Conflict of interest re:complexity?

[steveklabnik]

I don't read HN, but since I saw so many tweets about Tent, I went and checked out the thread. How do you plan on resolving this conflict of interest?

We anticipate follower counts similar to the levels seen on Twitter today. Managing 1 few hundred followers isn't too difficult, thousands can be managed by cranking up the dynos on heroku. But yeah, Justin Bieber is going to need a hosted solution to handle that kind of load (like he has now with Twitter, YouTube, etc).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4419117

and

hosted service within one month.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4419414

I'm not sure what incentive there is to reduce complexity in the protocol if you plan on selling a hosted version.

[wilkie]

This is a good point. The complexity is solved by using a distributed load balancing scheme. You can actually control your own set of load balancing servers fairly easily. Or use a free/paid service such as superfeedr.com which uses PuSH, an accepted protocol. But you guys don't like PuSH, which I don't understand. It solves the problem in a way that doesn't interfere with your protocol. This conflict-of-interest is indeed one explanation.

[maxogden]

I think we both like PuSH (https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/238417300414427137) but think neither of us like PuSH :)

PuSH itself is one implementation of a simple concept (one to many notifications via webhooks). I find things like this https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/realtime to be much more developer friendly than most PuSH implementations I've played with

[wilkie]

@maxogden Um. I think we both like PuSH. :) PuSH is frustratingly simple in that when you don't get it to work you have no idea why. But it is also because Google leaves bugs in their example code. Rar. Either way, PuSH or something else that exists... the problem isn't an open one.

[danielsiders]

We take this problem very seriously and struggled with our choice before making it.

We are designing the protocol for which we want to develop. It is clear from talking to potential users that broad initial adoption cannot occur without at least one hosted version available for users who do not want or are not able to host their own servers. This needs to happen quickly to maintain momentum.

As I told Information Week our primary interest is as developers. We will create a hosted version based on our reference implementation of the Tent server. This service will always be free and Pay What You Want. Each user will be shown our cost for providing service to him or her for that month and offered the option of paying us back or paying more than their share to help the service stay afloat (if operational costs rise so high that we cannot afford out of pocket, we will notify users so they can make other arrangements).

We are developers, not entrepreneurs. Tent is a protocol, not our attempt at a startup. We do not have venture capital, all our expenses are out of pocket, we neither hope nor expect to be remunerated. The only reason we are creating a hosted version is as a service to the community.

[steveklabnik]

Fair enough! Just wanted to make sure I fully dumped my brain, thanks.