[HN Gopher] Show HN: I just made my profitable online form build...
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Show HN: I just made my profitable online form builder open-sourced
Author : dearroy
Score : 172 points
Date : 2024-04-01 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| not_your_vase wrote:
| What's your rationale behind this step?
| dearroy wrote:
| It's to tap into global collaboration for faster innovation,
| and ensure transparency and trust.
|
| Thanks for bringing up the good question!
| gus_massa wrote:
| Do you have another source of income? If someone just use it
| without giving you money or code contributions, would you
| feel ok?
| MichaelMug wrote:
| Would this be a clever way of shrinking the market? Any
| competitors will now automatically need to have a value
| proposition greater than this free software.
| atonse wrote:
| I'm not OP but the software is GPL3, so it would disqualify a
| lot of risk-averse customers from hosting it.
| quantumwoke wrote:
| Can anyone confirm if the legal advice here
| https://docs.heyform.net/license is correct? Seems slightly
| different to my own interpretation of the spirit of GPL.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| They would need to use the AGPL if they want folks that self-
| host to release their changes.
| bachmeier wrote:
| There's nothing problematic about this, except that it's GPL
| plus conditions. AFAICT, only the second condition would be in
| addition to the GPL, but I didn't spend much time thinking
| about it.
| thih9 wrote:
| > it's GPL plus conditions
|
| Not in a uniform way - the license distributed with the code
| on github doesn't have the extra conditions.
|
| At this point I'd nuke the repo and force push with AGPL
| license instead, that seems a better fit.
| jahewson wrote:
| GPL does not permit additional conditions, it actually states
| that additional conditions may be removed by the licensee.
|
| In this case, I don't see the actual license containing
| additional conditions, simply that the FAQ guidance on the
| page is misleading.
| renewiltord wrote:
| But it needs attribution and he can say what attribution is
| valid, no? IANAL so can't say for sure but does GPLv3 have
| same issue as early CC? https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-
| in-early-creative-commons-...
| jahewson wrote:
| Yes and no. While the author can specify an attribution
| notice, the GPL limits it to being relayed amongst
| "appropriate legal notices" - these typically appear in
| an EULA or About screen. Otherwise an "inappropriate"
| attribution requirement could be misused to prevent
| modification of certain parts of the work.
|
| As for the issue with CC, GPLv3 gives a 30 day grace
| period for rectifying violations which obviates many
| potential troll issues.
| sfink wrote:
| Yeah, it looks wrong to me too. It claims to be GPLv3 and the
| "use cases" explainer looks like it's trying to clarify what
| GPLv3 means, but the requirements described under the use cases
| are not part of GPLv3.
|
| The 1st one is fine. The 2nd one says you would need to open
| source your modifications, but that would only be true if you
| also distributed your version rather than just using it on the
| server side. The 3rd adds three conditions. The first and third
| are again only true if you are redistributing the software. The
| second is an attribution clause that is not part of GPLv3, and
| the page to me definitely reads like it's explaining the
| license but not actually a license itself. GPLv3 does allow
| adding in similar conditions, but probably not those: I'm not
| sure requiring a link to the original project is ok.
|
| AGPLv3 would be a much closer match to what the author appears
| to intend. It allows adding the attribution requirements that
| the author wants; see
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html section 7: "You
| may...supplement the terms...: (b) Requiring preservation
| of...author attribution..."
|
| (IANAL, and every time I claim anything about licenses I get at
| least one detail wrong.)
| snapcaster wrote:
| How did you think about the tradeoffs between closed-source
| profitable vs. open sourcing it? What do you see as your criteria
| for success on this move?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| do you consider this a marketing move?
| hk__2 wrote:
| Of course; how else could they have been on the HN frontpage?
| (I'm not saying this negatively)
| bberenberg wrote:
| Considering that this is SaaS, are you sure GPL is sufficient
| here? Did you consider AGPL?
| thih9 wrote:
| Congrats on open sourcing your project!
|
| I see that it relies on mongodb, at a first glance this seems a
| good fit for a forms oriented product - looks like using a
| document db for actually dealing with documents. How did it work
| out for you? Would you choose it again?
| izwasm wrote:
| I really like that you are using nestjs, idk why some devs hate
| it, IMHO its the best node framework that can be used to build
| production ready apps, i started using it a month ago at work and
| it was my first time using it, and it already made so productive
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| NestJS is nodeJS for Java people. It's like Angular in that
| sense.
|
| So some people will feel like it's over engineered.
|
| I mean it's overengineered. Why do I have to register all these
| things, and why does it keep crashing if I register it like
| this without any understandable error message. It has a little
| bit of an OCD relationship with dependency injection. Where the
| normal import system can handle most of those cases.
|
| But few nice things, resolvers, auto-generate swaggers. And
| TypeORM is lovely.
|
| But yeah it's a bit too demanding. I'm okay with an opiniated
| framework if it gives a lot of features out of the box (like
| laravel or NextJs), but NestJS tells me how to do things
| without giving me enough in return. (auth, sockets etc are
| still quite a lot of work)
| pjerem wrote:
| nestjs is nice if you're coming from Angular. It's basically
| Angular for the backend.
|
| But like Angular, there is a very wide range of use cases where
| it is totally overkill and like Angular, companies are throwing
| it at each and every project.
|
| I don't find it bad but it's in a strange spot being more
| bloated than other JS frameworks while still being way less
| "batteries included" than more classical corporate frameworks.
|
| Like Angular, I don't hate it though it's just that I still
| haven't figured out a project where it's better suited than
| something else.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I recently migrated my API from lambda functions do a
| dockerized Node API and I evaluated NestJS, though ended up
| using Fastify. Like others have mentioned, it's great for devs
| that come from Angular or Java but for me I didn't like that it
| used decorators all over the place and preferred to have
| something more "Express like"
| calmoo wrote:
| Best makes JavaScript look like Java, it's needlessly complex
| and just encourages vast amounts of boilerplate. Awful stuff.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| This is precisely my experience. Classes are painful to deal
| with. Decorators are not only unergonomic, they also throw
| away any type safety. Also Nest shoves class transformer and
| class validator down your throat, which are also a pian in
| the ass.
|
| My go-to right now is itty router with zod.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Same experience here. Admittedly it's been a few years since
| I last used it, but there was so much boilerplate coupled
| with a layer of "magic" that was too thick for my liking.
|
| Provider initialization (dependency injection) failed on me
| on a few occasions and it always wasted hours of
| productivity. It would break in some obscure way that
| wouldn't log any errors to the console, so there was nothing
| to go on besides attaching a debugger and stepping through
| layers of framework code. It was quite infuriating because it
| always happened when I was in the middle of something else.
|
| If your specific use case wasn't covered by their docs (which
| were very barebones and "hello-world" oriented at the time),
| it was painful to figure out and use.
| aswerty wrote:
| I'm literally in the middle of spending my evening, outside of
| work, gutting NestJS from a project I've inherited at work. I
| would literally consider changing jobs if I couldn't remove it.
|
| There is so much to unpack to get as why I have such an issue
| with it. But time and again I have been frustrated with it in
| terms of: it's design philosophy, implementation, scope of what
| it covers, bloat, recommended implementation approaches, etc.
|
| I don't understand how a single framework can think that it
| should cover: message/request handling, logging, config
| management, dependency inversion, persistence, and IO. These
| things have almost no cross over (i.e. if they are well
| designed they should be easily composable with any other
| component) but time and again framework developers attempt to
| bundle them into a "one size fits all solution".
|
| To best sum it up. I think any package I use should be
| secondary to my application. But this package makes it so that
| my application is secondary to the framework.
| jraph wrote:
| I'm secretly and slowly building a form building application. The
| idea is that in my association we don't want to rely on Google
| Forms. And we only want to use open source software. We are using
| FramaForms which is a bit clunky and doesn't have this feature
| that updates a spreadsheet automatically. I thought that I could
| just create something that would answer both concerns.
|
| But a good open source forms app would probably change
| everything, I would gladly stop my small project (in favor of
| contributing to an existing one for instance). I see there is
| integration with a lot of products, including Google Drive and
| Google Sheet.
|
| Would an integration with Nextcloud be considered?
|
| Congratulations on open sourcing this, we need open source and
| self hosted form solutions. Critically private data is put in
| forms and that get sent to big private companies like Google,
| which is not ideal.
|
| As other commenters say, you might want to use AGPL indeed, but I
| guess you carefully thought this decision.
| blowski wrote:
| > But a good open source forms app would probably change
| everything
|
| Can you go into that a bit more, I'm interested what you would
| see changing. Why do you think it hasn't been done already?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Grist has the ability to create forms that are automatically
| connected to their spreadsheets [1]. Though it doesn't seem
| like you can create sophisticated forms (with some logic in
| them for example) just yet.
|
| I am thinking of moving my volunteer org away from Google forms
| towards Grist.
|
| [1] https://support.getgrist.com/widget-form/
| flavaz wrote:
| Limesurvey is "good enough" for most applications and is open
| source- any reason why that wouldn't work for your use case?
| tamimio wrote:
| Your website doesn't open, it seems it's flagged in one of the
| DNS popular blacklists
| zzzzzzzzzz10 wrote:
| Works fine for me. Did you add these blacklists yourself or is
| it from your ISP?
| mderazon wrote:
| For me too, using NextDNS
| la64710 wrote:
| What is the reason for "open sourcing" this , when any meaningful
| implementation is locked away behind services and is closed
| source. I just think these kind of use cases confuses users.
| There is no problem in being closed source and proprietary
| (unless you are using preexisting open source code and open
| sourcing those parts of your code makes it legally compliant) .
| In any case it is confusing at best and misleading at the worst.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Free advertising on Haker News. 10 bucks net profit without any
| grows is also profitable. Getting to the main page of HN was
| worth open sourcing what had no potential anyway.
|
| This is my reasoning, I'm not the creator of this.
| sfink wrote:
| I've often wanted a simple online form solution for random
| purposes, yet I have never quite gotten around to learning Google
| Forms. My kids use it for school stuff. They're reasonably
| capable with it and have gotten good mileage from it. I guess at
| some level it's hard for me to get into something that often
| requires flexibility, yet can't be modified beyond rigidly
| prescribed boundaries.
|
| I would totally rather learn something like this that I can hack
| on. And when other people ask me how to do something for a Real
| reason, I would not hesitate to recommend the hosted version if
| it can do what they want. (No, I don't want to be on the hook for
| maintaining a self-hosted version of something that will be
| depended on for wide public consumption. I'm done with pager
| duty.)
|
| The creators' hearts seem to be in the right place, so I'm less
| subliminally worried that they'll enshittify it in some way that
| bothers me. And if they do, the license gives me a way to proceed
| without starting with something new from scratch.
| jmholla wrote:
| Google Forms is very simple to learn. There's not much to it.
| You just dive in and you're good to go.
| V__ wrote:
| This looks really nice. I assume you have looked at the
| alternatives and created heyform with a special feature or use
| case in mind? If so, could you summarize the differences between
| heyform and for example: getinput.co, quillforms.com or
| snoopforms.com?
| circusfly wrote:
| AI thanks you for your efforts.
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