I’m actually interested in your product, but the total lack of pricing information or samples without giving you my email is a big turnoff. Dark patterns + AI generated makes me assume that you are far more interested in sales than in your product, and it’s a product for my kid, so.. hard pass.
There is another comment that answers "why" I assume dang doesn't have the time to answer all of these individually. But tl;dr it's in the guidelines for posting on the site why this happened.
> For works still under copyright, Google scanned and entered the whole work into their searchable database, but only provided "snippet views" of the scanned pages in search results to users.
i really wanted to use DSPy to generate prompts, but it wasn't quite as compatible with my workflow as i wanted. I love the idea tho - code instead of strings.
I loved my pebble and pebble time, but they really lost my trust with the “Pebble Time 2” kickstarter - it really felt like the kickstarter was just a ploy to enable their sale to Fitbit. Now they are hoping for some free dev work so that they can do it again? Pass.
Edit: Want community trust? Give some guarantee (eg open hardware) that you’re not going to just kill the hardware (again) for another big buyout. I would be more excited about new pebble hardware that did NOT involve the original founder/team.
But it seems like this move incentivizes you to not improve the open source server, at least such that the open source server is always inferior to the pro version.
If someone makes a new, more performant, open-source server, and it touches your bottom line then you're strongly motivated to "embrace, extend, extinguish".
The thing is, we've all heard this before, and it always ends up the same. I hope you prove me wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.
> But it seems like this move incentivizes you to not improve the open source server, at least such that the open source server is always inferior to the pro version.
The idea is that we absolutely improve FOSS synapse in all ways - other than supporting enormous deployments. For instance we continue to land perf improvements to FOSS synapse and make average sized servers as snappy as conceivably possible. And all features land in FOSS synapse, etc. If we don’t it would harm the public Matrix network and we obviously don’t want that.
> If someone makes a new, more performant, open-source server, and it touches your bottom line then you're strongly motivated to "embrace, extend, extinguish".
Rather than EEE, I’d expect us to simply compete with that server - adding more features, better perf, better commercial support, etc. For Matrix’s sake, I hope that we end up in that situation tbh.
> The thing is, we've all heard this before, and it always ends up the same. I hope you prove me wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.
I think the difference is that typically folks doing this are being greedy to grow a profitable (or could-be-profitable) company as aggressively as possible. Whereas here the motive is simply to pay for our FOSS dev and get to breakeven and be able to sustainably grow Matrix for the benefit of the whole network. If in the end a bit of proprietary software is the necessary evil to get there, sobeit.
Of course this could change in future, eg if mgt changed, but that’s true of anything. But the intention is categorically not to EEE (and on the Matrix Foundation side, the governance and spec process is set up to stop Element from being able to EEE even if it wanted to).
I just took a look at your project - you really need to simplify the README. I read the whole thing but it’s still not clear to me what you app actually does.
I have no idea what a “Social Operating System” is supposed to be. Seems like it’s a web/mobile app framework, but it’s completely unclear why I would want to use it. You need an “elevator pitch”.
There are hundreds of frameworks, if you want developers to use yours, maybe show some example code? No one is going to spend a bunch of effort trying to build with your framework if they can’t see an advantage.
Not trying to be a hater, I care and want you to succeed
Edit: just read some of the links in the readme - so it also has something to do with crypto and micropayments? Why would I want to use your “QBUX”? Would a developer only be able to get paid in your crypto? If so, why should they trust that you won’t rugpull? If you want people to care about your project, you need to think about what they care about (pro tip: nobody cares about making you rich via support contracts or shitcoin schemes. Sorry.)
I am not sure what you read that said any of the things you asserted in the "Edit" section. None of that is true. The token doesn't even exist yet. There is no "rugpull" possible in any event.
But I think this illustrates perfectly what I said originally. Context matters. The context on HN is "I see a word that triggers me (token / web3) somewhere and I immediately assume all these things I haven't seen or read, and forget about anything you actually did."
That's why it is very important how you present things. The original Facebook was just a bunch of profiles in php. And yet people used it like mad and investors camped out Zuck's dorm room. It's not so much about what you build but how you present it.
You are focusing on technical details too much, I don't think any of the initial Facebook users cared if it was php or not, they cared about what they saw on the screen.
While presentation definitely matters, the product itself has to be actually interesting (especially on HN). For example, current HN's top post is about Anthropic - and I don't even know what their stack looks like!
On the other side, if the product's is Yet Another PHP Framework then your target audience is (1) PHP developers who are (2) unsatisfied with existing frameworks they know and (3) willing to spend hours to try the unknown thing. This is a pretty narrow category.
I'm not triggered by crypto/web3 - I think there are a lot of good use-cases. I'm trying to explain to you that the README and website introducing your product/framework/platform (whichever it is, I'm still not sure):
1) Doesn't explain to the target market (developers) why they should use your product
2) Throws up a bunch of red flags to developers who actually bother to read it all, namely that your business model seems to be either/both of selling devleoper support (is that why there aren't any good developer docs?), or locking developers into a token with no published tokenomics or even a contract address (as you noted, the token doesn't exist!). Anyone with any experience in crypto knows that there is risk adopting an ERC20 token, you *need* to address the risk points (eg the potential for rugpull, available liquidity) if you want anyone to take you seriously.
My point is, this is why you are getting no traction from developers. People aren't ignoring your completely free awesome code because of apathy, it's because you're not doing a good job showing them any benefits to using your product. Your marketing needs work.
Also, you should really consider if you actually have a product that fits your market. It sucks to spend a lot of time developing a product that the market doesn't want, but you might be in that position. If so, no amount of marketing will help you.
Ironically, I went to the effort to parse through all your docs because I wanted to help you understand why your Show HN failed, but now I kind of feel like I wasted my time, making it harder for me to care in the same way for the next person in a similar position.
Anyhow, take the critique or not -- I wish you luck either way!
