Open Source made me the man I am (opens in new tab)

>Does a few weekend projects on GitHub and blogging about it really count as "developing open source software"?

Yes.

Any time you slap a open source license on some code and make it public you're doing open source. So yes.

imho if people are using your project you did good! and a lot of ppl are using iScroll.

I think it does, yes.

Log aggregation and analytics is a hot space at the moment and in all fairness I think that you are being taken advantage of. I've read the messages and you are under no obligation to provide free support for source code and you shouldn't be bullied into doing so. In my eyes you have gone far enough in providing the source and binaries.

I think your biggest problem isn't your licensing but the documentation and the site itself. Since I work in the same space for a commercial product similar to Splunk, I'd like to offer a few comments.

1. It needs to be clear what the difference is between the enterprise and the open source version. Features and support must be clear with the enterprise version.

2. The message has to be clear for the target audience. Your product is very developer focused, but you have many support use cases. Focus on making it easy for non technical (non dev) people to get started monitoring the most popular pieces of infrastructure. A few getting started or how to guides for popular web servers and databases is a good start.

3. You may also need to cripple the functionality of your product (for the free version). Perhaps cripple it based on scale. The number of agents that can be deployed in an env can be restricted. Don't do what splunk do a disable based on data volume.

4. There are no images on your site. I can't visualize how I would instrument my infrastructure for log collection. This is vital.

I haven't used nxlog but this was my first impression. I hope the comments help in some way.

Chris Main wrote to you:

   However, if you do choose to release your software under GPL or LGPL you also
   place yourself under an obligation to provide build instructions. This is not
   what I say, it is what the GPL/LGPL themselves say.

This is wrong. Section 4 of the compliance guide, from which Mr. Main proceeds to quote, is directed towards those distributing GPL software written by other people. The GPL does not place any such constraints on the author(s). If you want to distribute Windows binaries, and don't want to bother explaining how to build nxlog on Windows, you are completely within your rights. If Mr. Main cannot figure out how to build it on Windows, he is simply unable to distribute a modified version that runs on Windows (since the GPL would require him to explain how he did so), and you are not obliged to lift a finger about that.

While reading the emails, I do want to correct one thing.

The author to a copyrighted work are not obligated by the choice of license. GPL and other copyright licenses give people other than the copyright holder a licence to do things that they don't have under regular copyright law. The copyright holder however has full rights regardless of license.

The only exception is false advertisement laws, but those are quite narrow in definition, and might not matter much for non-paying customers. A paying customer would have a case however.

My advice would be to setup a paid support arm ASAP, and tell the person complaining they have two options:

1) Log a bug against the windows build process, and you'll look at it when it reaches the top of your priority list, or

2) Engage you for paid support to investigate the issue.

You are under no obligation to make your softwear buildable on any platform. If he chooses to disagree,he can refuse your license, delete your software and move on.

That's the pressure of a start up rather than the specifics of the project though isn't it?

Going it alone and giving up the security of a steady pay check is going to be hard whether you're setting up a software company or a sandwich shop.

I suspect for every entrepreneur blogging about how being self employed has given them a great work life balance, I suspect there are 20 in the same position as you. It could be that you're not suited to the life but, more likely I suspect, it's just part and parcel of the early stages of setting out on your own.

You'd be better off but not the better man. The better man endures the pain of doing the right thing.

Reminds me of the time I used to contribute to the enlightenment project. e17 was still not released, and very rough around the edges, I had commit access, so I wrote a theme selector app and put it in the repo, it eventually got picked up and included with the default installation of e17. Was the best feeling at the time to have something you wrote used by people all around the world.

Of course the project then moved on and my code was replaced.

open source ftw =)

Link to your stripe testing gem?

I'm the author of the original article. I actually haven't posted it on HN and it was a pleasant surprise.

I believe the best way to "promote" yourself is by being active in your community. Connect with other developers, discuss on forums, groups, g+, etc...

Just logging in to push your open source project is pretty useless and quite lame. You have to be believable and you need to gain the trust of your community first. It's a long process but it pays back.

How do you track your number of downloads on Github?

Personally I can't see a path forward for me from high school till now without open source.

I own a home, stock, work a great job, have gotten to travel the world, and do exactly what I want to do for a job. Purely as a result of having the tools and instructional material I needed available libre on the internet.

I can't help but think that without that kind of alternative, dropping out of college would have sunk me for life - I'd probably still be working odd jobs in my hometown and living with my parents, no career, no future, depressed. I could even imagine an alternate present where I had enlisted in the military and gotten deployed.

>OSS probably made me a humbler developer, too. I know what it means patching even small portions of code and I’m less harsh when posting bugs on others’ repositories.

That's definitely going to spill over into his day-to-day life, looking at my own experience. And such behavior does make you a better person.

if you don't mind what is your project? just curious

thanks for the heads-up. My standard hourly rate is public (you can find it in the "hire me" section too), long term hires are then discussed on a per project basis. I actually didn't disclose how much they spent :)

Not "silly" per se, but I think that concern is overblown. I write bad code and release all of it that I can, because we don't get better in a vacuum. Also, what's terrible code to you is likely highly useful to somebody else.

Start with documentation. And learn how to read other people's code.