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source code release with license for self-hosting?

Donny Winston 6 years ago updated by Paul Brandt 6 years ago 2

Hi, this is a great-looking service. However, I am concerned about it suddenly going away. Your terms of use (http://bibbase.org/terms.html) rightly limit my expectations. I currently build my group's website using a static site generator, including a script for the publications page -- I take a BibTeX file and generate the needed HTML+CSS. I have all the source code, so I can keep doing that, but BibBase looks great and I'd love to use / contribute to an open-source project. Have you considered releasing the source under a license such as MIT or BSD? I realize that some of the "social" bits like number of downloads and commenting on papers would not work out of the box, but I'd be happy to enable those options or link to bibbase.org to help people who want to create a publications page themselves and would rather simply copy-paste your embed script tag.

Answer

+2
Answer
Declined

Hi Donny,


No, sorry, we are not planning on open-sourcing the BibBase backend. However, in terms of uptime, I don't think there is much for you to worry about. BibBase has been in operation since 2005 and has been used since then by more users every year. They all rely on it being up and running 24/7 and so we take measures to prevent outages just like any other web site and as a result they are very rare. Naturally, we also have monitoring solutions in place that alert us of any problems as soon as they happen, so that we can fix them right away.


That said we are contemplating a paid tier with uptime guarantees, designated support, and other features. Would that be of interest to your group?

+2
Answer
Declined

Hi Donny,


No, sorry, we are not planning on open-sourcing the BibBase backend. However, in terms of uptime, I don't think there is much for you to worry about. BibBase has been in operation since 2005 and has been used since then by more users every year. They all rely on it being up and running 24/7 and so we take measures to prevent outages just like any other web site and as a result they are very rare. Naturally, we also have monitoring solutions in place that alert us of any problems as soon as they happen, so that we can fix them right away.


That said we are contemplating a paid tier with uptime guarantees, designated support, and other features. Would that be of interest to your group?

A +1 from me to reconsider open-sourcing your product. In general it results in a more complete and improved product that still can be commercially exploited. So going open source and producing a paid tier are not at all in contradiction, in fact in support of each other!