7 ms·
Gumroad’s source is available
- psnehanshu 1y agoIt's Rails!
- niklasbabel 1y agoi believe Sahil mentioned they’re moving away from Rails soon, as he sees it as technical debt.
- omnimus 1y agoDrama creation for marketing?
- taylorportman 1y agoTechnical debt, so hot right now.
- omnimus 1y agoI mean that choice of framework has very little to do with technical debt. So you claim something like this to create attention.
- rmason 1y agoIt launched right here on HN 14 years ago. https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227/photo/1 https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227/photo/1
- ihowlatthemoon 1y agoOriginal discussion thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614
- owebmaster 1y agoOne day work to start a multi-million project, 13 years ago. That's the real vibing.
- ignoramous 1y agoSome might not be aware: It wasn't always smooth sailing for Sahil (could have had a much comfortable life if he stayed put at Pinterest). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059594
- jatins 1y agodidn't he mention that he got fired from Pinterest?
- occamschainsaw 1y agoInteresting discussion on the merits of the initial plan of a paid link shortening service and the opposite approach (easy-to-setup paid access to links).They were discussing adding Bitcoin as a payment method when it was 0.7 cents a pop.
- spiderice 1y agoThat part made me chuckle. > At the current ~$0.70 / bitcoin, this means that every American will be able to have ~$0.05 in his or her electronic wallet, once all bitcoins are generated. Assuming that the rest of the world does not participate at all and that bitcoins are evenly distributed. > Sure, you could imagine an instant dollar-to-bitcoin-to-dollar conversion at the point of payment. Or you could imagine a bitcoin2.org that generates more coins. Or you could hope for a massive surge in the value of the bitcoin. > I'd put my money on Paypal sticking around, though. Even back that people pointed out the obvious flaw of Bitcoin remaining at $0.70. But I wonder if any of them believed it would be at $100,000 in 14 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407998
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Aurornis 1y agoGumroad became my cautionary tale for startup equity for early engineers. I remember excitedly following the story from start. It was fun to follow along. Then around 2015 things weren’t working well, so they laid off most of the team. Investors sold the company back to the founder at a steep discount. As I recall, a major investor sold their ownership for $1. Just like that, the founding engineers who worked so hard lost their jobs and saw their equity valued down to nothing. It happens! However, the strange thing in this case was that the company kept going. They had laid (almost) everyone off and declared their equity worthless, yet the company was still making money and growing. My younger self struggled to understand how the founding engineers could have gone from working so hard on something to being laid off and seeing their equity wiped out while the business itself continued right on working and generating revenue. A lot has been written to put positive spin on those events. The founder claims to have helped out some of the early engineers in vague ways. However, I’ll never forget being a young, aspiring startup engineer and watching an entire startup team get wiped out of the business they helped create and then the business just kept on trucking for the founder who walked away with ownership of the company.
- adrr 1y agoHow did lose all their equity? You can’t declare equity is worthless. You can raise new rounds with different valuations and dilute previous investors/employees but they would also dilute themselves.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoGoogle 'drag along rights'.
- hobofan 1y agoEven if they don't "lose" their equity, it might just turn essentially worthless. Very often "equity" founding staff receives is in the form of (V)ESOP s = (virtual) employee stock options, or other equity grants that only materialize in the case of an "exit event". Depending on how the exit events are specified in the contract, the founder taking the company private (/ divestment from the investors) might have resulted in an exit event with $1 value of the company.
- turnsout 1y agoI looked for a blog post announcing this, and couldn't find it. But Antiwork's Github profile mentions: > Antiwork emerged from Gumroad's mission to automate repetitive tasks. In 2025, we're taking a bold step by open-sourcing our entire suite of tools that helped run and scale Gumroad. We believe in making powerful automation accessible to everyone. That's pretty wild! I've always loved Gumroad's simplicity for creators and buyers. Now I guess people will have a pretty compelling option when searching "Gumroad open source alternative"
- noname120 1y agoAny idea what the motivation could be?
- verghese 1y agoGumroad's journey has been interesting: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting -> Billion dollar journey with VC backing to Kleiner selling back their stake to Gumroad for $1, which enabled Sahil to steer the company in a different direction. Perhaps the shift to making the source available has more to do with work culture: https://sahillavingia.com/work https://sahillavingia.com/work
- jslakro 1y agoSahil anticipates AI will significantly commoditize software. Especially following DeepSeek's impact. He has promoted Devin via twitter and likely aims to position Gumroad as the leading creator-focused alternative to traditional Open Source e-commerce platforms.
- geenat 1y agohttps://x.com/shl/status/1908146557708362188 https://x.com/shl/status/1908146557708362188 Probably not entirely, but straight from the author.
- spiffyk 1y agoCan't help but notice he's basically knowingly "donating" the code to multi-billion corporations to train their LLMs on (while in general those same corporations source their training data in ethically questionable ways), while mere mortal human individuals and small businesses are bound by a non-free license. An interesting decision to say the least.
- s17n 1y agoi mean... what would any "mere mortals" use the code for other than to directly compete with Gumroad?
- fbn79 1y agoLicense is very limiting for Business
- ZeroTalent 1y agoUse the source as inspiration and create something new in a more modern language/framework.
- rustc 1y agoIt would be a bad idea to read any of this code if you're working on a competitor based on the license terms.
- ZeroTalent 1y agoI would say the risk of a lawsuit is infinitessimal.
- arielcostas 1y agoYeah, it's more of a "source available" than Open Source in its definition. I'd rather they use AGPL or something like that.
- graemep 1y agoTo put it another way they want to call it open source without actually being open source.
- notpushkin 1y agoI don’t think they actually call it open source themselves – rather, the HN poster made a (probably benign) mistake.
- ecedeno 1y agoThe founder does. See: https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227 https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227
- lionkor 1y agoTime to train an "LLM" on it and have it reproduce the source code 1-to-1, so I can use it without a license!
- noname120 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoI think the line b/w derivative work and new work might be different. I mean if llms are trained on it ... and a lot of other things and then LLM can output the source code from a input ... then wouldn't it be open source / public domain
- singpolyma3 1y agoNo
- lionkor 1y agoIt's only a copyright issue if I know what the original source code looks like. If I don't know what it looks like, and my autocomplete writes it, how could I possibly know it's stolen?
- singpolyma3 1y agoAs if any court would accept this. Nice try
- yencabulator 1y agoOpenAI is basically betting the existence of the company on that. Meta is betting the existence of their Llama models on it.
- foxygen 1y ago
- ErrorNoBrain 1y agoI love how nothing in the readme tells me what it actually is.
- StrandedKitty 1y ago> Sell your stuff. See what sticks. Presumably an online shop with smart analytics.
- input_sh 1y agoI wouldn't really call it a traditional online shop, more like a file shop. They don't sell anything physical, only digital. If you've created a file on your computer that other people want, you can sell it on Gumroad. Depending on what you're trying to sell, there might be a better platform for the purpose (like Bandcamp for music), but Gumroad is the only one I'm aware of that's intentionally generic to fit many purposes (even if imperfectly). They also don't do shit like putting DRM on ebooks and you can set the minimum price to zero to turn it into a tipping platform (free download, but with an optional payment).
- rchaud 1y ago> They don't sell anything physical, only digital. Depends on the seller. I have a self-published physical magazine I distribute through Gumroad: https://www.glidermag.com/ https://www.glidermag.com/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- _joel 1y agoAn ecommerce platform designed to allow creators to sell to users.. apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumroad
- soco 1y agoWhich also dropped Android support, so I dropped them.
- rchaud 1y agoWeb app works fine. I'm an Android user, I sell through Gumroad and it's never occurred to me to download a native app that offers no functionality beyond what's already on the website. Sale notifications go to my email, as they should.
- clcaev 1y agoCould we please change the title to say : "Gumroad is source available"? This license is clearly fails OSD and is not open source by the industry standard; perpetuating a false statement is unhelpful. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
- runningmike 1y agoSo true. A very misleading title. This license is far away of any approved OSI or FSF Foss license. Gumroad is a great service, the value is imho not in the software. But in the execution of it’s mission and the very simple way to lower the bar to sell digital goods without upfront costs.
- WhyNotHugo 1y agoThe license is actually pretty restrictive: you can only use this if you own a small company or work for government / non-profit. Most average human's (including myself) can't use the source code in any way: > You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.
- noirscape 1y agoThe way it's been phrased, it seems like if you want to use the code to run a small webshop for some goods, you can use it, but if you're actively trying to run a resale platform, that's when you get in trouble. I don't think not being open source is that big of a deal in this situation, they aren't the only player in this space anyway. (Woocommerce to my knowledge still dominates the "small business webshop" market and probably always will for as long as the typical shared webhost webstack is still an AMP stack.)
- rustc 1y agoIt's risky if you have any chance of ever crossing $1M in company revenue because the license will terminate as soon as you reach that and you'll have to rewrite everything. > The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright, but only as long as you meet all the conditions below. > You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.
- TylerLives 1y agoI haven't followed Gumroad much, but I remember them being very pro freedom and having some interesting hiring practices. IIRC they were all being paid equally (based on position and hours of work) and had no meetings. Now I see a Code of Conduct.
- rchaud 1y agoThey've also bumped up their fees enormously, it's 10% + processing fee now, previously it was $1 flat + processing.
- teekert 1y agoThe Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.
- kwanbix 1y agoMy exact same thought.
- rchaud 1y agoIt's an ecommerce platform.
- handfuloflight 1y agoOne might prove one's intent in offering this platform for actual use by others through providing some base level of documentation.
- tempfile 1y agoI don't think they do intend that. I think they intend to get free contributions from keen people who think erroneously they're contributing to a public good.
- handfuloflight 1y agoAgreed. Their 'no full time employees' philosophy would be consistent with that: https://sahillavingia.com/work https://sahillavingia.com/work
- TheRealDunkirk 1y agoI had no idea, and I've been a "Rails guy" for 15 years, and keenly interested in high-profile successful Ruby projects for a long time. Even clicking through to their actual site from the source repo page, I had to surmise what it was.
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- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoDear SHL , Please truly open source this. I personally wouldn't mind AGPL but would still much prefer MIT Thanks.
- echelon 1y agoThere's no way he's going to do that. The leverage and market advantage would evaporate.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoWell. Any suggestions please? Though technically I don't mind it , its still great he source availabled it I am probably not going to reach 1 mln $ sales but still man if I do , then I probably want some grace period and I mean ....
- deanc 1y agoIt's in fact the market position (leader) that gives them the advantage here, not the code.
- prakashn27 1y agoWhat is the use of this opensurce when you have a strict license ?
- DetroitThrow 1y agoIt's a careless and sloppy marketing job by someone who wants to reframe the definition of open source for the millionth time, unfortunately.
- udev4096 1y agoWhat a joke of a license. This is not open source. Why the fuck is everyone in VC land trying to change the true definition of open source?
- openthc 1y agoWhich is super bullshit; cause now offering open source solutions many folk see it as a trick!
- cjpearson 1y agoFor what it's worth Gumroad left VC land several years ago. https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting
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- tempfile 1y agoThe definition of open source is itself a corruption of free software which came before it, and was corrupted by the same people.
- XCSme 1y agoMost of the VC open-source projects use open-source as a lead magnet/marketing tactic only, with no intention or desire of wanting people to actually use the software.
- diggan 1y agoThere is a distinction between those companies who actually license their stuff under FOSS licenses, but use it to get more marketing/contributors/whatever, and what companies like Meta are doing today, which is calling something "open source" in their marketing material, but if you read the terms and conditions, they call it "proprietary" instead and comes with lots of restrictions that aren't compatible with FOSS. One is a marketing tactic, the other one is outright misleading.
- quest88 1y agoWow, I remember their offices next to Thee Parkside on 17th.
- ingen0s 1y agonice work, you forgot to remove your API key tho
- nticompass 1y agoI saw this title and thought "the Australian craigslist is open source?" Then I realized I was confusing Gumroad and Gumtree.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Multiplayer 1y agoI'm reading a lot of complaints here but let's recognize some interesting aspects that Sahil is talking about: 1. It's the 5th largest rails codebase open to AI ingestion. 2. They are offering bounties for issues. Not large bounties but whatever, it's something. I personally like rails and would love to see AI tools improve with it. No idea if this code base will really help that, and when but it can't hurt. In my experience I can get next apps up in a jiffy but rails is much more of a struggle. If anyone has any tips here, please post. I'm always curious about how well bounties work especially now in an AI age. I wonder what the arbitrage on AI spend vs. bounty will be for people that take a run at them.
- irf1 1y agoI run a bounties platform (https://algora.io https://algora.io) and I've seen people who create bounties try to use some AI like Devin to solve them (@seveibar livestreamed trying it) just for fun and in all cases AI failed to solve the bounties. A Rust project that rewarded 300+ bounties ($37k) is now building an AI coding agent with the aim to solve bounties on Algora - it's an interesting benchmark I guess. Curious myself what the next years might look like, but from everything I've seen so far we're definitely not there yet.
- devops000 1y agoIf someone create a new business on top of this by changing layout and URL routes, how are they able to identify that they used this source code?
- whalesalad 1y agoIf you do it right, no one will know.
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
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- shipscode 1y agoIt's pretty cool that this license allows you to make up to $1mm revenue, at which point you can pivot and rebuild the stack. This is going to be a game changer for anybody who wants to MVP an app similar to Gumroad. MIT would be ideal, but I prefer this to GPL's force release model.
- itsthecourier 1y ago004_constants.rb: ===================== DENYLIST = %w[ ... ladygaga kanye kanyewest randyjackson mariahcarey atrak deadmau5 avicii prettylights justinbieber calvinharris katyperry rihanna shakira barackobama kimkardashian taylorswift taylorswift13 nickiminaj oprah jtimberlake theellenshow ellen selenagomez kaka ....].freeze the who is who of pop culture
- itsthecourier 1y agobots.rb: ========= BOT_MAP = { "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; cs-CZ) AppleWebKit/526.9+ (KHTML, like Gecko) AdobeAIR/1.5.1" => "Adobe AIR runtime", "BinGet/1.00.A (http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/load/ http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/load/)" => "BinGet", "Chilkat/1.0.0 (+http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatHttpUA.asp http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatHttpUA.asp)" => "Chilkat HTTP .NET", "curl/7.15.1 (x86_64-suse-linux) libcurl/7.15.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8a zlib/1.2.3 libidn/0.6.0" => "cURL", ... cool list
- tomhow 1y agoRelated post: https://danb.me/blog/gumroad-is-not-open-source/ https://danb.me/blog/gumroad-is-not-open-source/
- jppope 1y agoin a chatGPT world, just flip it over to laravel and you're off to the races
- jvns 1y agoI tried to grep the code for `api.` to get a sense for all the vendors this codebase is using, and which you'd need to have relationships with to run the code. Here's what I found: payments: https://api.paypal.com https://api.stripe.com tax stuff: https://api.taxjar.com https://api.vatstack.com (EU VAT) https://apiservices.iras.gov.sg for iOS app (?): https://api.appstoreconnect.apple.com https://api.storekit.itunes.apple AI stuff: https://api.iffy.com (AI content moderation) https://api.helper.ai (AI support) https://api.openai.com other: https://api.easypost.com (shipping labels?) https://api.sendgrid.com (email) https://api.pwnedpasswords.com (haveibeenpwned) https://api.worldbank.org (for purchasing power parity?) https://api.dropboxapi.com (for "upload from dropbox"?)
- ricardobeat 1y agoThat's pretty refreshing compared to the average 400 external "partners" your average online t-shirt store has.
- rafram 1y agoMost of those are probably indirect. Same here: Stripe doesn’t issue credit cards or even process transactions itself. It partners with a half-dozen or so credit card networks, and each network partners with thousands of banks around the world.
- ricardobeat 1y agoNo, I'm comparing to what you see on the average cookie consent banner [1]. If you dive into the 'manage' option, most e-commerce sites will literally have hundreds of third-parties listed that your data might be shared with. As far as I understand these are all direct integrations, either in the frontend or backend, not indirect - you don't have to ask for permission for companies downstream of your own providers. [1] we don't get to see most companies codebases, so this is a good indicator of the amount of integrations
- caycep 1y agois this the company where the CEO/ex CEO is trying to rejigger the VA? https://www.wired.com/story/doge-department-of-veterans-affairs-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/doge-department-of-veterans-affa...
- solarmist 1y agoNo, where'd you get that impression?
- caycep 1y agosee article above ----- "These DOGE operatives appear to have no work experience that’s remotely close to the VA in terms of its scale or complexity. The VA administers all the government benefits afforded to veterans and their families for roughly 10 million people, including education, loans, disability payments, and health care. Lavingia is the CEO of Gumroad, a platform that helps creatives sell their work and takes a cut of each sale. More recently, according to his blog, Lavingia launched Flexile, a tool to manage and pay contractors. According to his LinkedIn profile, Lavingia was the second employee at Pinterest, which he left in 2011 to found Gumroad. Lavingia is also an angel investor in other startups via SHL Capital, which backed Clubhouse and Lambda School, among others."
- hankchinaski 1y agoI don’t get the point on going open source aside from a tiny boost in marketing. What is the objective and proposition here? Considering as others have said is not really open source. If I were the founder I would not do that. It’s like if Airbnb went open source or something
- insane_dreamer 1y agoThe value of AirBNB is not in its code but in its network.
- hankchinaski 1y agoAnd yet is never gonna be open source
- skeptrune 1y agoJust calling it source available from the get go would have gotten a much better reception!
- BroadGauge 1y agoAre there any other large open-source (not necessarily free) rails codebases?