep
|
| Demo at https://livegrep.com/search/linux
|
| We used it at Stripe and it was quite popular; often, searching
| even a single repo was faster on livegrep than with ripgrep
| locally.
|
| A post reviewing it: https://www.alexdebrie.com/posts/faster-
| code-search-livegrep...
|
| A post by its creator, nelhage, on its impact:
| https://blog.nelhage.com/post/reflections-on-performance/ and
| another on its architecture:
| https://blog.nelhage.com/2015/02/regular-expression-search-w...
| synergy20 wrote:
| https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/ is open source and very good
| at huge source base, e.g. for the whole android and linux
| kernel together, fast and useful.
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| too bad it is associated with Oracle
| smarx007 wrote:
| I don't think it's fair. It's a Sun tool that Oracle
| inherited and never made an attempt to monetize.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Any guides on deploying it, preferably with ready-made
| Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml files? I looked into it a
| while ago and all I found was quite outdated.
| synergy20 wrote:
| it took me about one hour in the past to install it, no
| docker though, not really that difficult and I feel it's
| really worthwhile once it starts to run.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I remember having used a Red Hat (?) tool back in 2002 for
| understanding the source code of the Brazilian voting machine so
| we could more easily port it to Windows CE (the 2002 model ran on
| it initially, then on Linux from 2004-ish). It had a very Motif-
| like interface. Does anyone else remember its name?
| mechanicker wrote:
| > I remember having used a Red Hat (?) SourceNav (Source
| Navigator) by any chance?
|
| I used it quite a lot before completely moving to Emacs.
| anotherhue wrote:
| If you find yourself needing to search a large (xGB) codebase you
| should at least try some CLI tools first: fl() {
| # find line rg "$@" . --color=always --line-number
| --no-heading --smart-case | fzf --preview-
| window='top:60%:+{2}+3/2' \
| --preview='bat --style=full --color=always --highlight-line {2}
| {1}' \ --delimiter=':' -n 3.. \
| --bind "enter:execute(vim {1} +{2})" }
|
| Obviously not the same, but I often find it enough. Short demo
| https://imgur.com/a/hsyINjS
| aseipp wrote:
| Not really comparable, honestly. "Gigabytes" has nothing to do
| with it. Sourcegraph can e.g. index multiple repositories
| across multiple languages and link them together at large
| scale. You're doing an extremely easy case where 99% of the
| "meaty parts" are written in a single language (Nix) in a
| single repository (nixpkgs) with a very formulaic structure,
| where the _answer_ you 're looking for is also in that same
| repository. Finding like 90% of things isn't actually hard for
| that reason. I love Nix, I love that, but it is a fraction of
| the cases these tools handle.
|
| The hard case is this simple extension of your example: I found
| the definition of X package in Nixpkgs. Now how do you find all
| the _users_ of X, across, say, 10 other repositories? Or all of
| GitHub? That isn 't theoretical; if you make a backwards-
| incompatible API change to a NixOS module, you might want to
| know that. So suddenly you need a lot more things in place to
| make this work. Now change X so that it's something like an RPC
| interface defined in protobufs, and then change your query to
| "What clients are using this interface and what servers define
| it", and keep in mind these can all be in different languages
| in different repositories. _That_ is not so easy with Ripgrep,
| but tools like Kythe or SourceGraph can handle them with far,
| far greater ease.
|
| Also, for many cases, you actually need language aware search
| and the search engine needs to understand more structure than
| just utf8 bytes to answer you. Ripgrep won't help you find the
| definition of that fucked up thing that was defined by a
| template instantiation that was hidden by a macro in C++ from a
| header that was generated at build time, that you are only
| looking up because it was barfed out from some huge stack trace
| that came from production. SourceGraph can answer that
| instantly with no false positive (assuming you have SCIP
| indexing as part of your build system.)
|
| Yes, ripgrep is nice and I use it when writing nixpkgs patches
| all the time. But something like SourceGraph, Kythe, OpenGrok
| etc are all really a completely different class of tools.
|
| And the "X gigabytes" fact isn't really that impressive when
| you realize all the weight is in the .git/ directory of
| Nixpkgs; ripgrep will instantly filter that out and never even
| search it, so it isn't actually searching a working set of that
| size. The actual pkgs directly is in contrast about 300MB. It
| still _is_ crazy fast though, no doubt.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| Never found a startup on the premise that someone else's product
| will be inadequate forever.
|
| The recent rewrite of github search has probably made sourcegraph
| irrelevant. If you may recall, original github search used almost
| the most horrible algorithm possible. It dropped all punctuation
| and spacing and just searched for identifiers. No patterns
| allowed, no quoting allowed. One of the only meta-arguments was
| filename:xyz.
|
| Now that github has improved its basic search functionality,
| sourcegraph might be doomed.
|
| I used sourcegraph at Lyft which (at the time) had unlimited
| money to waste on software tools, and installed the open-source
| version at Databricks but nobody cared.
| me551ah wrote:
| I don't think GitHub search will replace source graph.
|
| 1. GitHub isn't free, especially for large private
| organisations 2. Source graph has much better search functions
| compared to GitHub
| prepend wrote:
| It's free for open source.
|
| For large private organizations they are paying already so
| more likely to use built in search than buying a new product.
| __float wrote:
| Is there still an "enterprise" niche that doesn't use GitHub's
| cloud version? (Or GitLab, etc.)
|
| My understanding is that GitHub's on premises version doesn't
| have any plans to include the new code search functionality.
| ilyt wrote:
| I still regularly download gh repos just to grep them because
| while less bad it still somehow sucks...
| thunky wrote:
| Me too, but usually after I already have 15 GH tabs open and
| have wasted a bunch of time.
| fortunateregard wrote:
| Yesterday I found out about git-peek
| (https://github.com/Jarred-Sumner/git-peek). Instead of
| describing how satisfying it is to use, here is a GIF:
| https://imgur.com/a/cT8zAha
|
| It uses a temp directory, and deletes it when you close your
| editor.
| ilyt wrote:
| I just clone it to /tmp, that gets removed on restart.
|
| Having it as button in browser seems cool but also horribly
| insecure...
| fortunateregard wrote:
| The button on the browser just navigates to the URL `git-
| peek://https://github.com/name/repo`. How your system
| handles this git-peek protocol is completely up to you.
| While the git-peek package does offer to setup a handler
| for this custom git-peek protocol, I went ahead and set
| it up manually. Now, my system calls this bash script
| whenever it encounters the git-peek protocol:
| #!/usr/bin/env bash # Expects a single argument:
| git-peek://<path> # Example: git-
| peek://https://github.com/Jarred-Sumner/peek kitty
| --single-instance --detach -e zsh -c "source ~/.zshrc;
| git peek $1"
|
| You can set it up to do anything you like.
| progval wrote:
| What happens if you click a link to git-
| peek://$(cat</etc/passwd) ?
| fortunateregard wrote:
| I'm not sure. What?
|
| Is there a reasonably legitimate reason to stop using
| this?
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| I'm curious to know, have you tried their dedicated search
| site? cs.github.com
|
| Their default search still sucks, IMO. But the one I
| mentioned is comparable to Google's internal CS.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Why do that have a good search that's not part of the main
| site?
| ezekg wrote:
| I actually think cs.github.com is now the same as
| github.com/search. It was in beta for awhile but they
| recently started redirecting it.
| el_isma wrote:
| I usually switch the url from github.com/whatever to
| github.dev/whatever
|
| That will load a web version of VS Code, and you can then use
| the search from there.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yeah, even after their rewrite it's essentially worthless.
|
| In some ways it's even worse now, because it seems to only
| build an index of the repository on the first search, when I
| need a result now.
| dimator wrote:
| I use grep.app instead, for open source projects. Many
| projects are indexed.
| ta988 wrote:
| Yep I have a small shell script that caches a repo with only
| the last commit files and runs ripgrep on it. I'll give a go
| at live grep that's discusses above, that look exciting.
| robryan wrote:
| It seems great across an org now. I can quickly answer the
| question of is anyone using something across 1000 repos.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| > The recent rewrite of github search has probably made
| sourcegraph irrelevant.
|
| It only makes it irrelevamt if all your code is hosted on
| Github.
|
| I'm quite tired of Github-proprietary solutions being hailed as
| the "industry norm." Or vendors like shipping products and
| integrations that only work with Github. Git is a decentralized
| protocol; please treat it like one.
| sbussard wrote:
| I strongly agree with this sentiment, whether applied to
| github, AWS, or any other popular platform. The industry
| should avoid single points of failure.
| swyx wrote:
| (typed on Hacker News, on an Apple Mac, probably on Google
| Chrome)
| hgsgm wrote:
| The problem is that "people who don't want to pay to
| outsource things" isn't a lucrative market of providers of
| outsource services..
| [deleted]
| egberts1 wrote:
| Whew.
|
| Got confused with SourceTrail C++ code viewer made by yet another
| Google intern, Eberhard Grather of CoatiSoftware.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211115131149/https://www.sourc...
| sourcegrift wrote:
| They were grifters from the very beginning, squatting
| langserver.org and making it seem like they it was their
| creation, mentioning microsoft exactly once (or was it zero times
| initially?)
| jmclnx wrote:
| I am getting:
|
| > This blob took too long to generate. But you can view the raw
| file.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| It was working when I posted it, if you click view raw file it
| will take you to the changelog.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/commit/3cd931ef54...
| has some additional information, but not a lot.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| One would expect announcement regarding license change to
| precede implementation of said changes :/
| caiusdurling wrote:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu...
| appears to be a comment from someone in the project laying out
| why they've changed.
| [deleted]
| bogwog wrote:
| So it seems like nobody was using the OSS version, and they
| didn't want to maintain two versions if nobody was using it.
|
| It also says they offer a free self hosted version for
| individuals, but I couldn't find that on their site.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I am using the version you can install via `brew install
| sourcegraph`, though they seem to have abandoned it to make
| people install Cody (which requires an account even for local
| use). I will probably use the Brew version for as long as it
| works. The major pain point is that it seems to have a
| timeout for repo discovery at 5s, so you can't just clone all
| of your GH starred repos and search them this way.
|
| P.S. Started a discussion regarding the Homebrew package, but
| pretty sure it's canned:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/discussions/54589
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| First they offered a Free Enterprise tier for 10 seats,
| they've removed this a few months back, their OSS lacked even
| some basic things as language support, building it was
| impossible due to lack of documentation/breakage in the build
| process for several months and they didn't offer sourcegraph-
| oss images.
|
| At some point, one individual on Github managed to get it
| working and his images got 10k+ pulls on DockerHub. That's
| hardly "nobody". Also, some people removed telemetry from OSS
| version so Sourcegraph didn't even know that anyone is using
| it.
|
| Also, they were open-closed-open-closed in the last 5 years.
|
| Their website is a mess, even employees on github are
| providing contradicting information. Original commit message
| that relicensed bunch of stuff had errors in it regarding
| what exactly will be closed source now.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| A few months back they removed free enterprise license that
| allowed 10 dev seats, some smaller companies were holding back
| the updates and looking at the OSS version - I guess, not
| anymore
| rattray wrote:
| Of note, they mention (ordering/emphasis mine):
|
| > We remain committed to Zoekt, the open source code search
| engine, and will continue to upstream changes to it.
|
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt
|
| > The source code will remain publicly available.
|
| > Individual devs will still be able to use Sourcegraph for
| free on public code at sourcegraph.com and within our self-
| hosted free tier on private code.
|
| > Very few individual devs or companies used the limited
| variant of code search that was open source. The vast majority
| (99.9%+) used the enterprise product. Maintaining two variants
| going forward was a big burden on our engineering team that had
| very little benefit for users.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| The title might be a bit misleading. Released code can't not be
| open source anymore, only future development.
| caiusdurling wrote:
| "no longer" suggests it was, but now isn't, which appears to
| match reality?
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Released code can't not be open source anymore...
|
| It can be. You can release under a "source available" license
| barring it from being used (even compiled), derived,
| incorporated into other works, making it basically "for eyes
| only, or we sue you to oblivion".
|
| Many people consider licenses as window decorations, but they
| are not.
| mort96 wrote:
| If the code was under a restrictive source-available license,
| it wasn't open source...
| tkfu wrote:
| Parent poster is saying that the already-released versions,
| which were released under an open source license, are still
| open source.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes you can't retroactively change licenses, but it's also
| important to know that just because you can read a source
| file, the file in question is bona-fide open source or free
| software.
|
| Many people lack this knowledge from my experience.
| bandrami wrote:
| We had a Windows CE dev license back in the Cambrian Era
| which included visibility of the source tree, but God
| help you if you tried to change it and make your own
| build.
| ghaff wrote:
| Solely being able to view source code without other
| rights absolutely doesn't make it open source. In general
| if something isn't under an open source license it isn't.
|
| ADDED Unless it's public domain and then it effectively
| is.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Further distribution can be put under any license they want
| but any copy anyone received in the past that was Apache 2
| licensed remains such and can be used as before.
|
| So if anyone wants to put a past release online they are free
| to do so (unless there are parts of the code that were
| restricted before).
|
| It would be prudent to remove branding where possible but
| that's mainly a precaution.
| bjord wrote:
| I think most people don't consider viewable source projects
| to be truly open source
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well licenses are window decorations when it comes to
| personal use.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Well, no.
|
| Personal use doesn't free you the obligations GPL brings,
| for example.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming you or a company doesn't redistribute it,
| copyleft doesn't matter.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > doesn't redistribute it
|
| Well sure, but that's a really big caveat.
| ghaff wrote:
| I would assume personal use doesn't involve
| redistribution. Probably true for most company software
| for internal use as well.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Does this vary by jurisdiction maybe?
| ilyt wrote:
| nope. If something in jurisdiction would make license
| invalid that would not mean you can do what you want with
| the code, that would mean that you can't use that
| license.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I think most understand the idea that a project can change its
| license at any point, but that doesn't apply to previous
| version. (In this case, any version prior to 5.1.0)
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Fun Fact: Steve Yegge, famous blogger, is Head of Engineering
| there (or at least was recently)
|
| https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-steve-yegge
| swyx wrote:
| still vocally is! https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/all-you-
| need-is-cody
| zomglings wrote:
| I've never in general been a fan of "open core" products.
|
| As someone who builds things, it feels like poor craftsmanship to
| put obstacles in front of your users and limit the extent to
| which they can use your work.
|
| It also feels like decisions to hamper how people use a product
| are driven purely by greed.
|
| Let's imagine a world in which Sourcegraph were completely free
| software. They would probably still have enterprise customers pay
| them to securely host Sourcegraph on-premise. They wouldn't be
| able to charge per seat. They would have to make sure their
| product was cheap enough that their customers wouldn't save a ton
| of $$ by hiring engineers to maintain Sourcegraph on premise
| themselves.
|
| I am curious if they (or anyone else running an open core
| business) has estimates for:
|
| 1. How many customers they would lose if they went fully free.
|
| 2. How much revenue they would lose if they went fully free.
|
| Building free software and charging people to host it can be the
| foundation for a sustainable business, but it's unlikely to give
| VCs the kind of outcomes they want from a successful investment.
|
| To be honest, I think it's fine for infrastructure to be
| closed/proprietary. There are good reasons to do this if you are
| writing programs for which security is important - releasing your
| infrastructure code freely gives attackers a lot of ammunition to
| work with.
|
| If we believe in the power of automation and in building high
| quality software, it is possible to build free software that:
|
| 1. Is easy for you to deploy and maintain securely on customer
| infrastructure.
|
| 2. Requires very little operational overhead from its you as the
| host (in terms of support).
|
| 3. For which the infrastructure code is proprietary.
|
| This can lead to a very solid business.
|
| Why don't we see more businesses like this?
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| License was changed almost 3 weeks ago, 5.1.0 release blog post
| skips this information. There's still no official announcement.
|
| It seems like the author of Sourcegraph OSS containers announced
| that his release train is now dead
|
| https://github.com/jensim/sourcegraph-release-train/
| asdf4life wrote:
| WizardCoder is free
| smarx007 wrote:
| It's not a code search tool. This discussion is not about Cody
| but the Sourcegraph search.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Their product basically got sherlocked by Microsoft when they
| released Github Copilot, no?
| imjonse wrote:
| Sourcegraph has recently released Cody which is the more direct
| competitor to Copilot. And it's free for individual developers.
| itake wrote:
| I think Cody is based on OpenAI tech. They haven't built
| their own model yet (as of 8 weeks ago)
| ar-jan wrote:
| They're using Anthropic by default, but it's possible to
| connect it to the OpenAI API as well.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Their main product is Code Search, Cody is a new thing.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Code Search seems a limited market so I would be surprised if
| their plan wasn't to go after deeper code tooling in the
| future. Otherwise I don't see how their $2.6 billion
| valuation made sense. They likely thought that an iterative
| approach based on human encoded code understanding would
| allow them to build better systems. Pretty reasonable
| assumption 1+ years ago. Then GPT3/4 proved that you could
| just dump data into an AI and probably get an even better
| result.
| smarx007 wrote:
| But that makes no sense. If AI is the future, you'd leave
| Code Search open-source and make the AI assistant closed-
| source.
| [deleted]
| deng wrote:
| Did anyone actually use the open version? I dimly remember that I
| looked into it like 2-3 years ago, but all the really interesting
| stuff was not included in that. The pricing for enterprise was
| absolutely bonkers, something like 100$ per month&developer,
| which already made it clear that they are obviously only
| targeting big players with infinite budget. Seems the pricing is
| now changed, and it "starts at 5k/year" for some "Enterprise
| Starter" edition, but despite lots of bullet points it is very
| unclear to me what the limitations really are. I'm actually
| really interested in this product and it might be a good addition
| to our tool set, it's a shame the pricing is so opaque.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| OSS version didn't have official Docker images prebuilt, you
| had to build them yourself and for a long time the OSS build
| was broken. A year or two ago they promised they'll fix it or
| even provide official OSS image, this didn't happen.
|
| One person finally created a working release train on github
| and was releasing OSS containers, Docker Hub reports it as 10k+
| pulls, which is a lot for unofficial image.
|
| I tend to stay away from any 3rd party tool that's not really a
| main part of infrastructure and requires sales contacts. It's
| wasting my company time to deal with sales when it comes to a
| few licenses, just give me a number input and buy button. I
| also lost some confidence regarding Sourcegraph, as it seems
| they change their direction, pricing and rules multiple times
| per year
| deng wrote:
| Yes, I remember the Docker thing, but I also remember that at
| least the language parsers we were interested in were only
| supported through some kind of plugin mechanism, which the
| OSS version did not support, so it was useless for us, so I
| didn't ever bother testing it.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| So basically their "open source" offering wasn't really
| open source, it wasn't even open core, as you had to build
| it yourself, the build wasn't working for a long time and
| even if you managed that, some languages were enterprise-
| only.
|
| Nice. How to get free marketing by strapping Open Source to
| your product and writing a bunch of announcements.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've had a few consulting calls with companies where they
| (or their VCs) want to call their software open source
| but have no interest in community development and want to
| block competitors from taking any advantage of it.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| I remember looking for Sourcegraph submissions on HN,
| their CEO's (sqs) first submission to HN was titled
| "Which Open Source License Should Your Project Use If You
| Want to Raise VC$?"
| indus wrote:
| QED.
| [deleted]
| svengrunner2049 wrote:
| It is a good product, so we're tying to put our org in a
| position to pay for it. But I really don't like this model of
| intentionally frustrating or obfuscating whether it is open
| source or not, or not listing/hiding what is or isn't in
| enterprise vs OSS versions. For example, the fact that
| starting off open source (assuming you succeeded running the
| maze of figuring out how to run it), explicitly blocked the
| path to goto enterprise is a shame, and seems like a bit of a
| missed business opportunity.
|
| We'll probably see more of these faux OSS projects who hoped
| for some community/network effect from being OSS to translate
| into either strong donations or considerable uptake of their
| enterprise/cloud/managed versions go this route.
|
| To be clear, fully support charging for and paying for SaaS.
| Would just like be able to know what is in front of me when
| making build/buy decisions.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| I've tried finding out if they still offer the free tier
| now that the OSS is gone, because one of their employees
| mentioned it on Github, but failed to find anything. I can
| see they have a free trial. Their own website is full of
| broken links and contradicting information due to the
| frequent licensing/product changes.
|
| I've even found a page still mentioning the OSS version and
| telling you how easy it is to fire it up.
| linuxdude314 wrote:
| They shot themselves in the foot majorly on this one.
|
| When you realize that one of your products isn't being
| heavily used and is OSS, you don't close source it, you
| keep it open!
|
| This shows that the value add of the paid product is
| actually worth it to customers.
|
| Now?
|
| Not so much.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Oooooops. That sounds like New Relic's $400/month per full
| user...
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Or Gitlab pricing.
|
| Why are companies isolating themselves from smaller clients?
| Macha wrote:
| Because they figure there's a bigger opportunity cost in
| the possibility of the big clients using cheaper tiers than
| in the possible lost customers who won't go for tiers at
| the current prices if an alternative is available.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| You could always add seat limits at lower tiers, truth is
| that almost no company in my region is paying for Gitlab,
| but there are plenty that are paying for GitHub. There's
| also the problem with big customers, you can see it in
| Gitlab's case, namely they demand a lot of stuff and they
| have the leverage. I worked at a company like this, we
| couldn't stop focusing on niche custom dev for Mr Big
| Buck while our core offering was neglected and we
| stagnated.
|
| It's really healthy for a company to have a whole
| spectrum of clients, from people that chip in 2-4$ per
| month for a minor bump in capabilities and without any
| support included to big companies that push for exploring
| new features.
|
| In my opinion, Gitlab is a primary example of feature-
| creep and it will be the demise of the company.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >In my opinion, Gitlab is a primary example of feature-
| creep and it will be the demise of the company.
|
| Gitlab was VC funded which means it had little choice but
| to take on a high risk/high reward approach. It worked
| fairly well since it IPOed at $12b while it's last round
| of funding was at under $3b. Good return for VCs. Of
| course the stock is down over 50% since IPO but that's
| someone else's problem.
| sofixa wrote:
| The marginal cost per customer is not _that_ different if
| it 's a small customer or a massive one, so it's much
| interesting for you to go after the big ones that will
| generate much more revenue. You miss out on revenue from
| smaller customers, but your margins are higher (and it's
| totally possible that the revenue from smaller customers
| isn't financially directly worth it, if the support costs
| around them are too much).
|
| Of course that skips the bigger picture like more people
| knowing and using your products and being happy with them
| leads to more champions for them doing your sales and
| marketing work for you, which can create lots of revenue in
| the long term; but it's pretty much impossible to quantify.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I installed the opensource version for fun at work, and synced
| about 750 repositories. I applied some patches to support
| OAuth2 proxy and removed the telemetry. It's great software,
| very fast and it works as intended.
|
| A few months later and 70 registered users, I have a total of 3
| users who used it a few times.
| hgsgm wrote:
| What do people use?
|
| My company lives in code search. Most bug fixes and small
| enhancements start by investigating code search, and clicking
| a link from code search to start editing the file.
| speedgoose wrote:
| They don't use anything for internal codebases.
|
| However it's not that bad because we work mostly on short
| lived research projects and it's not that much to reuse.
| Public code search and ChatGPT are used much frequently.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Maybe you could create some short demo for people?
|
| I've done a demo and created documentation, 80% of the
| developers at $MY_COMPANY used Sourcegraph Code Search at
| least a few times in the past month, some of them are doing a
| dozen searches per day.
| Max-q wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to say that you need "infinite budget"
| to pay $100 per month? I pay more for several products and have
| a quite limited budget. But tools making me more productive or
| help my business is definitely worth to pay for.
| aflag wrote:
| Does it make you and all your peers $100 more productive
| each? Sounds a bit of stretch to me for code search. I don't
| even think I need to do a code search that
| bitbucket/GitHub/gitlab search aren't able to provide me
| every month. To be honest, I don't even think I'd be less
| productive even without those. Although they are helpful when
| discussing code that you don't have in your ide at the moment
| with other people.
| deng wrote:
| For which products do you pay more than 100$ in license cost
| per month and developer? I only know prices like these for
| fairly specific niches, like development environments for
| very specific hardware/FPGA, or sophisticated physics
| simulation software. But this is a code search&navigation
| tool - a nice one, I'll admit, but still. That's 4x the price
| for GitLab Premium. Almost 2x of the whole Adobe Creative
| Suite.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| 100 USD per developer per month is 1/2 of our whole
| infrastructure cost at my company. You could get GitHub
| enterprise seats for 1/4 of that. Dealing with sales,
| contracts and licenses also has some non-zero opportunity
| costs.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| There's life outside the United States, and $100/month is a
| decent chunk of a junior's salary in many parts of that. Two
| places I worked at migrated off Microsoft products to FOSS
| solutions for that reason alone (I was fortunate enough to
| initiate and complete this process for one of them) --
| something that has zero business sense according to most HN
| commenters.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| It also looks like they're now pivoting hard into AI bullshit,
| and barely want to acknowledge that the reading product even
| exists? Absolutely bizarre.
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| But it will be open source this time, pinky swear
| moneywoes wrote:
| What's the use case? Finding useful libraries?
| CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote:
| Global code search across hundreds of repos even if they are
| hosted at different SCMs
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| If they've accepted contributions from third parties they can't
| relicense those contributions, right?
| kbumsik wrote:
| Not really, they have received CLAs so not legally:
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/pulls
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| As a general rule with open source projects it basically
| depends on whether they had a contributor licence agreement.
|
| Sourcegraph appear to have had one:
|
| https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/blob/main/CONTRIB...
|
| https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/-...
|
| It includes a grant of copyright licence so I guess this is
| nailed down.
| j1elo wrote:
| And that's why I believe that requesting a mandatory CLA
| should drive contributions down in OSS projects. Otherwise,
| you're basically providing free labor without the
| counterpart's promise of keeping the code free, which is
| (should?) be the reason one is making their contributions to
| start with.
| dolmen wrote:
| Except that external contributions to a full product are
| usually minuscule (mostly typos) compared the codebase.
| sdesol wrote:
| I also don't believe they receive many non-employee
| contributions (probably because the software is more advanced
| than most open source projects). You can get a breakdown of
| their contributions at:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/UCJ6y9r
|
| The interesting one is he second image which filters by code
| contributors that have contributed more than 500 lines of
| code churn.
|
| Note, I'm not taking into consideration if code contributions
| were merged or not, just that somebody created a pull
| request/commit.
| [deleted]
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