Persumi - Level up your writing and blogging with AI Fred Wu ifredwu@gmail.com http://persumi.com/u/fredwu http://persumi.com/u/fredwu/tech/e/blog/t/open source 2026-05-02T00:02:03.407028Z <![CDATA[<p> <em>Update: I have blogged about <a href="/blog/2011-09-02-startup-vc-and-the-things-i-learnt-from/">the things I have learnt</a> from this.</em></p> <p> Last night, after some long overdue frustration, I have open sourced <a href="https://github.com/fredwu/angel_nest">Angel Nest</a> - an online platform for connecting entrepreneurs and investors, similar to <a href="http://angel.co/">AngelList</a>.</p> <p> Shortly after I open sourced my work, the news <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2891907">got picked up by Hacker News</a> and went onto its front page. (Update: I was just informed that the story <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/jkr8r/developer_opensources_200_hr_project_after_client/">was picked up</a> by Reddit as well.) The <a href="https://github.com/fredwu/angel_nest">Github repository</a> has since been followed by 250+ people and forked by 60+ times - it became one of the Github’s daily trending repositories.</p> <p> Since then I have received many warm regards from fellow developers and entrepreneurs. Thank you so much guys! I will reply to each one of you as soon as I have a chance. :)</p> <p> From the Hacker News comments as well as some of the comments received privately, there were a few questions raised, and I hope to address some of them in this blog post.</p> <h2> Why didn’t you charge upfront or by milestone?</h2> <p> Well, because it wasn’t a simple freelance or contract job. I was approached and asked to become the then to-be-set-up company’s first employee (yes, an employee, not a technical co-founder). At the time of our work agreement negotiation, the company was still to be formed and the investors were still to be signed on - no term sheets or contracts have been signed by any of the investors.</p> <p> As a result, I agreed to put the invoices on hold for a while (i.e. a couple of weeks, according to him), then I will start invoicing the company fortnightly.</p> <p> Oh, and many of you think I am a freelancer. Well, yes and no, I freelance, but my income is mostly from my full time job (as a web developer, of course). :)</p> <h2> Still, why did you trust him so easily?</h2> <p> Before I agreed to work on the project, I did some background-checking of this so-called entrepreneur - everything seemed legit - he was a developer himself a few years ago; he worked as a VP in a major corporation in the States before committing himself to this project; and from the few Skype conversations we had, he seemed to understand how to keep a developer happy. As a matter of fact, he had stressed many times that he would pay the developers a fair deal in order to keep them happy.</p> <h2> And how could you have agreed to work for him without any contracts?</h2> <p> Being a person with goodwill, I agreed to work for him on this project - essentially as the principal developer. My contribution was supposed to be compensated by a low hourly rate + equity in the company - the figures were agreed both verbally and via written Email.</p> <p> Ordinarily I value equity very little. However, the way he described the investment situation - the company being valued at $2M, with investment from several top VCs and angels in China - got me believed that the company had a very strong lineup of investors and a reasonably large sum of first round investment.</p> <p> To this day I still do not know what the actual investment situation is. It seems to be a sensitive topic whenever I brought it up during our conversations.</p> <h2> Why didn’t you stop working sooner?</h2> <p> I wanted to be professional - I cared more about building an awesome product than receiving a fat cheque (not that the cheque will be fat anyway, given the low hourly rate).</p> <p> He stressed many times that the project is very time sensitive and we needed to launch as soon as possible.</p> <p> And in order to speed up the development progress, I even took two weeks off work (with many unpaid leave days) and worked on this project. Looking back, I lost not only the compensation I am entitled to, but also a fraction of the salary that puts food on my table.</p> <h2> Are you upset?</h2> <p> Actually, not really. As I said before, I care more about building fine products than receiving more money - just the fact that I worked on a real Rails 3.1 project is very fulfilling in itself. And the fact that I received so many warm regards and comments - I am :) rather than :(.</p> <p> As for the non-paying client, well, this isn’t my first time, and I usually just choose to forget about them and move on. I have too many more important things to worry about than chasing after payments.</p> <h2> Can I donate?</h2> <p> I sincerely thank you for your offer, but no I do not need donation.</p> <h2> What about the intellectual property? Any NDA?</h2> <p> We have no contracts or any paper signed whatsoever, despite I requesting them repeatedly - hence why I could release the source code at my will.</p> <h2> Why release the source code in MIT?</h2> <p> Because I am a big fan of total freedom in open source. I <a href="http://fuckgpl.com/">do not like</a> the GPL family of licenses. Having said that, I respect the opinion of other peoples’, so I dual licensed the source code under GPL as well.</p> <h2> But open-sourcing the system gives them access?</h2> <p> They (the entrepreneur himself, and another account who I suspect is the new developer) already have access to the Github repository. Their access was revoked just before I open sourced the work.</p> <p> To be honest, I could not care less what they do with the source code. Just the fact that he chose to shaft me is a strong enough indication that he will not succeed.</p> <h2> Again, why open source now?</h2> <p> I would have waited a little longer if it wasn’t for the fact that his new developers don’t seem to know what they were doing. A while ago I received a bunch of broken test emails sent to my inbox - indicating that he’s already hired someone else to continue the development work. Last night, a bunch of test emails came through again - so that was when I decided enough is enough.</p> <h2> Is it wise for you to do this?</h2> <p> I don’t know, you decide! :) Is gifting the source code to someone who might find it useful a good thing? I sure hope so.</p> <h2> Are you looking for freelance work?</h2> <p> Nope. Not because I just got burned, but because I have <a href="http://wuit.com/">my own adventures</a> to pursue.</p> <h2> What about other work and/or startup opportunities?</h2> <p> You may find out by dropping me a line, all my contact details can be found on this blog. :)</p> <h2> I am interested, but who are you?</h2> <p> Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will find my bio with a couple of links. :)</p> ]]> 2011-08-17T11:55:00.000000Z Fred Wu ifredwu@gmail.com http://persumi.com/u/fredwu http://persumi.com/u/fredwu/tech/e/blog/p/open-sourcing-a-200-hour-project-the-story-behind-it 2011-08-17T11:55:00.000000Z <![CDATA[<p> I am extremely happy that <a href="http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/cdad483dff4fef1b640dc3c750719c325b252f89">my patch was accepted</a>, so I am now <a href="http://contributors.rubyonrails.org/contributors/fred-wu/commits">one of the 1600 odd people</a> who have contributed to the Rails project! :D</p> ]]> 2010-08-02T22:40:46.000000Z Fred Wu ifredwu@gmail.com http://persumi.com/u/fredwu http://persumi.com/u/fredwu/tech/e/blog/p/im-now-a-ruby-on-rails-contributor 2010-08-02T22:40:46.000000Z